{"id":53520,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/the-first-amendment-guardian-of-all-freedoms.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"the-first-amendment-guardian-of-all-freedoms","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/the-first-amendment-guardian-of-all-freedoms.html","title":{"rendered":"The First Amendment Guardian of All Freedoms:"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The First Amendment: Guardian of All Freedoms:<\/h1><\/span>
A Review of Anthony Lewis’s Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment<\/span>
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By ELAINE CASSEL <\/h2>
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Friday, Feb. 29, 2008
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In his new book, Anthony Lewis returns to the topic of the First Amendment – which he also addressed in 1991, in Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment<\/i>. It’s a fitting topic for this former longtime New York Time<\/i>s journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who has long covered the law and the courts. Readers might be familiar with Lewis’s most famous book — Gideon’s Trumpet<\/i> — about the landmark unanimous 1963 Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainright<\/i><\/a>, wherein the court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel requires that states appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants. (The book was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda).<\/p>

Lewis’s subtitle is also apt. He calls the book a “biography,” distinguishing the law of the First Amendment, which consists mainly of Supreme Court decisions, from the life of the First Amendment, derived from the stories of litigants and judges. <\/p> \n