Reading Seminar: Free Speech and Race

Free speech is a treasured facet of our legal and political traditions in the United States. Its exercise, however, has often collided with competing commitments to racial hierarchy. These controversies have played a defining role in the development of First Amendment jurisprudence. This course examines how the social, political, and legal dimensions of race in the U.S. have contoured expression jurisprudence. It considers the relationship between the diminished citizenship capacity engendered by racial marginalization and the democratic functions of free speech. Students will grapple with scholarship that interrogates how expression doctrine has both reproduced and disrupted social hierarchies. By engaging a range of cases and perspectives that situate free expression within the sociohistorical context of race in the United States, students are tasked with granular thinking, nuanced discussion, and critical analysis.