An interesting read by a lawyer and his fight for free speech and also how politicians want aspects of free speech taken away. I found this to be very insightful.

Everyone would benefit from reading this detailed and interesting read about free speech in our world today. It is an emotional read, but Rodney Smolla breaks it down so that anyone can understand his purpose and meaning. Good historic detail is given for background. Highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in free speech, and especially in this day and age of unrest in our nation.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC for an honest opinion.

I greatly enjoyed the legal lessons of this book of how to balance free speech and hate speech.in US law. This is one of those books that should be read by all activists and elected officials in America.

Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer: Charlottesville and the Politics of Hate by Rodney A Smolla is a thought provoking and emotional read.

When I say an "emotional read" I don't mean that it is written emotionally but rather that a reader, probably regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, will experience a range of emotion. Anger, sadness, frustration, and even helplessness at times. But this is a good thing, it means we have to think about why we feel as we do and what we actually believe is right to do in a pragmatic way without betraying our ideals. Praxis rarely if ever caters 100% to ideals, no matter what those ideals are, so we have to work out a way to retain as much of our ideals while creating a solution that works for, if not all, then at least the vast majority of people. And without leaving entire groups of people outside of the solution, we don't need more scapegoats to make us feel like we are making progress.

This book reviews both the events in Charlottesville as well as the history leading to it and the aftermath so far. In addition to this it also is a debate about what free speech, in the US, actually is and what it might become. Smolla does not leave himself and his history as a free speech lawyer out of the line of critique.

Smolla still falls into the marketplace theory of free speech and he makes a case for it very well. He also critiques the order and morality theory fairly and even, in a way, acknowledges that in some cases it would appear to provide better outcomes. As much as I am resistant to even the name marketplace I have to say he has convinced me that, if these are the two options, it is the way to go. The single biggest reason, what he calls the Achilles heel of the order and morality theory, centers on the issue of who decides and then enforces such a theory in practice. It would have to be the government and whoever at a given moment controls the government. That would always have been a worrisome problem but in the age of Trump dismantling anything that resembles rule of law, trying to consolidate power in not only the executive branch but in his own tiny little hands, and in the violent nature of his most vocal supporters, this does indeed become a major reason to adhere to the marketplace theory.

Whether you agree with my opinion above, either about the theories or about the current regime, that should not keep you from reading this book. Smolla explains the theories far better than I just paraphrased my understanding of them and, whichever side you argue, the facts here will lead to a better informed debate and, hopefully, some agreement. Even when we put a new or improved policy or system in place we need to always already be critiquing it. No policy or system is perfect and there will be flaws and places for improvement. It seems to me that the marketplace theory incorporates this element into itself while the order and morality theory would have us disrupt the entire system every time we needed to make any change at all.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This is an incredible read that reflects on Charlottesville in regards to free speech. It goes over some history and politics of free speech while the author shares his unique experience as a free speech lawyer.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in politics, free speech, or really any American!