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The Road to Now

#231 Freedom of Speech w/ Lynn Greenky

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8628 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The first amendment right to the freedom of speech is a cornerstone of American liberty, but this broad principle becomes a bit narrower when put into practice. Why, for example, is burning an American flag in protest protected by the first amendment but burning your draft card is not? Lynn Greenky, whose new book When Freedom Speaks: The Boundaries and Boundlessness of our First Amendment Rights joins Ben and Bob to answer these questions and others in a master session on the freedom of speech.

Lynn Greenky is a former lawyer and current teaching professor in Syracuse University's Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, where she teaches a course on the First Amendment. Her book, When Freedom Speaks, will be available on May 15th from Brandeis University Press and can be pre-ordered from her website, LynnGreenky.com.

This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Ben Sawyer.

0:06.3

I'm Bob Crawford.

0:07.4

This is the road to now.

0:08.9

Our guest today is a teaching professor at Syracuse University, where she teaches courses

0:14.3

on the First Amendment, particularly freedom of speech.

0:17.8

And she now has a book out based upon her 15 years of experience teaching

0:23.3

this and previously working as a lawyer in the state of New York. Lynn Greenkey, the author of

0:28.6

When Freedom Speaks the Boundaries and Boundlessness of our First Amendment rights,

0:32.5

welcome to the road to now. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Thank you. Your book, I got to say, it is so

0:40.0

accessible. All right. I'm a historian. And obviously because in my classes, we have to cover

0:45.1

major court decisions, the First Amendment is always tricky, but the freedom of speech thing,

0:50.9

this is something I've tried to wrap my head around. This is something that I

0:55.3

hear enough people speaking about and I absolutely know they are wrong when they talk about it. But then

1:01.5

there are all these middle ground areas where it's not clear. And your book was so helpful with this.

1:07.6

And so, Lynn, could we start off? I'm just going to, I'm going to throw one at you because I thought

1:11.6

this was fascinating. Why is it illegal to burn your draft card, but it is perfectly legal and

1:17.7

upheld twice by the Supreme Court to burn an American flag? Okay. So, burning the draft card versus

1:23.5

burning the flag. When the legislature creates legislation, they can do it. They can focus it on

1:32.2

behavior or they can focus it on speech. If they focus it on behavior, that's called,

1:40.3

then it is a content neutral. If they focus, it's called content neutral. If they focus it on

1:46.7

speech, it's called content based. When David, the burning the draft card, that was back in the

1:54.1

1960s during the Vietnam War. And what the Congress decided is that they needed to have all the men who were drafted

...

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