In Speech Matters (Princeton 2014), Seana Shiffrin explains why lying is wrong, why freedom of speech is right, and why those two views are compatible. This review lauds Shiffrin’s book for its creative and powerful coherence of vision. It lays its claims about both lying and free speech on the same foundation: on a view of sincere communication as a prerequisite for moral agency and moral progress. In this regard, Shiffrin’s book stands in sharp rebuke to the current trend, in the Supreme Court and elsewhere, of assuming that the freedom of speech must include a right to lie. Instead, Shiffrin argues, the reasons that we have freedom of speech are the same reasons that lying is rarely morally permissible. At the same time, the coherence of Shiffrin’s view also reveals a certain symmetry between Kantian accounts of lying and predominant views of free speech, one that not everyone will find salutary. In both, the importance of communication seems to override other interests, even other moral commitments. While Shiffrin articulates a compelling view of why free and authentic communication serves a distinct, indeed a singular, role in moral identity, the question remains whether that role requires quite so much protection, either against lying or in favor of free speech. Nevertheless, Shiffrin’s book puts forth an original and authoritative view on these questions, one that will challenge and instruct anyone interested in lying, free speech, or the communicative responsibilities we owe to ourselves and others.
For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
Today, legal culture is shaped by One Big Question: should courts, particularly the US Supreme Court, have a lot of power? This question is affecting...
Constitutional review is the power of a body, usually a court, to assess whether law or government action complies with the constitution. Originating...
Liberalism is back on its heels, pushed there by political movements in the United States and Europe and by the critiques of legal scholars and...
Cyber stalking involves repeated, often relentless targeting of someone with abuse. Death and rape threats may be part of a perpetrator’s playbook...
Fifty years ago, federal and state lawmakers called for the regulation of a criminal justice “databank” connecting federal, state, and local agencies...
In the last few years, the Supreme Court has upended its doctrine of religious freedom under the First Amendment. The Court has explicitly rejected...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
The United States has granted reparations for a variety of historical injustices, from imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War...
This Article develops a new way of understanding the law in order to address contemporary debates about judicial practice and reform. The...
In Poland, Venezuela, Rwanda, and several other countries, governments have in the past years altered basic rules of their constitutional system to...
In Chile, many commentators, academics and political leaders have spent years arguing that the limited nature of the social rights in the national...
The demise of Roe v. Wade has raised a host of religious liberty questions that were submerged prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v...