| Beyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First Amendment Contributor(s): Cleary, Edward J. (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0679747036 ISBN-13: 9780679747031 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group OUR PRICE: $18.05 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 1995 Annotation: Here is the story of the controversial landmark decision by the lawyer who took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Although he detested the crime his client had committed in 1990, Cleary believed First Amendment rights were being threatened. The Supreme Court agreed. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Law | Civil Rights - Political Science | Civil Rights - Law | Criminal Law - General |
| Dewey: 347.305 |
| Physical Information: 0.86" H x 5.66" W x 8.72" (0.98 lbs) 336 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Minnesota - Cultural Region - Midwest - Cultural Region - Upper Midwest |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Does our abhorrence of racism allow us to ban certain forms of speech? This is the simple yet subversive question that Edward J. Cleary posed to the U.S. Supreme Court when, in 1991, he defended a white student who had burned a cross on a black family's lawn in St. Paul, Minnesota, violating a local ordinance against hate crimes. As a progressive, Cleary detested everything his client stood for. But in this compelling argued book he describes how he overturned the St. Paul ordinance--and convinced the Court to rule that burning a cross is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means . . . to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire. As Cleary retraces his path from St. Paul to the courtroom in Washington, he juxtaposes the stories of previous First Amendment cases with a personal account of the unlikely alliances (with both the A.C.L.U. and a group engaged in defending the Ku Klux Klan) and antagonisms that grew out of the case. Ultimately, he shows us why a law that bans expressions of racism is as dangerous as a law that bans protests against those expressions. In Beyond the Burning Cross, Leary has given us an unparalleled insider's report of a watershed event in constitutional history that is as absorbing as any thriller. |