ESSENTIAL LIBERTY: First Amendment Battles for a...

ESSENTIAL LIBERTY: First Amendment Battles for a Free Press edited by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (Seven Locks Press: $14.95: 128 pp.; illustrated, paperback original). The editors of the prestigious Columbia Review of Journalism prepared these summaries of historic cases for high school readers on the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. The collected editorials, excerpts from decisions and reflections of participants focus on five key cases, from Near v. Minnesota (1930) to Hustler v. Falwell (1988). In many of these cases the need for a free press triumphed over distasteful content: As Justice Felix Frankfurter noted, “It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.”