The Perilous Public Square

A perfect book for our time, and a true public service. A terrific and impressively diverse collection, exploring multiple threats to freedom of speech. -- Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University
This volume is terrific and timely, and essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of how to think about expression, the platform monopolies, threats, and what the public sphere means today. It challenges shibboleths you may not realize you have. The diverse writers directly and eloquently fight each other in these pages, helping clarify both the stakes and the disagreements about not only what to do, but how to do talk about what to do with some of the most maddening and massive threats to democratic life and discussion. -- Zephyr Teachout, author of Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money
The Perilous Public Square provides the type of provocative, outside-the-box thinking we so desperately need right now. This collection brings together a stellar group of legal scholars in a format that includes the challenging of, and elaboration on, the core essays’ principal arguments. The result is a compelling and thought-provoking collection that represents a vital contribution to a number of contemporary communications policy debates. -- Philip M. Napoli, author of Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously said that free speech “is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” The meaning and wisdom of that experiment long have been, and continue to be debated. This has never been truer than it is today, as new communications technologies and rapidly shifting political norms call into question old assumptions about speech, information, and their relationships to democratic governance. In this volume, top-notch thinkers from a range of backgrounds and perspectives tackle these vexing questions. The result is timely, engrossing, and deeply informed. A must-read for anyone who cares about the future of free speech and democracy. -- Heidi Kitrosser, Robins Kaplan Professor of Law, University of Minnesota
A must-read for anyone concerned about the many threats facing free expression today, be they from structural, private, or government (U.S. or otherwise) forces, as well as any number of bad actors. * Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books *
A thought-provoking, important collection of conversations that embody and manifest the complexity of the challenges that cyberspace presents to “terrestrial” legal thought." * Law and Politics Book Review *