Lee Levine
The Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) will podcast future First Amendment Salons, the next of which is scheduled for December 8th in Washington, D.C. That salon, the eleventh, will feature a discussion between David Cole (the new national legal director of the ACLU) and Jess Bravin (the Supreme Court correspondent for the Wall Street Journal).
Henceforth, a podcast of the Salons will be available on FIRE’s So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast station hosted by Nico Perrino. A video of the Salons will also be available on FIRE’s First Amendment Online library.
Lee Levine, one of the Salon’s co-chairs, stated: “The First Amendment Salon has quickly developed a well deserved reputation as the leading forum for spirited and frank discussion about the role of the freedom of expression in contemporary society. Now, more than ever, we believe it is vital to bring those discussions to as wide an audience as possible and we are delighted to be working with FIRE to make that happen.”
Nico Perrino
“The First Amendment Salon has become an important platform for bringing together the most prominent figures in the First Amendment community to regularly discuss hot-button free speech issues,” said Perrino, FIRE’s director of communications. “We are thrilled to partner with the Salon’s organizers to share these essential conversations with a wider audience on So to Speak.”
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The salons, which began in April 2014, engage members of the First Amendment community – lawyers, academics, journalists, and activists – in an ongoing discussion of key free speech issues of our day. Each by-invitation only program involves a 90-minute discussion concerning a timely topic related to freedom of expression, whether in a contemporary Supreme Court case, book, article, legal brief, or memorandum.
→ In September 2014, the Salons formed an association with the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at the Yale Law School. And in August 2015, the Salon first went “on the road,” beginning with an event in Los Angeles and thereafter one in Chicago. The last salon involved a discussion between Professor Geoffrey Stone and Judge Richard Posner (YouTube video here).
→ This past October the First Amendment Salon launched its first in the “More Speech” series of Occasional Papers” to be circulated by the salon and the Floyd Abrams Institute. The purpose of these “More Speech papers is to introduce the practicing First Amendment bar to some new and important scholarly work that might be useful in litigation. Thus, the Salon will invite a noted First Amendment lawyer to write a foreword to a particular scholarly article. By the same token, from time to time it will invite a noted First Amendment scholar to write a foreword to some important appellate brief, which we think might be of interest to the academic community. In this way, among others, the Salon hopes to enhance the communication between the practicing bar and the legal academy (and among journalists and activists, too).
→ The next Salon will be on April 5, 2017 at the Floyd Abrams Institute at Yale Law School. Adam Liptak (Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times) will interview Mr. Abrams in connection with his latest book, The Soul of the First Amendment (Yale University Press, 2017).
Co-Chairs
- Ronald K.L. Collins, University of Washington School of Law
- Lee Levine, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz
- David M. Skover, Seattle University, School of Law
Advisory Board
- Floyd Abrams, Cahill Gordon & Reindel
- Sandra Baron, Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression
- Erwin Chemerinsky, University of California at Irvine, School of Law
- Robert Corn-Revere, Davis Wright Tremaine
- Robert Post, Yale Law School
- David Schulz, Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression
- Paul M. Smith, Jenner & Block
- Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago, School of Law
- Nadine Strossen, New York Law School
- Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law