Books by Owen Fiss

Freedom of expression, long an issue that united liberals, now serves to drive them apart. This book analyzes the pressure on liberal thought resulting from such controversies as pornography, Mapplethorpe and artistic expression, and the rights of street-corner orators.

How free is the speech of someone who can't be heard? Not very--and this, Owen Fiss suggests in this incisive book, is where the First Amendment comes in. He reframes the debate by showing how restrictions on political expenditures, hate speech, and pornography can be defended in terms of the First Amendment, not despite it.

After decades of hand-wringing and well-intentioned efforts to improve inner cities, ghettos remain places of degrading poverty with few jobs, much crime, failing schools, and dilapidated housing. Stepping around fruitless arguments over whether or not ghettos are dysfunctional communities that exacerbate poverty, and beyond modest proposals to ameliorate their problems, one of America's leading experts on civil rights gives us a stunning but commonsensical solution: give residents the means to leave. Inner cities, writes Owen Fiss, are structures of subordination. The only way to end the poverty they transmit across generations is to help people move out of them--and into neighborhoods with higher employment rates and decent schools. Based on programs tried successfully in Chicago and elsewhere, Fiss's proposal is for a provocative national policy initiative that would give inner-city residents rent vouchers so they can move to better neighborhoods. This would end at last the informal segregation, by race and income, of our metropolitan regions. Given the government's role in creating and maintaining segregation, Fiss argues, justice demands no less than such sweeping federal action. To sample the heated controversy that Fiss's ideas will ignite, the book includes ten responses from scholars, journalists, and practicing lawyers. Some endorse Fiss's proposal in general terms but take issue with particulars. Others concur with his diagnosis of the problem but argue that his policy response is wrongheaded. Still others accuse Fiss of underestimating the internal strength of inner-city communities as well as the hostility of white suburbs. Fiss's bold views should set off a debate that will help shape urban social policy into the foreseeable future. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in social justice, domestic policy, or the fate of our cities.

"The Law As It Could Be" gathers Fiss's most important work on procedure, adjudication and public reason, introduced by the author and including contextual introductions for each piece - some of which are among the most cited in 20th Century American legal studies.

Professor Fiss examines contemporary free-speech issues in the context of the collision of liberal ideas of equality and freedom with modern social structures and speculates on what role the state might play in furthering robust public debate.