Degradation

Kevin W. Saunders is Charles Clarke Chair in Constitutional Law at Michigan State University College of Law. He is the author of Violence as Obscenity: Limiting the Media's First Amendment Protection and Saving Our Children from the First Amendment (NYU Press, 2003).

While the book covers much ground that is familiar to even casual scholars of the subject, it does so in an innovative fashion, interweaving diverse topics such as global religion, the theory of evolution, and contemporary critical race and legal theory. - S. B. Lichtman (Choice) Degradation: What the History of Obscenity Tells Us About Hate Speech presents a compelling and timely argument. - Melanie Zoltan (suite101.com) Degradation is provocative and...well presented; it should make interesting reading for both legal professionals and others interested in First Amendment issues. - Michael J. Gentile (Law Library Journal) Professor Kevin Sounders' book addresses two topics in the First Amendment law not commonly associated with one another, obscenity law and hate speech . . . the book makes a substantial contribution to this decidedly thorny area of First Amendment law. - Kevin Saunders (Law and Politics Book Review) Kevin Saunders puts forward a striking thesis, namely that hate speech deserves regulation under the First Amendment because it degrades the human personality of those whom it targets. In likening hate speech to pornography and obscenity, Saunders provides a novel and arresting approach that avoids entanglement in the thought-ending clichés that have marked much previous scholarship on this subject. - Richard Delgado,co-author of Understanding Words That Wound Saunders' scholarship is characterized by painstaking research, often delving deeply into the historic antecedents to the legal doctrines and policies he is addressing. His intellectual courage, particularly his willingness to espouse with passion and persuasive intensity positions that are often controversial, marks him as one of the most significant champions for re-thinking the direction of modern American constitutional law dealing with freedom of speech. - Rodney Smolla,author of Free Speech in an Open Society

• Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Pornography, Life, and the Gods in the Greek and Roman Eras 3 The Arrival of Christianity 4 The Modern Era 5 A Look at Other Cultures 6 What about Hate Speech? 7 Using Obscenity Doctrine to Address Hate Speech 8 Applications 9 Variable Obscenity, Children, and Hate 10 Conclusion Notes Index About the Author