BiblioVault - Books about Ginsburg, Tom

The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression

Edited by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg

University of Chicago Press

A collection of texts that provide the foundation for the University of Chicago’s longstanding tradition of free expression, principles that are at the center of current debates within higher education and society more broadly.

Free inquiry and expression are hotly contested, both on campus and in social and political life. In higher education, the University of Chicago has been at the forefront of conversations around free speech and academic freedom since its inception in the late nineteenth century. The University combined elements of a research university with a commitment to American pragmatism and democratic progress, all of which depended on what its first president referred to as the “complete freedom of speech on all subjects.” In 2014, then University provost and president J. D. Isaacs and Robert Zimmer released a statement now known as the Chicago Principles, which have since been adopted or endorsed by one hundred US colleges and universities. These principles are just a part of the long-standing dialogue at the University of Chicago around freedom of expression—its meaning and limits. The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression brings together exemplary documents that explain and situate this ongoing conversation with an introductory essay that brings the tradition to light.

Throughout waves of historical and societal challenges and changes, this first principle of free expression has required rearticulation and new interpretations. The documents gathered here include, among others, William Rainey Harper’s “Freedom of Speech” (1900), the Kalven Committee’s report on the University’s role in political and social action (1967), and Geoffrey R. Stone’s “Free Speech on Campus: A Challenge of Our Times” (2016). Together, the writings of the canon reveal how the Chicago tradition is neither static nor stagnant, but a vibrant experiment; a lively struggle to understand, practice, and advance free inquiry and expression.

At a time of nationwide campus speech debates, engaging with these texts and the questions they raise is essential to sustaining an environment of broad intellectual and ideological diversity. This book offers a blueprint for the future of higher education’s vital work and points to the civic value of free expression.

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How to Save a Constitutional Democracy

Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self-rule. In the United States, the tenure of Donald Trump has seemed decisive turning point for many. What kind of president intimidates jurors, calls the news media the “enemy of the American people,” and seeks foreign assistance investigating domestic political rivals? Whatever one thinks of President Trump, many think the Constitution will safeguard us from lasting damage. But is that assumption justified?

How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to be complacent. Drawing on a rich array of other countries’ experiences with democratic backsliding, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq show how constitutional rules can both hinder and hasten the decline of democratic institutions. The checks and balances of the federal government, a robust civil society and media, and individual rights—such as those enshrined in the First Amendment—often fail as bulwarks against democratic decline. The sobering reality for the United States, Ginsburg and Huq contend, is that the Constitution’s design makes democratic erosion more, not less, likely. Its structural rigidity has had unforeseen consequence—leaving the presidency weakly regulated and empowering the Supreme Court conjure up doctrines that ultimately facilitate rather than inhibit rights violations. Even the bright spots in the Constitution—the First Amendment, for example—may have perverse consequences in the hands of a deft communicator who can degrade the public sphere by wielding hateful language banned in many other democracies. We—and the rest of the world—can do better. The authors conclude by laying out practical steps for how laws and constitutional design can play a more positive role in managing the risk of democratic decline.

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Judicial Reputation

A Comparative Theory

Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Judges are society’s elders and experts, our masters and mediators. We depend on them to dispense justice with integrity, deliberation, and efficiency. Yet judges, as Alexander Hamilton famously noted, lack the power of the purse or the sword. They must rely almost entirely on their reputations to secure compliance with their decisions, obtain resources, and maintain their political influence.

In Judicial Reputation, Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg explain how reputation is not only an essential quality of the judiciary as a whole, but also of individual judges. Perceptions of judicial systems around the world range from widespread admiration to utter contempt, and as judges participate within these institutions some earn respect, while others are scorned. Judicial Reputation explores how judges respond to the reputational incentives provided by the different audiences they interact with—lawyers, politicians, the media, and the public itself—and how institutional structures mediate these interactions. The judicial structure is best understood not through the lens of legal culture or tradition, but through the economics of information and reputation. Transcending those conventional lenses, Garoupa and Ginsburg employ their long-standing research on the latter to examine the fascinating effects that governmental interactions, multicourt systems, extrajudicial work, and the international rule-of-law movement have had on the reputations of judges in this era.

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