Art and Freedom of Speech. Randall P. Bezanson. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 313 pp.

Art has frequently caused firestorms of scandal in a context of sex, impiety, or cultural irreverence—think Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987), or Kurt Westergaard’s Muhammad (2005). Art’s abstract or subjective nature has complicated legal categorization; First Amendment scholars have engaged a social notion of art, but few have displayed author Randall P. Bezanson’s felicity with complex legal theory, which he discusses fluidly, or his deep compassion for human creativity. [Read more...]