Samantha Barbas PROFESSOR DIRECTOR OF THE BALDY CENTER FOR L AW AND SOCIAL POLICY JD, Stanford Law School PhD, University of California at Berkeley BA, Williams College (716) 645-6216
sbarbas@buffalo.edu
AREAS OF INTEREST FIRST AMENDMENT LEGAL HISTORY MASS MEDIA LAW
The Esquire Case: A Lost Free Speech Landmark, 27 William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 287 (Dec. 2018).
My work examines the interconnections between law, American social and cultural history, and the history of mass communications. I have focused on the history of
BOOKS
CHAPTERS
The Rise and Fall of Morris
Privacy and the Right to One’s
Ernst: Free Speech Renegade
Image: A Cultural and Legal History,
(University of Chicago Press, 2021).
in Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and
privacy, defamation, and free speech law, looking at topics ranging from the 1957 trial of Confidential magazine, to
Confidential Confidential:
Redress 202 (Anne Bloom, David
The Inside Story of Hollywood’s
M. Engel & Michael McCann, eds.,
Notorious Scandal magazine
Cambridge University Press, 2018).
(Chicago Review Press, 2018).
the 1967 Supreme Court case Time v. Hill, to the history
ARTICLES
of the ACLU and the career
The Press and Libel Before
of famed civil liberties
New York Times v. Sullivan, 44
attorney Morris Ernst.”
Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 511 (2021).
Recounting the Life of a Free-Speech Renegade Based on volumes of archives and historical accounts, The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst: Free Speech Renegade (University of Chicago Press, 2021) follows the life and the career of civil liberties attorney Morris Ernst. Ernst spent decades as the American Civil Liberties Union’s general counsel. Renowned for battling against artistic censorship, he successfully argued high profile free-speech cases and supported the widespread expansion of protections for sexual expression, reproductive rights, and union organizing. Yet, Ernst had another side. Samantha Barbas details her subject’s late-career obsession with resisting Communist influence in the ACLU and the wider society, highlighting his contrary perspectives that both transformed free speech in America and inflicted damage to the cause of civil liberties. Barbas puts Ernst in a timely new light, showing that today’s challenges to free speech and the exercise of political power make Ernst’s battles as relevant as ever.
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