The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares that ‘Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.’ What does this mean? Justice Oliver W.l Holmes, in his famous Abrams v. U.S.(1919) dissenting opinion, began what may be the single most poetic paragraph ever written by a Supreme Court justice on the meaning of freedom of speech. What could Holmes have been thinking?
  The most celebrated attempt at explanation is the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor, a notion that is most famously associated with Holmes" great dissent in Abrams, in which he argued that “when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”
  The marketplace of ideas metaphor does not posit that truth will emerge from the free trade in ideas, at least not instantly. Freedom of speech is a core belief, almost a kind of secular religious tenet, an article of constitutional faith. How do we account for the modern Constitution reverence for freedom of speech? Why is this value so solidly entrenched in our constitutional law, and why is it so widely embraced by the general public? Over the years many legal scholars and judges have offered theoretical justifications for strong protection of freedom of speech, and in these justifications we may also find explanatory clues.
  Freedom of speech is the right to defiantly, robustly and irreverently speak one’s mind just because it is one’s mind. Freedom of speech is thus bonded in special and unique ways to the human capacity to think, imagine and create. Conscience and consciousness are the sacred precincts of mind and soul. Freedom of speech is intimately linked to freedom of thought, to that central capacity to reason and wonder, hope and believe, that largely defines our humanity.
  What is the relationship between fear, danger, and the law? Sunstein attacks the increasingly influential Precautionary Principle. Focusing on such problems as global warming, terrorism, and genetic engineering, He shows how free societies can protect liberty amidst fears about terrorism and national security. Laws of Fear represents a major statement from one of the most influential political and legal theorists writing today.