Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Series
  • People
  • Depts & Colleges
  • Open Education

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Series
  • People
  • Depts & Colleges
  • Open Education

From Locke on Toleration to the First Amendment

Series
Foundation for Law, Justice and Society
Audio Embed
Professor Dan Robinson gives a talk on the First Amendment in the US Constitution and the philosophy of John Locke.
The First Amendment has had a mixed pedigree and a difficult birth. In this lecture, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Dan Robinson will demonstrate that, in offering protection of the basic liberties — freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and assembly — the clear language of the First Amendment's final form has been no bar to diverse and conflicting interpretations. This leaves unsettled the question of just what constitutes 'speech' and the grounds on which it loses the Amendment's protection.

Professor Robinson will chart the development of philosophical thought on these freedoms from John Locke to the present day, and address the question of how courts navigate these conflicting interpretations. Operating as they do within the wider cultural climate of the day, he will assess whether the courts do, and should, remain immune to its fluctuating pressures.

This lecture forms part of a series on Free Speech convened by Professor Sir Richard Sorabji.
Professor Dan Robinson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University and a Fellow of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.

More in this series

View Series
Foundation for Law, Justice and Society

Populism and the Constitution: The Case of Britain in the Wake of the EU Referendum

Professor Denis Galligan, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford gives a Research Cluster Seminar to celebrate Wolfson's 50th Anniversary.
Previous
Foundation for Law, Justice and Society

Introduction to Film Screening of Pablo Larrain's NO

By Alan Angell, author of *Democracy after Pinochet*SPEAKER: Alan Angell, Member of the Latin America Centre, Oxford; Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford; and author of Democracy after Pinochet.
Next

Episode Information

Series
Foundation for Law, Justice and Society
People
Dan Robinson
Keywords
law
justice
john locke
america
constitution
Department: Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Date Added: 14/10/2016
Duration: 00:41:04

Subscribe

Apple Podcast Video Apple Podcast Audio Audio RSS Feed

Download

Download Audio

Footer

  • About
  • Accessibility
  • Contribute
  • Copyright
  • Contact
  • Privacy
'Oxford Podcasts' Twitter Account @oxfordpodcasts | MediaPub Publishing Portal for Oxford Podcast Contributors | Upcoming Talks in Oxford | © 2011-2022 The University of Oxford