The American First Amendment in the Twenty-First Century, Cases and Materials, 4th

Van Alstyne's casebook provides detailed information on First Amendment law. In brief, this new edition integrates all of the supplemental material, including legislative and judicial, and more recent developments through the end of the Supreme Court's term in July of 2009. The organization and overall design of the work, however, have not changed. The division of the book into its two principal parts (Part I on the speech and press clauses and Part II on those concerned with religion and the state) is self-explanatory, reflecting as it does the different specific subject matter treated in each set of clauses within the First Amendment itself. Both subjects are embraced within this single work, however, to make it useful within a single integrated course of reasonably generous semester credit hours. Roughly two-thirds of this current edition are still addressed to the First Amendment clauses concerning freedom of speech (including the freedom of the press, of assembly and of petition). The remaining third takes the measure of the distinctive twin clauses within that same Amendment separately addressed to the free exercise of religion, and of religious establishments whenever and wherever they confront, become entangled with, or otherwise interface with the State. As in previous editions, significant attention is also extended in this edition to other clauses in the Constitution clauses unnoticed by the First Amendment within its text, but clauses nonetheless impinging on it and, indeed, quite often impinging with a significant impact of which one needs to be alert. There are in fact a surprising number of such additional clauses (perhaps as many as fifteen) that have an informing significance of substantial importance for a first amendment course.