Burning the Flag - by Goldstein (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that dissidents had a constitutional right under the First Amendment to burn the flag. During the Bush Administration, Congress passed the Flag Protection Act (FPA), and so doing reflected the broad spectrum of opinion that saw the flag as a sacred symbol of American freedoms. Robert Justin Goldstein's Burning the Flag thoughtfully draws on the disciplines of law, political science and history to analyze the controversy in all its dimensions."-- London Review of Books"Goldstein has written a wonderfully comprehensive and highly readable history and analysis of the flag desecration debate in the US."--Choice

From the Back Cover

In 1989 a political fire storm erupted after the United States Supreme Court declared that dissidents had the constitutional right under the First Amendment to burn the flag. To some, including President George Bush and many members of Congress, the flag was a sacred symbol of American freedoms. They believed its physical destruction posed a serious threat to the country and demanded a constitutional amendment to reverse the Court's decision. For those who defended the Court's ruling, flag desecration was a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and any attempt to forbid such conduct was seen as creating a dangerous precedent. Burning the Flag brings together the disciplines of law, journalism, political science, and history to explain and place the development of the controversy in its full context. It is based on extensive research in legal, congressional, and journalistic sources and on exclusive interviews with nearly 100 of the key players in the dispute, among them flag burners, judges, lawyers and lobbyists on both sides, members of Congress, congressional aides, and journalists. A timely addendum chronicles the late 1995 attempts once again to pass a constitutional amendment on flag desecration, adding to the significance of this readable account. Burning the Flag will be of value to both an academic and a general audience, particularly to civil libertarians, flag buffs, and those interested in popular media, American politics, modern American history, and constitutional law.