Uninhibited, Robust, And Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century (Book Review‪)‬

Scholars and practitioners in communications law and the First Amendment will recognize Lee Bollinger's status as our most preeminent and thoughtful writer on press freedom. His latest effort, Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century, (1) is a slim, elegant, and forceful piece of advocacy, taking its title from the most celebrated line in First Amendment jurisprudence, (2) and perhaps in all of constitutional law. (3) In the book, Bollinger turns his focus to international law, and on how "[t]o project a U.S. free press system onto the world," (4) so as "to create a global system of a free press for the emerging global society." (5) In broad strokes, Bollinger offers a compelling argument for the need for universal flee press principles in the era of globalization, as well as the means by which to achieve them. But in his argument's particulars, Bollinger presents an incomplete analysis and an overriding irony. The incompleteness is in his failure to discuss a number of areas in which other countries' conceptions of the press are irreconcilable with our own, or how to resolve these differences. And the irony is that many of the measures Bollinger proposes that other countries take in adopting First Amendment values would themselves likely not survive First Amendment scrutiny here in the United States.