Over at the Law and Politics Book Review, Feminist Law Prof Ruthann Robson reviews Robert Tsai’s book Eloquence and Reason, Creating a First Amendment Culture. Robson points out a noticeable absence from Tsai’s work:
My most serious misgiving about ELOQUENCE AND REASON, with its subtitle, CREATING A FIRST AMENDMENT CULTURE, is evinced by another quotation; this one is about totalitarianism attributed to Hannah Arendt (p.128). My apprehension is not connected to the accuracy or the substance of the statement, but to my realization that Arendt is the sole woman invoked in ELOQUENCE AND REASON, apart from a few mentions of Justice O’Connor and a handful of citations in the notes. The absence of women is noteworthy; it has been quite some time since I found myself hunting through a book of contemporary legal theory looking for any reference to any woman. Moreover, the lack of feminist theorizing on gendered speech and linguistics, as well as on specific aspects of the First Amendment including sexual speech and discriminatory speech, left me wondering whether women were to be included in”Creating a First Amendment Culture.”
Robson’s full review is here.
-Bridget Crawford
