Greenky’s easy-to-read primer offers general readers and students a telling history and framework for understanding the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodologies courts commonly use to negotiate clashing and competing constitutional values and individual rights to free speech.
Lynn Levine Greenky
Lynn Greenky began her professional career as a lawyer. She earned a Juris Doctor degree from Emory University School of Law and is admitted to the bar in New York State. Prior to that she received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts in Communication Studies from Northwestern University. For the past fifteen years, she has served as a teaching professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies. Ten years ago, she began teaching an undergraduate course about the First Amendment. Her educational background gave her a unique perspective upon which to build a course about the protection we have from laws that abridge our right to the freedom of speech. Rhetoricians focus on language and how it influences perception and moves people to action. Teaching the First Amendment in a department that values a rhetorical approach gave her the opportunity to teach the concepts as moral narratives that proscribe the boundaries of our constitutionally protected right. Using the characters and drama embedded in the cases that elucidate First Amendment principles, When Freedom Speaks makes the concepts easier to understand and applicable to our lives.
