Williams, the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, undertakes to “unravel the cultural meanings of the First Amendment” by examining the traditional rationales for protecting expression, namely, truth and autonomy. (Democracy, a third contender, she decides, is a subset of these two.) Free speech is one of America’s “cultural icons,” she writes, its protection central to our laws and our consciousness.

Yet some First Amendment doctrine is inimical to the interests of feminists and other historically disempowered groups. Why then, she asks, is speech special, why more special than other actions or societal aims? Her attempt to answer is a painstaking and largely persuasive analysis of feminist and legal theory, which can be recapped here only briefly.

The doctrine, the critique

Beginning with a review of the history and the philosophical underpinnings of free speech, Williams lines up the usual suspects -- Milton, Mill, Locke, Kant, and especially Descartes -- to establish that its traditional defenses are based on an understanding of truth as universal, objective, discoverable, and singular, and autonomy as a function of individual choice and free will. Though these theories have intellectual and intuitive appeal, what she sees as their central preoccupations -- certainty and vulnerability -- are less positive. “We are using our free speech principle not so much to pursue our dreams as to evade our nightmares,” she notes.

Next she reviews feminist critiques of the Cartesian underpinnings of truth and autonomy justifications. Based on social constructionism, these critiques challenge assumptions that Williams believes are so widely accepted as to be nearly invisible. The problem is that the assumptions don’t serve feminist aims or women’s needs particularly well. A short list of drawbacks includes overdependence on rationalism and dichotomous thinking, discounting of alternative perspectives, perpetuation of gender hierarchy, and a capacity to offer, at best, an illusion of security.

Though sympathetic to this feminist critique, Williams is aware of its shortcomings. The attacks, taken to their not-so-logical conclusions, can degenerate into paralyzing cultural relativism and glorification of victimhood and can undermine the self-awareness and political standing necessary to achieve feminist goals. Williams’ solution is to salvage what is useful from these critiques while re-conceiving truth and autonomy in ways compatible with their insights. She proposes a relational and interpretive model, devoting the second part of the book to its description and defense.

A new framework

Williams means for her model to resolve tensions in free speech theory by approaching truth as a product of engagement and moral responsibility and a means of describing a shared reality, and by defining autonomy as taking an “active role in the creation of self.” Creativity in the service of self-definition and self-actualization -- shaping a narrative of one’s life -- appeals to Williams, though in her purposefulness and concern to include of the tongue-tied along with the chatty, she makes it sound rather joyless.

This model is integrated, dynamic, contextual, process-oriented, and evaluative, and, according to Williams, has multiple advantages over the dominant concepts of truth and autonomy. “Centered on a notion of interpretive agency and its attendant responsibility,” her model replaces insularity with interdependence and certainty with commitment. It offers a way to live with vulnerability without being paralyzed by it. It allows for a connection to “nonhuman reality,” which includes spirituality and mystical experiences (Williams’ attention to this dimension is refreshing). Finally, it can help focus legal attention appropriately. For example, Williams suggests that if hate speech is protected by the First Amendment -- and most of what’s shoved into the category is -- then the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause could be interpreted to redress the inequalities that make such language especially hurtful.

Good for speech

Rousing as this is, it’s several steps short of a plan, and despite Williams’ occasional foray into the practical implications of the debate and her call to feminist theorists to complement their critique with a program that places speech in this new framework, it is theory that interests her. In the end, she decides that having free speech is better than not. Given the attacks considered here, this is a significant conclusion, but the path there is arduous, full of post-modern locutions and redundant academic writing in which Williams tells what she’s going to tell us, tells us, summarizes what she’s told us, and concludes by telling us that she’s told us what she meant to tell us.

Post-modern theory has been salutary in poking holes in our blinders and challenging us to see things from often ignored perspectives, but it tends to belabor the obvious and present truisms as more controversial than they are. For instance, Williams considers “the nature of the subject” at length, even as she points out that feminists (and, I might add, everyone else) need a self and probably know that self exists. As the philosopher Morris Rafael Cohen is supposed to have asked a distraught student begging for evidence that he existed, “To whom should I address the proof?”

Yet, Williams can be plain-spoken, even eloquent, as when she examines the hunger for understanding:

“We make knowledge not because we want to but because we must. It is a necessary aspect of our lives and one that is often fraught with substantial danger and anxiety: there are serious consequences if the cloth we make is not useful to us.”

The primary usefulness of free speech may be that it makes us feel good to speak our minds and our hearts. It is helpful to have this careful and smart analysis to back that up.