 Who is Owen Fiss and what did he do?
Shut Up, He Explained Owen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. This is what Fiss means by the "irony" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women, gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Fiss does not avoid it.
 He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, The Irony of Free Speech
 He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible taking Robert Mapplethorpe to court.  He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, The Irony of Free Speech  He is a professor at Yale Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, Shut Up, He Explained.  He is a professor at Harvard Law School. He is responsible for writing the book, Shut Up, He Explained.