 What does Fiss mean by Irony?
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. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional. This is what Fiss means by the "irony" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. 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.
 That true freedom of speech calls for the silencing of a few groups.
 That true freedom of speech calls for the silencing of a few groups.  That true freedom of speech calls for the silencing of unorthodox artists, as their work so often offends on a large scale and does not bode positively for the groups the artist hopes to represents.  That true freedom of speech depends on the silencing of the state in free speech trials.  That true freedom of speech calls for an inspection of the pornography market.