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This book was one reason why I took up the study of law at 50. Anthony Lewis begins with a Supreme Court case and ends up reviewing this country's long experience of free speech controversy. The premise is simple enough: Sullivan v. New York Times, which started as a 1960 civil rights case, involving a defamation lawsuit in Alabama, and ending up as a pivotal Supreme Court ruling on freedom of speech and of the press. The legal importance of the case alone justifies Mr. Lewis' interest.

However, Mr. Lewis' real contribution, at least to me, are in the background chapters to the case, in which he goes back to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and tells of the ongoing tension between free speech and official power. His discussion of WWI wartime legislation and its aftermath -- a period very much like the post-9/11 era in its attempts to legislate security -- is central to the book.
It is here that he acquaints us with the dissents by Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissents in freedom-of-speech cases that didn't prevail in that time but burn brightly ever since. One Brandeis quote suffices: "Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men ... no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present."

Mr. Lewis rightly regards these jurists with awe. Certainly their words are as noble as anything the Founding Fathers wrote on the nature of our liberties. If patriotism means an appreciation of the depth, timelessness and principle of our liberties, then you'll find much of that here.

I have read Anthony Lewis' earlier, arguably more famous book, Gideon's Trumpet, another work of homage to our legal system, and would still put Make No Law ahead of it, though I also recommend Gideon's Trumpet as well. But this book did reinforce my own appreciation for this country's liberties and I cannot recommend it more highly.