Today was the first class of my seminar on The U. S. Supreme Court: A Critical Appraisal. The students are great: lively, curious, articulate, poised, diverse. I'm going to have a good time learning from them as we read the Court's greatest hits, cases like Dred Scott, Brown v. Board, Korematsu, Roe v. Wade, etc.

The course I gave at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco in the fall of 2016 was recorded and is now available as a "Frommcast." Here's the Link: http://fromm.enterprisetube.com/v/69524/Prof__Turner___The_First_Amendment
The course was in eight sessions of about an hour an a half each. Feel free to check it out.

I just published the First Edition of Free Speech: Supreme Court Opinions from the Beginning to the Roberts Court. I'll use it for my course at UCBerkeley this Spring, but it will be available nationally. It's a curated selection of the Supreme Court's decisions on free speech issues, with my commentary and analysis. It can be ordered directly from the publisher, Cognella, by going to https://students.universityreaders.com/store/

On October 1 I gave a talk at Cal's Homecoming on Sex and the Supreme Court, from the Warren Court to the Roberts Court. It was about the court's losing battle with obscenity and indecency. A sharp audience with a lot of good questions. I'm thinking about putting together a new course on Sex in the Supreme Court that would include not just sexual speech but gay rights, abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, crush videos and other sex-related legal controversies. Stay tuned.

Today was the first class in my new course at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. The course is The Roberts Court and the First Amendment. 218 students, all "career-free," engaged and wanting to understand Citizens United and what the court is doing these days about free speech. Class meets Tuesdays at 10:00 through November 1. All the lectures are being recorded and in January will be available as video "Frommcasts."

Tonight I was invited to speak to the Undergraduate Communications Association at Cal. They wanted to hear about issues at the intersection of law and journalism. So I talked about the KQED cases I did on whether there is a First Amendment right of access to government facilities and information, and televising executions. It brought back bittersweet memories. I suspect -- and hope -- some of them will show up in my course one of these years, to get the full story.

I just published a new book, Free Speech: Supreme Court Opinions from the Beginning to the Roberts Court. It's a collection of the Court's free speech opinions, which I have edited and to which I add historical context and analysis. I am using the Preliminary Edition in my course on Freedom of Speech and the Press at Berkeley; classes started today for the Spring semester. The book can be ordered from Cognella, the publisher, by going to https://students.universityreaders.com/store/

Over the weekend I interviewed Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- "the most outspoken judge on the federal bench" -- at Uncharted, the Berkeley ideas festival. Nothing about the First Amendment; it was about his provocative proposal for Criminal Law 2.0.

Classes started yesterday. It's an OLLI@Berkeley course about the first decade of the Roberts Court and its free speech decisions. I'm teaching it to a lively group of senior citizens at the snazzy library in Lafayette. Tuesdays from 10:00 to noon.

Today I was on a panel at the conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The panel addressed Privacy, the Right of Publicity, and Free Speech in the Digital Age. My fellow panelists were Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Peter Scheer of the First Amendment Coalition, and Cathy Gellis, an Internet lawyer who was my student back in 1993. Ashley Messenger, counsel for NPR, moderated.