When Speech Becomes a Crime

"You're under arrest," said the policeman pointing a gun at Raphael Golb's face. "It's about the Dead Sea Scrolls."

On March 5, 2009, Golb, a lawyer practicing in New York, had his computer seized - and his future.

This book tells the inside story of how prosecutors sought - in a case that lasted nine years - to have Golb imprisoned for engaging in "annoying" speech. Reflecting on the various court decisions elicited by the case, Golb poses the crucial question of where the United States today stands regarding a pillar of American democracy: the First Amendment.

Will forms of expression that stir up controversy again be suppressed, as they were in centuries past? Or will the courts decisively recognize that provocative ways of challenging power must be protected, even when they take us out of our comfort zone?

In sum, will the First Amendment remain the guiding star of our democracy, or has it become a political football, tossed between left and right, at times enforced, at other times ignored or evaded?

Speech has been criminalized through the centuries. But the latest efforts to suppress it, Golb says, must be seen in the context of issues increasingly relevant to our time: the growth of spectacle at the expense of debate; hidden patterns of censorship; the ease with which authority can be abused in a democratic society - and many more.