Geoffrey R. Stone | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 (age 78–79) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BS) University of Chicago (JD) |
| Occupation | Legal scholar |
Geoffrey R. Stone (born 1946) is an American legal scholar and notedFirst Amendment scholar. He is currently the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, where he served as the dean from 1987 to 1994, thenprovost of theUniversity of Chicago from 1994 to 2002.
Stone completed aB.S. degree in 1968 at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and aJ.D. degree in 1971 at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of theUniversity of Chicago Law Review. He clerked for JudgeJ. Skelly Wright of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1971–72, and then for JusticeWilliam J. Brennan Jr. of theSupreme Court of the United States in 1972–73.[1]
Stone has been a law professor at Chicago since 1973. He served asdean of the Law School from 1987 to 1994, and asprovost of theUniversity of Chicago from 1994 to 2002. He also served as Interim Dean of the Law School from July 1, 2015 to November 1, 2015 while the school searched for a replacement forMichael H. Schill.[2]
Stone is a member of the board of directors of theAmerican Constitution Society, the board of advisors of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union, and the chair of the board of the Chicago Children's Choir. He has served as a vice president of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and as a member of the executive committee of theAssociation of American Law Schools. He is a frequent author of op-eds in theChicago Tribune,The New York Times,The Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal, and theLos Angeles Times, and he writes regularly for theHuffington Post.[3][4][5]
A book by Stone entitled,Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004), received theRobert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Award for the Human Rights Book of the Year, theLos Angeles Times Book Prize as the Best Book in History, the Kammerer Award for the Best Book of the Year in Political Science from theAmerican Political Science Association, the Goldsmith Award from theKennedy School of Harvard University for the Best Book of the Year in Public Affairs, and the Scribes Award for the Best Book of the Year in Law.[citation needed]
Other books by Stone includeSex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century (2017),Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark (2007),War and Liberty: An American Dilemma (2007), andDemocracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2019) (with fellow Chicago professorDavid A. Strauss).
He is an editor of theSupreme Court Review and he is co-author of "Constitutional Law", "The First Amendment", "The First Amendment in the Modern State", and "The Bill of Rights in Modern Society". He is currently chief editor of a twenty-volume series,Inalienable Rights, which is published by theOxford University Press.[6] Authors in this series includeRichard Posner,Laurence Tribe,Alan Dershowitz,Martha Nussbaum,Mark Tushnet,Jack Rakove,Larry Lessig,Louis Michael Seidman, andKathleen Sullivan, among others.
Stone has written about the religious affiliations of Supreme Court justices and notably, how this relates to judicial decisions aboutabortion. He has argued that five sitting Catholic judges effectively prevented the legalization ofintact dilation and extraction abortion inGonzales v. Carhart.[7]
In March 2019, Stone drew criticism from some students for his long-standing use of the wordnigger in his classroom discussions of thefighting words doctrine, a limitation of theFirst Amendment's guarantee offreedom of speech.[8][9]
On March 7, 2019, Stone announced that he no longer intended to use the word in class.[10] Stone remarked, "My conversation with the African-American students convinced me that the hurt and distraction caused by use of the word in the story are real and to be taken seriously. As a teacher, my goal is to be effective and I decided that use of the word in that story isn’t sufficiently important to justify the hurt and distraction it causes. For me, this is a great example of why free speech is important. It enables us to learn from each other."[11] During an interview withDavid K. Shipler andDaniel Zwerdling on the March 2023 broadcast ofTwo Reporters, Stone provided many details about how he came to the decision to eliminate use of the word to elicit discussion in class.[12]
