The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious Liberties

Abstract

This is the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapters 1 and 2 of my forthcoming book, which is entitled "The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious Liberties" (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). The book examines the relationship between the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and international borders. In contrast to more traditional and provincial accounts, it reveals a First Amendment that is critical to robust cross-border conversation and commingling and the global spread of democratic principles, protective of expressive and religious liberties regardless of location, influential across the world despite its exceptionalist character, and a core justification for respectful engagement with the liberty regimes of other nations. This more cosmopolitan First Amendment is the product of an array of social, historical, political, technological, and legal developments. Its principles and justifications are examined through analysis of the First Amendment’s relationship to foreign travel, immigration, cross-border communication and association, religious activities that traverse international borders, the conduct of international affairs and diplomacy, and conflicts between foreign and U.S. speech and religious liberty models.

Keywords: First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free press, cross-border, transborder, extraterritorial, territorial, community of nations, import, export, cosmopolitan, self-governance, marketplace, autonomy, global marketplace, global theater, forum