The 2012 S-USIH conference committee is pleased to announce the following plenary sessions: 1. Speech Rights: Legal History as Intellectual History Recent controversial Supreme Court decisions, from Citizens United v. FEC (2010) to Brown v. Merchants of Entertainment (2011), have inspired impassioned discussion over contemporary interpretations of the free speech clause of the First Amendment. This plenary offers an historical look at the ideas that have shaped definitions of speech, speakers, and speech rights in U.S. history. Accordingly, it interrogates the intersections between speech rights law and intellectual history. Participants: Jack Balkin (Yale University) Vincent Blasi (Columbia University) Ronald Collins  Read more