COLLINS, Ronald K. L. 1949-

PERSONAL: Born July 31, 1949, in Santa Monica, CA; son of LeRoy (self-employed) and Yolanda (self-employed) Collins; married Susan A. Cohen (employed in the field of public interest), May 25, 1986; children: Dylan Lee. Ethnicity: "Italian-Irish." Education: University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., 1971; Loyola Marymount University, J.D. Politics: "Progressive."

ADDRESSES: Office—School of Law, Seattle University, 950 Broadway Plaza, Tacoma, WA 98402. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, professor of law, 1988-90; George Washington University, Washington, DC, professor of law, 1992-95; Seattle University, Tacoma, WA, professor of law, 1995—. Center for Science in the Public Interest, member.

MEMBER: Simone Weil Society, Legal Aid Society of Orange County.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Constitutional Government in America, Carolina Academic Press (Durham, NC), 1980.

(Editor) Grant Gilmore, The Death of Contract, Ohio State University Press (Columbus, OH), 1995.

(With David M. Skover) The Death of Discourse, Westview (Boulder, CO), 1996.

(With David M. Skover) The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon, Source-books (Naperville, IL), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Simone Weil's Philosophy of Culture, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Ronald Collins is a First Amendment scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Arlington, VA, and has written over 150 newspaper op-ed pieces as well as having coauthored two books on the topic of free speech. He, along with coauthor David M. Skover, once discussed some of the details of his writing process and shared some of his ideas about his favorite topic with CA: "We have been writing together for a decade. Ron lives in the East, and Dave in the West, yet each word, line, paragraph, section, and chapter of our collaborative works is written together in the same room, with Dave manning the keys and Ron pacing. We thrive on the synergy generated by our different intellects, personalities, and interests.

"We refuse, in Marshall McLuhan's words, to drive into the future with eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror of the past. Thus, we enjoy probing relatively new and unsettled terrains, however uncertain or unruly these efforts may be. In the article 'The Future of Liberal Legal Scholarship,' for example, we urged liberals in 1988 to recognize that Earl Warren is dead and to break out of the mind cells of an era long gone. Similarly, in The Death of Discourse, we examined America's free speech as it is, rather than as it should be, and pointed to the pomp and hypocrisy surrounding the First Amendment. We believe in testing Niccolo Machiavelli's claim that it is 'more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it.' Like Antaeus, we need to touch the earth, if only better to appreciate the poetic imagination.

"May our collaboration continue as long as Fortuna smiles. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the pair principle—the uncanny excitement that comes with mixing two minds in order to communicate with one 'voice.' It is a wondrous experience, this art of recreation.

"I enjoy writing, more than most other things. For me, writing is an experiment, as life is. It is a way, both in form and substance, to test new waters, new ways, even new worlds. Part of this experiment is the attempt to make writing mean different things as the reader senses different patterns in the writer's quilt. Hence, style is nearly as important as substance. In the best of writing, the two are blended into one. That is why I have always enjoyed reading Plato's dialogues, Weil's notebooks, Wittgenstein's tracts, McLuhan's anti-books, and yes, Nietzsche's aphorisms, among others…. Free speech! Free writing! Free thought! Three maxims in search of a mind…. Over the years I have written with several souls, David M. Skover being the best."

Collins's first collaboration, The Death of Discourse, "details the dilemma, conundrum, or paradox, between the 'traditional' concept and contemporary applications of the First Amendment," wrote Journal of Communication reviewer David R. Allen. In this work, Collins follows the historical development of discourse, beginning with the Greek civilization, in order to create an acceptable and understandable definition of what free speech really is. The result of this is one of the book's main arguments, according to Allen, which is that there is a need in contemporary times for new definitions and a new view of the First Amendment "that will allow us to stem the flood of the new tyrannical free speech," which has been created by commercial interests. As an example, Allen pointed out that the section of the book called "Commerce and Communication," demonstrates that advertisers, especially via television commercials, use the right of free speech to lure viewers to seek self-gratification rather than to use their minds and make logical decisions about what they need. The question then remains, does the First Amendment protect individual citizens' reason by limiting or defining codes for the kinds of ads that can be shown on television or does it protect the rights of mass advertisers? Allen concluded that despite the fact that readers might have to work hard to make their way through this book, the material and concepts contained within it proved to be "intellectually stimulating."

A slightly more accessible book is Collins's collaboration, again with Skover, about the comedian Lenny Bruce. The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon recounts Bruce's own 1950s struggles with freedom of speech, which included five years' worth of court cases that diminished and then finally extinguished his career as a stand-up comedian. Bruce's comedy routine almost always included very frank comments about sex, race, religion, government, and an assortment of other topics. He said things that other people were afraid to say; and he said them frequently in an effort to tear away the taboos that had been imposed on them. He angered a lot of people, many of whom had the power to see that he was, in turn, harassed through legal cases. The comments that he made may not raise many eyebrows today, but back in the 1950s, many people thought that his language was filthy and his thoughts were depraved. Collins's book takes a look at Bruce as someone who died for the right of freedom of speech.

Bruce did for comedy, wrote Seattle Times critic Paul De Barros, "what Bob Dylan would do for pop music." De Barros is referring to the social criticism that both artists employed. "With brutally incisive street humor, he [Bruce] exposed society's hypocrisy about taboo subjects," De Barros wrote.

Critics agree that The Trials of Lenny Bruce is highly researched, or as David M. Lisa for Library Journal put it, "The book is a literal walking tour of his [Bruce's] time in court." The emphasis of this book is on the many obscenity charges and the subsequent court cases that Bruce had to face, rather than on the biography of the legendary comedian. But it is the legal details that make the book interesting, and that is why a Kirkus Reviews writer described it as "detailed, objective, and valuable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, September 1, 2002, Mike Tribby, review of The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon, p.26.

Discourse and Society, July, 1997, Laurel Sutton, review of The Death of Discourse, pp. 428-429.

Journal of Communication, winter, 1997, David R. Allen, review of The Death of Discourse, p. 171.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2002, review of The Trials of Lenny Bruce, p. 852.

Library Journal, August, 2002, David M. Lisa, review of The Trials of Lenny Bruce, p.97.

Publishers Weekly, July 1, 2002, review of The Trials of Lenny Bruce, pp. 49-50.

Reason, January, 2003, Nick Gillespie, review of The Trials of Lenny Bruce, p.55.

Seattle Times, October 7, 2002, Paul De Barros, "Standing Up for Free Speech: New Book Revisits Legal History of Lenny Bruce, First Amendment Warrior," p. F1.

online

Trials of Lenny Bruce Web site, http://www.trialsoflennybruce.com/ (February 23, 2003), Web site for the book, The Trials of Lenny Bruce, containing book reviews and author biographies.*