Ronald K. L. Collins

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Ronald K. L. Collins
Born	Ronald Kenneth Leo Collins[1] (1949-07-31) July 31, 1949 (age 72)[2] Santa Monica, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of California at Santa Barbara Loyola Law School
Literary movement	History Book Festival

Ronald Kenneth Leo Collins (born July 31, 1949) is the co-founder and co-director of the History Book Festival, co-founder and co-chair of the First Amendment Salons, editor of First Amendment News, and editor of ATTENTION. He was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law.^[3] From 2002 to 2009 he was a scholar at the Newseum's First Amendment Center.^[4]

Biography[]

Born in Santa Monica, California, Collins grew up in Southern California. He graduated from Pius X High School in 1967 and in the summer of that year was on The Dating Game TV Show (and won). Thereafter, he attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and received a B.A. degree in political philosophy and later received a J.D. degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where he was a member of the Law Review. Afterward, Collins served as a law clerk to Justice Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and was a Supreme Court Fellow under United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. After working with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the , Collins was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School.^{[citation needed]}

Collins also worked for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, where, among other things, he directed its First Amendment Project. During his years with CSPI he authored Dictating Content: How Advertising Pressure Can Corrupt a Free Press (1992).

Thereafter, he taught constitutional law, contracts, and commercial law at Temple Law School, The George Washington University Law School, and the University of Washington School of Law.^{[citation needed]}

His scholarly writings have appeared in many law journals including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Michigan Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review (online), Texas Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and the Southern California Law Review.

The Los Angeles Times selected The Trials of Lenny Bruce (co-authored with David Skover) as one of the best books of the year for 2002.^{[citation needed]}

The following year, Collins and Skover successfully petitioned the governor of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce.^{[citation needed]} In 2004, they received the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009, he served as the president of the Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association, and in 2011 he received the Association's Administration of Justice Award "in recognition of his scholarly and professional achievements in advancing the rule of law."

In 2010, Collins was a fellow in residence at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]} He was also on the board of editors (now staff writer) of the Washington Independent Review of Books.^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, Collins became the book editor for SCOTUSblog, a blog devoted to news and analysis concerning the U.S. Supreme Court.^{[citation needed]}

In 2012, Collins received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the editors of the Washington Law Review.^{[citation needed]} That same year the awarded him a Scribes Book Award (bronze) for We Must not be Afraid to be Free (written with Sam Chaltain).^{[citation needed]} In 2013, Mania, a book co-authored with David Skover, was selected by the San Francisco Book Festival as runner up in the best book of American history category.^{[citation needed]}

-- 2016 Editor-in-Chief of the online First Amendment Library (published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) (prior to 2016, FAN was published by Concurring Opinions).^{[citation needed]}

-- 2017 Collins is one of the co-founders and co-directors of The History Book Festival, which launched in Lewes, Delaware in October 2017.^{[citation needed]}

-- January 2020, named Distinguished Lecturer, Lewes Public Library.^{[citation needed]}

-- May 2021, editor of ATTENTION, a bi-monthly journal on the life and Legacy of Simone Weil.^{[citation needed]}

Selected publications[]

Books on Law[]

• Co-authored with Greg Lukianoff, Will Creeley, David Hudson, & Jackie Farmer, The First Amendment in Modernity – Casebook on The Fundamentals of Freedom, (Carolina Academic Press, 2022)
• Co-authored with Will Creeley & David Hudson, – A Modern Coursebook on Free Speech Fundamentals (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, e-book, September 2019)
• Co-authored with David Skover, The People v. Ferlinghetti The Fight to Publish Allen Ginsberg's Howl (Rowman & Littlefield, March 2019)
• Co-authored with David Skover, Robotica: Speech Rights & Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
• Co-authored with David Skover, The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons (Oxford University Press, 2017)
• Co-authored with David Skover, When Money Speaks: The McCutcheon Case, Campaign Finance Law & the First Amendment(Top Five Books, 2014)
• Co-authored with David Skover, On Dissent: Its Meaning in America (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
• Co-authored with David Skover, Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution (Top Five Books, 2013)
• Nuanced Absolutism: Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment (Carolina Academic Press, 2013)
• Co-authored with David Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall & Rise of an American Icon - Revised & Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition (e-book, Top Five Books Press, 2012)
• Co-authored with Sam Chaltain, We Must not be Afraid to be Free: Stories of Free Expression in America (Oxford University Press, 2011)
• Edited The Fundamental Holmes: A Free Speech Chronicle and Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Co-authored with David Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce (Sourcebooks, 2002)
• Co-authored with David Skover, The Death of Discourse, (Carolina Academic Press, 2nd ed., 2005)
• Edited The Death of Contract (Ohio State University Press, 2nd ed. 1995)
• Edited Constitutional Government in America (Carolina Academic Press, 1980)

Books & Articles on Weil[]

• Co-edited with Eric Springsted, A Declaration of Duties Toward Humankind: A Critical Companion to Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press (2022).
• "The Future of Thinking in a Digital Age," Epoché (June 2021)
• "Parachute Woman: Simone Weil’s Front-Line Nurses Proposal," Epoché, #37 (Feb. 2021)
• "The Virtues of Weil," Washington Independent Review of Books (Oct. 29, 2020)
• "Dangerous Doublespeak," Washington Independent Review of Books (Aug. 27, 2020)
• "The Weil Conjectures," Washington Independent Review of Books (Aug. 8, 2020)
• "The Famous Book She Never Wrote," Washington Independent Review of Books (April 16, 2020)
• "On Simone and André Weil: An Exchange with Karen Olsson," Los Angeles Review of Books (Feb. 1, 2020)
• "The Play’s the Thing: On Simone Weil’s Venice Saved," Los Angeles Review of Books (Aug. 28, 2019)
• "Waiting for God," Washington Post (May 27, 2001)
• “The Spirit of Simone Weil’s Law” (with Finn Nielsen) in Richard H. Bell, ed., Simone Weil’s Philosophy of Culture: Readings Toward Divine Humanity, New York: Cambridge University Press, (1993), pp. 235-259, reprinted in Richard Bell, ed., Simone Weil: The Way of Justice and Compassion, Rowman & Littlefield (1998).

References[]

External links[]

• Appearances on C-SPAN