Ronald K.L. Collins is a scholar at the Washington, D.C., office of the First Amendment Center. He writes and lectures on freedom of expression and oversees the online library component of the First Amendment Center’s Web site and helps organize conferences at the Newseum. He also hosted the "Topics of Our Times" lecture series at the Newseum. He will be on sabbatical from October 1, 2009 to January 1, 2010.

Ron Collins was born on July 31, 1949 in Santa Monica, California and grew up and was educated in Southern California. He graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in political philosophy and took his law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Afterwards, Collins served as a law clerk to Justice Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and thereafter was a Judicial Fellow under Chief Justice Warren Burger at the United States Supreme Court. He is currently the president of the Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association.

After working with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, Collins was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School. Thereafter, he taught constitutional law and commercial law at Temple Law School and The George Washington University Law School, among other schools. Collins has written constitutional briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court and various other federal and state high courts. He has also published some 50 articles in scholarly journals such as the Supreme Court Review and the Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan law reviews. His writings on the First Amendment have appeared in Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among numerous other publications.

Collins is co-author (with David Skover) of The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002) and The Death of Discourse (1996/ 2nd ed., 2005), and the editor of Constitutional Government in America (1981) and The Death of Contract (1995). His next book, with Sam Chaltain, is We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free (Oxford University Press, 2010) followed by Mania: The Story of the Outraged and Outrageous Lives that Launched a Generation (with David Skover, 2010) and The Fundamental Holmes: A Free Speech Chronicle & Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

In 2003, Collins and Skover successfully petitioned the governor of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce. In 2004, they received the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award.

In September 2006 Collins conducted a public interview with Anthony Lewis at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. A transcript of that interview can be found here. On February 11, 2008 he did another interview with Mr. Lewis on C-SPAN's Book TV ("Afterwords"). On September 26, 2008, he co-chaired a workshop held at Seattle University Law School on "The Future of Law School Course Books."

In 1967, just before he entered college, Collins appeared on "The Dating Game" and was the bachelor selected.

Contents 1 Selected publications 1.1 Books 1.2 Forewords 1.3 Articles: scholarly & online (partial listing)

[edit] Selected publications

[edit] Books

• Co-author with David Skover,The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002)
• Co-author with David Skover,The Death of Discourse, (2n ed., 2005)
• The Death of Contract, editor of 2nd edition(1995)
• Constitutional Government in America, editor (1980)
• Developments in State Constitutional Law, Bradley D. McGraw, editor (contributor)
• The Legal Rights of Citizens with Mental Retardation, Lawrence A. Kane, Jr., editor (contributor)
• Signs of Life in the USA: Readings in Popular Culture for Writers, Sonia Maasik & Jack Solomon, editors (contributor)
• Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, David M. O'Brien, editor (contributor)
• Simone Weil's Philosophy of Culture, Richard A. Bell, editor (contributor)
• Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion, Richard A. Bell, editor (contributor)
• We the Media, Don Hazen & Julie Winokur, editors (contributor)

[edit] Forewords

• Geoffrey R. Stone, Top Secret:When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
• Robert Benson, The Interpretation Game (Carolina Academic Press, 2008)
• Symposium, “Foreword: To America’s Tomorrow -- Commerce, Communication & the Future of Free Speech,” 41 Loyola Los Angeles Law Review 1 (2007)
• Symposium, "Nike v. Kasky and the Modern Commercial Speech Doctrine," 54 Case Western Reserve Law Review 965 (2004) (with David Skover)

[edit] Articles: scholarly & online (partial listing)

• "Curious Concurrence: Justice Brandeis's Vote in Whitney v. California," 2005 Supreme Court Review 333
• "New 'Truths' and the Old First Amendment," the Afterword to "Noble Lies & The First Amendment: A Symposium on The Death of Discourse," 64 University of Cincinnati Law Review 1315 (1996)
• "The Pornographic State," 107 Harvard Law Review 1374 (1994)
• "Commerce & Communication," 40 Texas Law Review 697 (1993)
• "A Cultural Approach to the First Amendment," 45 Stanford Law Review 783 (1993)
• "Paratexts," 44 Stanford Law Review 509 (1992)
• "The First Amendment in an Age of Paratroopers," 68 Texas Law Review 1087 (1990)
• "The First Amendment in Bold Relief: A Reply," 48 Texas Law Review 1087(1990)
• "The Future of Liberal Legal Scholarship," 87 Michigan Law Review 601 (1988)
• Rehnquist & First Amendment: end of an era
• Recent trends go against free speech
• Campaign finance: Reform trumps rights
• Pardoning Lenny Bruce's language
• Press Release: Petition to Pardon Lenny Bruce
• Pardon Lenny Bruce
• Books-on-Law
• Judge Alito & the new First Amendment defenders
• Judge Alito: fairly strong on free expression
• Alito as government lawyer: '84 broadcast-regulation case
• Wartime riskiest for free speech, scholar says: An Interview with Geoffrey Stone
• New York Times, Inc. v. Sullivan: The Case That Changed History
• Let Nike Talk (scroll down to article)
• Repeal Colorado's Food Sedition Law
• Congress Must Address Food-Disparagement Laws
• Win or Lose, Dissing Food Can be Costly
• Book Publishing & Food Libel Laws
• "Veggie-Libel" Law Still Poses a Threat
• Speech on food safety is on trial
• A Funeral for Free Speech: Protests at Funerals
• "Famed First Amendment scholar Leonard W. Levy dies"
• "AIPAC, Espionage Act & First Amendment"
• "Trial of 'Angelheaded Hipsters'"
• "It's time to let public tune in the voices of the Supreme Court"
• "Really, You Might Not Know Jack Kerouac," Chicago Tribune, September 5, 2007.
• "New e-book may 'kindle' fires of regulation — or of freedom"
• "FCC's puritanical actions should be reined in"
• "About that word ‘abridging’ in the First Amendment …"
• "What to make of ‘make’ in the First Amendment"
• "Remembering 2 forgotten women in free-speech history"
• "Benjamin Bache & the fight for a free press, Pts. 1 & 2"
• "Picking nits: Justice Scalia, Heller & the First Amendment"
• "Carlin: comic who buzz-sawed hypocrisy"