James Weinstein

James Weinstein is the Dan Cracchiolo Chair in Constitutional Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. He is Faculty Advisor to the First Amendment Clinic and Faculty Fellow, Center for Law, Science & Innovation at ASU. His academic interests are Constitutional Law, especially free speech, as well as jurisprudence and American legal history. He is co-editor with Ivan Hare of Extreme Speech and Democracy (Oxford University Press 2009, paperback edition 2010), and the author of Hate Speech, Pornography and the Radical Attack on Free Speech Doctrine (Westview Press 1999). He is the co-author with Ashutosh Bhagwat of Freedom of Expression and Democracy in The Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech (F. Schauer & A. Stone, eds, Oxford University Press, 2021).  

Weinstein has written numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of free speech topics, including: free speech theory, hate speech regulation and political legitimacy, lies in political campaigns, climate change disinformation, internet harassment, obscenity doctrine, institutional review boards, commercial speech, database protection, campaign finance regulation, the relationship between free speech and other constitutional rights, hate crimes, and campus speech. His current research interest is regulation of disinformation consistent with core democratic free speech principles. He has litigated several significant free speech cases, primarily on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Weinstein received his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was a was the Research & Writing Editor of the Law Review. After law school, he served as a law clerk to Chief Judge James R. Browning of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then practiced civil litigation in Los Angeles for several years before joining the ASU law faculty in 1986.