Professor Baker was scheduled to participate in the upcoming fifth international human rights workshop on the subject of “Private Power and Human Rights” in Israel, and he was working on his fifth book at the time of his death. His first book, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech, published by Oxford University Press in 1989, defends interpreting First Amendment freedom of speech as concerned primarily with individual freedom and autonomy rather than the more traditional understanding of it being about a marketplace of ideas. Most recently, he focused his work on the economics of the news business, political philosophy, and jurisprudential questions concerning the egalitarian and libertarian bases of constitutional theory. Professor Baker was considered one of the country’s foremost authorities on the First Amendment and on mass media policy. 8 in New York City, where he had lived the past 20 years. He was 62. He collapsed while exercising and could not be revived. Gallicchio Professor of Law and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading scholar in the fields of constitutional law, communications law and free speech, died suddenly on Dec. Legal Theory: "Ed was a significant contributor to fundamental debates in constitutional theory for decades."īalkinization: "The finest media law scholar of his generation."īalkinization (2): "I’ve never seen the influence of the 'marketplace of ideas' on the Supreme Court documented or criticized as thoroughly as Baker does it."įeminist Law Professors: "He was brilliant, funny, kind and fiercely invested in building a more just world."ĭaily Pennsylvanian: "He loved the underdog.”Ĭ. Concurring Opinions: "He was as fine a teacher as he was a scholar."įirst Amendment Center: "Ed was a modern-day gadfly, albeit one who wore wide-rimmed glasses that allowed him to see things that many of the rest of us could not."
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