In this book, the authors, all legal scholars from the tradition of critical race theory start from the experience of injury from racist hate speech and develop a theory of the first amendment that recognizes such injuries. In their critique of "first amendment orthodoxy", the authors argue that only a history of racism can explain why defamation, invasion of privacy and fraud are exempt from free-speech guarantees but racist verbal assault is not.

The Oxford Handbook on Freedom of Speech provides a critical analysis of the foundations, rationales, and ideas that underpin freedom of speech as a political idea, and as a principle of positive constitutional law.