Ronald K. L. Collins

Ronald Kenneth Leo Collins (born July 31, 1949) is the co-founder and co-director (emeritus) of the History Book Festival and co-founder and co-chair of the First Amendment Salons.

He is the editor of the weekly online blog First Amendment News and editor of Attention (an online journal on the life and legacy of Simone Weil).

He is also the Lewes Public Library's Distinguished Lecturer.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Collins grew up in Southern California.

He graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a B.A. degree in political philosophy.

He received a J.D. degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where he was a member of the Law Review.

After graduating from law school, he worked with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County.

Thereafter, he was a fellow at Stanford Law School He served as a law clerk to Hans A. Linde on the Oregon Supreme Court and was a Supreme Court fellow under Chief Justice Warren Burger.

He worked with the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. for several years.

Collins was selected as a Norman Mailer Fellow in fiction writing with a residence in Provincetown (Winter 2010).

Scholarly & Newspaper Articles

His 60-plus scholarly articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Supreme Court Review, and the Michigan Law Review, among other publications.

His popular press articles or reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Forward, and The Nation.

He is the recipient of Supreme Court Fellows Alumni Association’s Administration of Justice Award for legal scholarship (February 2011).

After teaching at Syracuse Law School and George Washington Law School, he was a scholar at the Newseum's First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C. for six years.

Thereafter, was the Harold S. Shefelman Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law.

Books

In 2011, Collins became the book editor for SCOTUSblog.

He is the author, co-author (with David Skover), or editor of 12 books on a variety of topics such as constitutional law, First Amendment law, robotics and artificial intelligence, popular culture, dissent, campaign finance laws, contract law, and judging.

These and other books included works on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simone Weil, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Floyd Abrams.

His latest two books are ''[https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531022020/A-Declaration-of-Duties-toward-Humankind#:~:text=This%20book%20is%20a%20readers,Weil%27s%20thought%20and%20striking%20proposals.

A Declaration of Duties Toward Humankind: A Critical Companion to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots] (2024, co-edited with Eric Springsted) and Tragedy on Trial'' (2024), a work on the 1955 Emmett Till murder trial (foreword by Congressman Bobby Rush and an introduction by Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch).

The third edition of his book The Death of Discourse was released in 2022.