About the Authors//

Ron Collins and David Skover are friends.

Ron lives in the East, David in the West.

They have been writing together for well over a decade. Their work is a joint effort, with David manning the keys and Ron pacing.

Ron, who grew up in Southern California, is a First Amendment scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.

David, who grew up in Wisconsin, is a law professor at Seattle University. Both are law graduates. Ron went to law school at Loyola in Los Angeles, David at Yale in New Haven.

Both clerked for appellate judges: Ron for Justice Hans A. Linde of the Oregon Supreme Court (and later as a judicial fellow in the United States Supreme Court), and David for Judge Jon O. Newman of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In a prior life, David sang in professional operatic and musical theater productions. He adores the works of Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner, and admires the music of Stephen Sondheim.

Ron likes to probe Plato, Camus, Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil. He respects the thought of Louis Brandeis and admires the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, especially "Howl."

In addition to The Death of Discourse, Ron and David have co-authored The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002) and numerous scholarly articles in journals such as the Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, and Texas Law Reviews.

Ron's and David's next book, entitled Dissent, will focus on the traditional meaning of dissent and the reconfiguration of the concept in modern America.