page_title: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties / Background
caption_attribution_description: Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Professor Christopher M. FairmanSee also: Moritz College of Law bio page profile.
context_page_description: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties is a nonfiction book by law professor Christopher M. Fairman about freedom of speech, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, censorship, and use of the word fuck in society. The book was first published in 2009 by Sphinx as a follow-up on the author's article "Fuck", published in 2007 in the Cardozo Law Review. It cites studies from academics in social science, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. Fairman establishes that most current usages of the word have connotations distinct from its meaning of sexual intercourse. The book discusses the efforts of conservatives in the United States to censor the word from common parlance. The author says that legal precedent regarding its use is unclear because of contradictory court decisions. Fairman argues that once citizens allow the government to restrict the use of specific words, this will lead to an encroachment upon freedom of thought.
  The book received a mostly favorable reception from news sources and library trade publications.
context_section_description: Christopher M. Fairman graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. He taught high-school level history for nine years before returning to his alma mater where he ultimately received his Juris Doctor degree. He worked as a clerk on the Texas Court of Appeals for the Third District for Justice J. Woodfin Jones. Subsequently, he was a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Fortunato P. Benavides, and worked for the law firm Weil Gotshal in their office in Dallas. Fairman became a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law in 2000. He specialized in areas of freedom of speech and word taboo, and earned a reputation as an expert on the subject of legal ethics.
  Fairman was motivated to conduct research on "fuck" after learning of a Columbus, Ohio, man who was arrested for using the word in an email to a judge in 2004. Fairman delayed writing the article until he received tenure because he was concerned its publication would adversely affect his professional reputation. Nevertheless, his supervisors did not try to convince him to cease research into the topic. Government funding helped finance Fairman's scholarship.
  His original 2006 article "Fuck" is an analysis of forbidden speech from linguistic and legal perspectives. It covers use of the word in case studies about sexual harassment and education. The article is 74 pages long, and the word fuck appears over 560 times. According to author Jesse Sheidlower in his book The F-Word, Fairman's work is the first academic article with the title of simply "Fuck".
  Fairman made his article available as a working paper on the Social Science Research Network website on April 17, 2006. Initially the author unsuccessfully tried to have the article published by providing copies to multiple U.S. law reviews. The Kansas Law Review rejected his article 25 minutes after receipt. It was published by the Cardozo Law Review in 2007. The author wrote a follow-up piece in April 2007 titled "Fuck and Law Faculty Rankings". Fairman died on July 22, 2015. At the time of his death, Fairman's 2007 Cardozo Law Review article, "Fuck" was still classed with the 20 top downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network.
caption: Professor Christopher M. Fairman of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University (2008)
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