C. Edwin Baker

C. Edwin Baker (May 28, 1947 – December 8, 2009), the Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, was a scholar of constitutional law, communications law, and free speech.

Biography

Baker was considered one of the country's foremost authorities on the First Amendment and on mass media policy.^[1] His most recent scholarship focused on the economics of the news business, political philosophy, and jurisprudential questions concerning the egalitarian and libertarian bases of constitutional theory.

Baker was a native of Madisonville, Kentucky. He received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University and his J.D. degree from Yale Law School. He was a law and humanities fellow at Harvard University in 1974, a fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Barone Center in 1992, and a Radcliffe fellow there in 2006.

Baker served as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a professor at the University of Oregon and an assistant professor at the University of Toledo. He joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981, and since 2007 held a joint appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn. He was also a visiting professor at New York University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Texas.

Baker died on December 8, 2009, after he collapsed while exercising.^[2] Baker was survived by his sister, Nancy L. Baker a member of the faculty at Fielding Graduate University. He was predeceased by his parents, Falcon O. Baker Jr. and Ernestine Magagna Baker.

Books

• Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (Oxford, 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
• Advertising and a Democratic Press (Princeton, 1994)
• Media, Markets, and Democracy (Cambridge, 2002), 2002 winner of the Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research.^[3] This book has been translated into Chinese and a number of other languages.
• Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters (Cambridge, 2007)

References

External links

• CV at Penn Law
• Blog: an appreciation of C. Edwin Baker, 1947-2009
• SSRN page
• Penn Law Obituary
• Papers to be held at West Virginia University College of Law Library

Baker Links:

• WVU COL Baker Lecture Page
• Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study Harvard University
• The Faculty Lounge
• Friends of Ed Baker, Facebook
• The C. Edwin Baker Media Policy Fellowship
• National Center for Lesbian Rights C. Edwin Baker Clerkship
• National Center for Lesbian Rights article in the newsletter, The Docket: Law Scholar C. Edwin Baker's Estate Donates $150,000 Gift to NCLR
• The Daily Pennsylvanian obituary
• International Communication Association: C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy
• Free Press Announcement
• Future of Music Collation: FMC Honors C. Edwin Baker
• Testimony of C. Edwin Baker before the Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, Committee on the Judiciary. House of Representatives, Congress of the United States Hearing on: A New Age in For Newspapers, Diversity of Voices, Competition and the Internet
• Freedom From Religion Foundation: FFRN Chosen to Memorialize C. Edwin Baker in newsletter Freethought Today at the Wayback Machine (archived January 5, 2011)
• Angelo State University Symposium: Market Threats to Press Freedom by C. Edwin Baker