Professor Soucek Takes New Book to the Streets of New York

Cabinet, an art press in Brooklyn, has published Professor Brian Soucek’s Permitting Art: Visual Arts and the First Amendment on the Streets of New York as the first book in its  new series “Art before the law.”

The book reprints opinions and a brief in two cases that established—and then limited—the rights of visual artists to sell their work on New York City streets. Soucek wrote a long introductory essay for the book that explains the cases and their stakes both for artists and First Amendment law.

In November, Cabinet hosted a discussion about the book in its studio in Brooklyn. Then Cabinet and Soucek did some street vending of their own in Soho, where artists regularly were arrested in the 1990s. 

Professor Soucek’s primary teaching and research interests are antidiscrimination law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and refugee/asylum law. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz in Connecticut, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professor Soucek is a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow.