Founder of The Slants talks about the band’s free-speech fight

When Simon Tam booked the first gig for The Slants, there was a major obstacle to overcome: The band did not technically have any other members yet. There was just Tam and his dream of creating a rock band made up entirely of Asian American musicians. The bassist soon recruited enough musicians to perform the gig, but that would not turn out to be The Slants’ biggest challenge. That would come with a trademark battle over the band’s “disparaging” name that dragged on for more than a decade until it finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Tam joins the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles to discuss his band and his new book, Slanted: How an Asian American Troublemaker Took on the Supreme Court.

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