The format of this series, “Art before the Law,” is simple. Each volume will present primary documents from a court case (or several related ones, if relevant) where an important issue in the field of art has been raised, debated, and, crucially, adjudicated during the course of a trial. These documents will be accompanied by a legal primer that will help readers navigate the complex language and protocols of jurisprudence, as well as an essay that will contextualize the particular artistic and legal entanglements of the case in question. In Permitting Art, the first volume of the series, legal scholar Brian Soucek shows how deciding whether art can be sold on the streets of New York City without a vending permit depends on answering several historically contentious questions: Are the visual arts a form of speech, and, as such, protected by the First Amendment of the us Constitution in the same way that words are? And more fundamentally, what is accorded the status of art, and who has the authority to do so?