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Freeing Speech And The First Amendment Value Of Promoting Public Discussion, Chapin F. Cimino

Thurgood Marshall Law Review (Texas Southern University)

“Freeing Speech” contributes to the existing academic debate around the virtues and vices of freedom of information act (“FOIA”) requests, and specifically, to the much-discussed problem of judicial under-enforcement of both federal FOIA and state right-to-know law actions. Freeing Speech offers a new insight into this problem, which is that often courts simply do not see the First Amendment implications of these cases. The article coins the phrase promoting speech, and argues that this First Amendment value undergirds the entire right-to-know statutory scheme. Yet this value remains hidden in these cases, as adjudicating a right-to-know claim does not require …