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Constitutional Law

Pace University

First Amendment

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On The Categorical Approach To Free Speech – And The Protracted Failure To Delimit The True Threats Exception To The First Amendment, Wayne Batchis Mar 2017

On The Categorical Approach To Free Speech – And The Protracted Failure To Delimit The True Threats Exception To The First Amendment, Wayne Batchis

Pace Law Review

On June 1, 2015, the Supreme Court decided Elonis v. United States on statutory rather than constitutional grounds. In doing so, it turned away an important opportunity to provide needed clarification of true threats, a category of expression relegated to a lower level of protection by the Court almost a half-century ago. The categorical approach to free speech made its first explicit appearance in Supreme Court case law in 1942. Since that time, the Court has relied heavily on this method of constitutional interpretation, carving out discrete exceptions from the seemingly absolutist mandate of the First Amendment that Congress make …


Privacy And The Right Of Free Expression, John A. Humbach Jan 2012

Privacy And The Right Of Free Expression, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Nobody likes to be talked about but everybody likes to talk. Trying to stop the dissemination of private information is, however, an impingement on free expression and the freedom to observe. A freestanding “right of privacy” that violates these interests is constitutionally permissible only if it can be justified using one of the standard bases for allowing restrictions on First Amendment rights. The three most likely possibilities are that the law in question: (1) can pass strict scrutiny, (2) fall within a recognized “categorical” exception, or (3) places only an “incidental” burden on First Amendment interests. Of these three, only …