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Full-Text Articles in Law
Commercial Speech, Commercial Use, And The Intellectual Property Quagmire, Jennifer E. Rothman
Commercial Speech, Commercial Use, And The Intellectual Property Quagmire, Jennifer E. Rothman
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The commercial speech doctrine in First Amendment jurisprudence has frequently been criticized and is recognized as a highly contested, problematic and shifting landscape. Despite the compelling critique within constitutional law scholarship more broadly, Intellectual Property (“IP”) law has not only embraced the differential treatment of commercial speech, but has done so in ways that disfavor a much broader swath of speech than traditional commercial speech doctrine allows. One of the challenges for courts, litigants, and scholars alike is that the term “commercial” is used to mean multiple things, even within the same body of IP law. In this Article, I …
Sex Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property, Jennifer E. Rothman
Sex Exceptionalism In Intellectual Property, Jennifer E. Rothman
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The state regulates sexual activity through a combination of criminal and civil sanctions and the award of benefits, such as marriage and First Amendment protections, for acts and speech that conform with the state’s vision of acceptable sex. Although the penalties for non-compliance with the state’s vision of appropriate sex are less severe in intellectual property law than those, for example, in criminal or family law, IP law also signals the state’s views of sex. In this Article written for the Stanford symposium on the Adult Entertainment industry, I extend my consideration of the law’s treatment of sex after Lawrence …
Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, Jennifer E. Rothman
Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, Jennifer E. Rothman
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Scholars have often turned to the First Amendment to limit the scope of ever-expanding copyright law. This approach has mostly failed to convince courts that independent review is merited and has offered little to individuals engaged in personal rather than political or cultural expression. In this Article, I consider the value of an alternative paradigm using the lens of substantive due process and liberty to evaluate users’ rights. A liberty-based approach uses this other developed body of constitutional law to demarcate justifiable personal, identity-based uses of copyrighted works. Uses that are essential for mental integrity, intimacy promotion, communication, or religious …
The Possibility Of A Secular First Amendment, Chad Flanders
The Possibility Of A Secular First Amendment, Chad Flanders
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In a series of articles and now in their new book, Religious Freedom and the Constitution, Lawrence Sager and Christopher Eisgruber (E&S) defend an interpretation of the religion clauses of the First Amendment which, they write, "denies that religion is a constitutional anomaly, a category of human experience that demands special benefits and/or necessitates special restrictions." While not a book review in the traditional sense, my essay takes E&S's defense of a secular First Amendment as a starting point and asks, how did we get to the point where an interpretation of the First Amendment which denies that religion is …
'"You Have Been In Afghanistan": A Discourse On The Van Alstyne Method, Garrett Epps
'"You Have Been In Afghanistan": A Discourse On The Van Alstyne Method, Garrett Epps
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This essay pays tribute to William Van Alstyne, one of our foremost constitutional scholars, by applying the methods of textual interpretation he laid out in a classic essay, "Interpreting This Constitution: On the Unhelpful Contribution of Special Theories of Judicial Review." I make use of the graphical methods Van Alstyne has applied to the general study of the First Amendment to examine the Supreme Court's recent decisions in the context of the Free Exercise Clause, in particular the landmark case of "Employment Division v. Smith". The application of Van Alstyne's use of the burden of proof as an interpretive tool …
Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Political Representation And Accountability Under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Tobias Barrington Wolff
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The U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy constitutes a singular type of speech regulation: an explicit prohibition on identity speech by a defined population of individuals that mandates a state of complete social invisibility in both military and civilian life. The impact of such a regulation upon the public speech values protected by the First Amendment should not be difficult to apprehend. And yet, as the tenth anniversary of the policy approaches, First Amendment scholars have largely ignored this seemingly irresistible subject of study, and the federal courts have refused to engage with the policy's implications for public speech …
Freedom Of Speech And True Threats, Jennifer E. Rothman
Freedom Of Speech And True Threats, Jennifer E. Rothman
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This article proposes a new test for determining what is a true threat - speech not protected by the First Amendment. Despite the importance of the true threats exception to the First Amendment, this is an underexplored area of constitutional law.
Even though the Supreme Court has made clear that true threats are punishable, it has not clearly defined what speech constitutes a true threat. To make this determination circuit courts have adopted inconsistent and inadequate tests including a reasonable listener test. The Supreme Court has never granted certiorari to resolve the issue.
The law surrounding threats has gained recent …
Televised Executions And The Constitution: Recognizing A First Amendment Right Of Access To State Executions, John Bessler
Televised Executions And The Constitution: Recognizing A First Amendment Right Of Access To State Executions, John Bessler
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This article examines the history of public and private executions and the passage of private execution laws. It concludes that existing laws restricting media access to executions – and requiring private executions that exclude television cameras – are unconstitutional. The author examines existing statutory schemes which curtail media access and prohibit the filming of executions, discusses legal challenges to such laws, and explores freedom of the press jurisprudence. In particular, the article analyzes First Amendment case law and right-of-access cases. The author also discusses the Eighth Amendment's relationship to First Amendment case law in the area of media coverage of …
The First Amendment And The Cable Television Operator: An Unprotective Shield Against Public Access Requirements, Michael I. Meyerson
The First Amendment And The Cable Television Operator: An Unprotective Shield Against Public Access Requirements, Michael I. Meyerson
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This article focuses on the question of whether state-imposed public access requirements violate the First Amendment rights of the cable television operator. The author suggests that the appropriate analysis asks whether the law abridges expression the First Amendment was meant to protect. In other words, do cable access requirements abridge speech safeguarded by the First Amendment? The article demonstrates that such requirements do not hinder, but in fact further, fundamental First Amendment interests. Finally, the article shows that access requirements fulfill the standards of the constitutional tests for each classification into which they could be placed.