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First Amendment

Selected Works

Selected Works

2018

First Amendment

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

When Should The First Amendment Protect Judges From Their Unethical Speech?, Lynne H. Rambo Nov 2018

When Should The First Amendment Protect Judges From Their Unethical Speech?, Lynne H. Rambo

Lynne H. Rambo

Judges harm the judicial institution when they engage in inflammatory or overtly political extrajudicial speech. The judiciary can be effective only when it has the trust of the citizenry, and judicial statements of that sort render it impossible for citizens to see judges as neutral and contemplative arbiters. This lack of confidence would seem especially dangerous in times like these, when the citizenry is as polarized as it has ever been.

Ethical codes across the country (based on the Model Code of Judicial Conduct) prohibit judges from making these partisan, prejudicial or otherwise improper remarks. Any discipline can be undone, …

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Prosecuting Conduit Campaign Contributions - Hard Time For Soft Money, Robert D. Probasco Jul 2018

Prosecuting Conduit Campaign Contributions - Hard Time For Soft Money, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

In recent years, there have been several high-profile prosecutions for violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, involving contributions nominally by one individual but funded or reimbursed by another individual deemed to be the true contributor. Prosecutions of these “conduit contribution” cases have been surprising in at least three significant respects. First, the prosecutions have been based on violations of FECA’s reporting requirements and may not have involved any violations of the substantive prohibitions or limitations of contributions. Second, the defendants were the donors rather than campaign officials who actually filed reports with FECA. Third, the cases were prosecuted as …

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Reconciling The Lanham Act And The Fdca: A Comment On Chris Hurley’S Note, Christopher B. Seaman Apr 2018

Reconciling The Lanham Act And The Fdca: A Comment On Chris Hurley’S Note, Christopher B. Seaman

Christopher B. Seaman

No abstract provided.

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Police Misconduct, Video Recording, And Procedural Barriers To Rights Enforcement, Howard M. Wasserman Apr 2018

Police Misconduct, Video Recording, And Procedural Barriers To Rights Enforcement, Howard M. Wasserman

Howard M Wasserman

The story of police reform and of "policing the police" has become the story of video and video evidence, and "record everything to know the truth" has become the singular mantra. Video, both police-created and citizen-created, has become the singular tool for ensuring police accountability, reforming law enforcement, and enforcing the rights of victims of police misconduct. This Article explores procedural problems surrounding the use of video recording and video evidence to counter police misconduct, hold individual officers and governments accountable, and reform departmental policies, regulations, and practices. It considers four issues: 1) the mistaken belief that video can "speak …

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When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2017

When Judges Are Theologians: Adjudicating Religious Questions, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

In this chapter, I explore how judges—and, more generally, U.S. courts—deal with legal disputes when they must consider not only laws and facts, but also religion, or maybe even more precisely, theology. Indeed, in a wide range of circumstances, judges are confronted with cases where the outcome in some way or another requires them to issue a decision that is predicated, to varying to degrees, on a theological question upon which there is some debate. While in American law the ostensibly simple answer to this question is simply that the Constitution prohibits courts from adjudicating religious questions, the reality is …

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Implied Consent To Religious Institutions: A Primer And A Defense, Michael A. Helfand Dec 2017

Implied Consent To Religious Institutions: A Primer And A Defense, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

One of the recent fault lines over religious liberty is the scope of protections afforded religiously motivated institutions and corporations. Courts and scholars all seem to agree that such religious institutions deserve some degree of protection. But there remains significant debate over the principles that should guide judicial decisions addressing the circumstances in which religiously motivated institutions should, and in which circumstances they should not, receive the law’s protection.

In this Article, I expound, and defend, my proposed “implied consent” framework for addressing religious institutional claims. Such a framework grounds the authority of religious institutions not in a degree of …

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