Law Commons^™

Closing The Barn Door After The Genie Is Out Of The Bag: Recognizing A "Futility Principle" In First Amendment Jurisprudence, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues for a simple proposition: the First Amendment imposes a presumption against the suppression of speech when suppression would be futile. Suppression is futile when the speech is available to the same audience through some other medium or at some other place. The government can overcome this presumption of futility only when it asserts an important interest that is unrelated to the content of the speech in question, and only when the suppression directly advances that interest.

In Part I, the article explores the role that this unarticulated "futility principle" has played in Supreme Court and other decisions …

At Work In The Marketplace Of Ideas: Academic Freedom, The First Amendment, And Jeffries V. Harleston, Stephen A. Newman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

New Restrictions On Academic Free Speech: Jeffries V. Harleston Ii, Richard H. Hiers

UF Law Faculty Publications

Notwithstanding academic freedom's venerable and near-sacrosanct place among academicians in the United States today, the Supreme Court first accorded it constitutional status only in the 1950s. The Court did not recognize First Amendment speech rights of public employees generally until 1968. In subsequent years, the Court evolved two separate lines of cases: the one relating to, and generally protective of, academic freedom in public colleges and universities; the other, relating to the speech rights of public school teachers and public employees in other work contexts. The Supreme Court has yet to address the question whether the severely restrictive standards developed …

Section 6: Freedom Of Speech And Press, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Censorship Of Cyberspace A Personal Choice, I. Trotter Hardy

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Business Information And "Personal Data": Some Common-Law Observations About The Eu Draft Data Protection Directive, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Discusses the public interest in the free flow of information.

Love Speech: The Social Utility Of Pornography, Jeffrey G. Sherman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bad News, Good News For The First Amendment, In Supreme Court Review Of The 1993-94 Term,, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

With the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (F.A.C.E.), and the Supreme Court’s decision in NOW v. Scheidler, pro-life activists who engage in civil disobedience will suffer far greater legal disabilities than have been placed upon other protest movements in American history. But following Madsen, pro-life demonstrators can now take advantage of protections not previously articulated by the Court. So long as they do not engage in repetitive illegalities, pro-life demonstrators can count on strong First Amendment guarantees.

The Separation Of The Religious And The Secular: A Foundational Challenge To First Amendment Theory, Laura S. Underkuffler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Eye On Justice, Roger J. Miner '56

Legal History

No abstract provided.

Adding Complexity To Confusion And Seeing The Light: Feminist Legal Insights And The Jurisprudence Of The Religion Clauses, Leslie Gielow Jacobs

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Equality And Freedom Of Speech (Eighteenth Annual Law Review Symposium: Demise Of The First Amendment? Focus On Rico And Hate Crime Litigation), Terrance Sandalow

Other Publications

The editors responsible for today's symposium have posed an alarming question: whether we are witnessing the demise of the First Amendment. I want to dispel at the outset any anxiety the question may have aroused. The First Amendment is alive and well; indeed, it is thriving. I believe, though I cannot prove, that public respect for the values it expresses has never been greater than it has been in recent years. Whether or not I am correct in that belief, however, it is certain that constitutional protections against governmental efforts to limit speech and other forms of expressive activity are …

Authors, Editors, And Uncommon Carriers: Identifying The "Speaker" Within The New Media, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

First Amendment analysis has historically depended on whether a party is a speaker, an editor, or a carrier. With communications technology rapidly evolving, determining which category is appropriate becomes increasingly complex, and ascertaining the First Amendment protections that are applied to various actors in the process of diffusing ideas becomes difficult. This article looks to the historical treatment of the First Amendment rights of speakers, editors, and distributors. This article traces the Supreme Court’s treatment of speech regulations on new technologies, from telegraph and telephone regulations to the seminal Turner Broadcast System, Inc. v. FCC case that created rules for …

Abortion Counseling As Vice Activity: The Free Speech Implications Of Rust V. Sullivan And Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Part I of this article discusses the Court's opinions in Rust and Casey. It first demonstrates that the driving force in both decisions was the Court's characterization of abortion counseling as an activity rather than as speech. Part I further discusses the speech/conduct distinction in First Amendment jurisprudence and demonstrates that abortion counseling falls on the speech side of that distinction. Parts II and III suggest that the real cause of the conflation of speech and conduct in Rust and Casey was the confluence of (1) the reemergence of reasoning found in a curious commercial speech decision -- Posadas de …

A Restatement Of The Supreme Court's Law Of Religious Freedom: Coherence, Conflict Or Chaos?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Religious freedom as guaranteed in the First Amendment makes religious pluralism more likely, while pluralism makes the maintenance of religious freedom as a fundamental civil right more necessary. It seems there is a limit, however, to the expansion of America's religious pluralism that, when exceeded, shatters cultural consensus thus rendering impossible the political and civil discourse necessary to sustain democratic institutions.1 This follows because pluralism promises freedom but exacts a price in civic disunity and moral confusion. The question thereby resolves itself into just how a religiously diverse people are to live together, despite their deepest differences, while sharing in …

Workplace Censorship: A Response To Professor Sangree, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Interpretation And Interdependence: How Judges Use The Avoidance Canon In Separation Of Powers Cases, Brian C. Murchison

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The Structure Of The Religious Liberty Guarantee, Robert A. Destro

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Anonymous Campaign Literature And The First Amendment, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

Presently, forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have statutes that require the disclosure of some party's identity (for example, an author or a sponsor) on political literature pertaining to elections. The most common explanations given for these statutes are that they deter fraud and libel in the election arena and that they provide valuable information to the voters. Because these statutes regulate core political speech, however, they necessarily implicate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Although campaign disclosure laws have been both struck down and sustained by state courts reviewing appealed convictions, the decisions have been disappointingly …

Rhetoric, Evidence, And Bar Agency Restrictions On Speech By Attorneys, Lloyd B. Snyder

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

There are two problems with permitting litigation about attorney speech to proceed without requiring bar disciplinary agencies to present empirical data or other evidence to support claims that restrictions on attorney speech are necessary. First, the history of bar association restrictions on attorney speech should make us skeptical that the bar rules are based on lofty ideals about protection of the public. The restrictions began as rules promulgated by elite corporate lawyers whose effect was to limit the activities of their less affluent brethren who were representing criminal defendants and other impoverished clients. The purpose of the rules was to …

Counter-Demonstration As Protected Speech: Finding The Right To Confrontation In Existing First Amendment Law, Kevin F. O'Neill, R. Vasvari

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Accordingly, this Article is aimed at disentangling lines of precedent that are all too frequently entwined by urging an analysis of public protest cases that distinguishes among the four regulatory players. Thus, this Article devotes separate sections to the regulatory roles of legislators,16 administrators,17 judges,18 and police,19 with an introductory section on the doctrinal bedrock in this field: the public forum doctrine.20

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act: The Constitutional Significance Of An Unconstitutional Statute, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article addresses the constitutionality and the constitutional significance of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), through which Congress, relying on Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, attempted to repudiate the Supreme Court's restrictive interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, as announced in Employment Division v. Smith, and to adopt in its place a more generous regime of religious freedom. The article advances two major propositions. First, it contends that despite the Act's noble purpose, RFRA circumvents the process of constitutional amendment, frustrates the Supreme Court's role as the primary interpreter of the Constitution, and improperly intrudes on …

N.O.W. V. Scheidler: Rico Meets The First Amendment, Craig M. Bradley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A look at the controversial N.O.W. v. Scheidler case.

Of Markets And Media: The First Amendment, The New Mass Media And The Political Components Of Culture, Ashutosh Bhagwat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Graduation Prayer: The Parrot Sketch Redux, J. Alexander Tanford

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment And The National Information Infrastructure, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What the First Amendment status of electronic information should be is a fundamental question which must be addressed in any attempt to arrive at appropriate legal standards to protect the multifarious interests of the users of cyberspace. Yet, despite its importance, the First Amendment has largely been ignored in the debate surrounding what sort of legal framework should control the emerging National Information Infrastructure. Professor Cate surveys the current terrain of First Amendment jurisprudence and describes the different analytical approaches which may be taken. Doctrinal anomalies such as the law of common carriage indicate that at times the courts have …

The Ironic State Of Religious Liberty In America, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Independent Contractor Speaks His Mind: Can He Lose His Government Contract? An Analysis Of Heiser V. Umbehr, Barbara J. Fick

Journal Articles

This article previews the Supreme Court case Heiser v. Umbehr, 515 U.S. 1172 (1995). The author expected the Court to consider whether, and to what extent, a governmental unit can take into account an independent contractor's poltical speech in making decisions regarding the award or termination of government contracts.

Converging First Amendment Principles For Converging Communications Media, Thomas G. Krattenmaker, L. A. Powe Jr.

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Institutions Of Culture And The First Amendment: The New Frontier, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

The general subject of my lecture today is the relationship between the First Amendment and public institutions of culture, which I take to be those sponsored and supported by the state with the clear purpose of preserving and promoting high culture in the United States. These include universities, museums, theaters, libraries, public broadcasting networks, programs for art in public places, and the national endowments for the arts and the humanities. All of these institutions or programs are vested with the responsibility of insuring the preservation of high human achievement in the areas to which they are devoted (knowledge, art, music, …