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Data-Driven Constitutional Avoidance, Gregory P. Magarian, Lee Epstein, James L. Gibson
Data-Driven Constitutional Avoidance, Gregory P. Magarian, Lee Epstein, James L. Gibson
Scholarship@WashULaw
This article uses a case study to explain how empirical analysis can promote judicial modesty. In Matal v. Tam, the U.S. Supreme Court invoked the First Amendment to strike down the Lanham Act's bar on federal registration of "disparaging" trademarks. The Tam decision has great constitutional significance. It expands First Amendment coverage into a new field of economic regulation, and it deepens the constitutional prohibition on viewpoint-based speech regulations. This article contends that empirical analysis could have given the Court a narrower basis for the Tam result, one that would have avoided the fraught First Amendment issues the Court decided. …
The View From My Window: The Roberts Court's First Amendment Symposium, Gregory P. Magarian
The View From My Window: The Roberts Court's First Amendment Symposium, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
The experience of writing a book and then reading what some very smart and knowledgeable people have to say about the subject matter is humbling and a little dizzying. In Managed Speech: The Roberts Court's First Amendment, I try to make some sense of the present Supreme Court's decisions over the past decade about the First Amendment's protections for free expression.' The book argues that those decisions, taken as a whole, excessively constrain free speech within a particular managerial framework. Rather than helping speech to flourish in all its noisy, messy glory, the Roberts Court favors First Amendment claims from …
Bookends: Justice Stevens And Justice Scalia, Gregory P. Magarian
Bookends: Justice Stevens And Justice Scalia, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
The great importance Justice John Paul Stevens attaches to his bonds with former colleagues has long shone through his words and actions. Anyone who knows Justice Stevens knows of his deep admiration for his former boss, Justice Wiley Rutledge, whose deep ties to Washington University Justice Stevens emphasized in his recent remarks here.' During the year I had the privilege of serving as one of Justice Stevens' law clerks, retired Chief Justice Warren Burger passed away. A few days after Chief Justice Burger's death, Justice Stevens announced a decision from the bench. He revised his explanation of the majority's reasoning …
The Marrow Of Tradition: The Roberts Court And Categorial First Amendment Speech Exclusions, Gregory P. Magarian
The Marrow Of Tradition: The Roberts Court And Categorial First Amendment Speech Exclusions, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
INTRODUCTION The Roberts Court has made a lot of First Amendment law. Since Chief Justice John Roberts took the Supreme Court’s helm in 2006, the Court has issued decisions on the merits in about thirty-five free speech cases. With greater vigor than the late Rehnquist Court, the present Justices have waded into free speech controversies ranging from violent video games to commercial speech to campaign fi- nance regulation. In all those areas, the Court has handed import- ant victories to First Amendment claimants. Free speech advocates’ conventional (not to say universal) view of this Court is adoring. Renowned First Amendment …
How To Apply The Religious Freedom Restoration Act To Federal Law Without Violating The Constitution, Gregory P. Magarian
How To Apply The Religious Freedom Restoration Act To Federal Law Without Violating The Constitution, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Learned commentators have called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 ("RFRA" or "the Act") "perhaps the most unconstitutional statute in the history of the nation" and "the most egregious violation of the separation of powers doctrine in American constitutional history." In the 1997 case of City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court struck down the Act in its applications to state and local governments, declaring that "RFRA contradicts vital principles necessary to maintain separation of powers and the federal balance." The Act's applications to federal law, however, survived Boerne, which means that plaintiffs with religious freedom claims against …