Law Commons^™

Powerful Speakers And Their Listeners, Helen Norton

Publications

In certain settings, law sometimes puts listeners first when their First Amendment interests collide with speakers’. And collide they often do. Sometimes speakers prefer to tell lies when their listeners thirst for the truth. Sometimes listeners hope that speakers will reveal their secrets, while those speakers resist disclosure. And at still other times, speakers seek to address certain listeners when those listeners long to be left alone. When speakers’ and listeners’ First Amendment interests collide, whose interests should prevail? Law sometimes – but not always – puts listeners’ interests first in settings outside of public discourse where those listeners have …

Pregnancy And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Suppose that you are pregnant and seated in the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood clinic, or maybe in a facility that advertises “Pregnant? We Can Help You.” This Essay discusses the First Amendment rules that apply to the government’s control of what you are about to hear.

If the government funds your clinic’s program, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that it does not violate the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause when it forbids your health-care provider from offering you information about available abortion services. Nor does the government violate the Free Speech Clause, the Court has held, when …

Recording As Heckling, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

A growing body of authority recognizes that citizen recording of police officers and public space is protected by the First Amendment. But the judicial and scholarly momentum behind the emerging “right to record” fails to fully incorporate recording’s cost to another important right that also furthers First Amendment principles: the right to privacy.

This Article helps fill that gap by comprehensively analyzing the First Amendment interests of both the right to record and the right to privacy in public while highlighting the role of technology in altering the First Amendment landscape. Recording information can be critical to future speech and, …