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Full-Text Articles in Law

Introduction: The Difficult First Amendment, Christina E. Wells Jan 2001

Introduction: The Difficult First Amendment, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.


Beyond Campaign Finance: The First Amendment Implications Of Nixon V. Shrink Missouri Pac, Christina E. Wells Jan 2001

Beyond Campaign Finance: The First Amendment Implications Of Nixon V. Shrink Missouri Pac, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This essay, however, is less concerned with the campaign finance aspects of Shrink than with the decision's broader implications. In the course of its decision, the Shrink Court not only obfuscated the standard of scrutiny applicable to contribution regulations, it effectively ignored the government's lack of factual support for the law, instead accepting the state's assertions at face-value. Consequently, Shrink is far more than a simple application of Buckley. Rather, it reflects fundamental problems with the Court's standards of review in First Amendment cases generally. The more global nature of Shrink's problems suggest that, despite scholarly focus on the Buckley …


Bringing Structure To The Law Of Injunctions Against Expression, Christina E. Wells Oct 2000

Bringing Structure To The Law Of Injunctions Against Expression, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article reviews the Court's cases regarding injunctions against speech, focusing first on the increasing elevation of rhetoric (as opposed to analysis) in the Court's prior restraint decisions. Part I also reviews the Court's other decisions involving injunctions and demonstrates that they too contain little, if any, analysis concerning the appropriateness of injunctive relief against expression. Part II examines Madsen's interaction with the Court's previous decisions and discusses how Madsen furthers the incoherence of the Court's previous cases. Part III explains that content discrimination principles, although superficially attractive, are inappropriate with injunctive relief because the content-based/content-neutral distinction's …


Differentiating The Free Exercise And Establishment Clauses, Carl H. Esbeck Jul 2000

Differentiating The Free Exercise And Establishment Clauses, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The purpose of the Establishment Clause is not to safeguard individual religious rights. That is the role of the Free Exercise Clause, indeed its singular role. The purpose of the Establishment Clause, rather, is as a structural restraint on governmental power. Because of its structural character, the task of the Establishment Clause is to limit government from legislating or otherwise acting on any matter "respecting an establishment of religion." The powers that fall within the scope of the foregoing clause (denied to government, hence within the sole province of religion) and the powers outside this clause (hence, authority vested in …


Introduction: Tiger Woods And The First Amendment, Tyler T. Ochoa Jan 2000

Introduction: Tiger Woods And The First Amendment, Tyler T. Ochoa

Faculty Publications

Although the right of publicity has been recognized as a distinct common-law doctrine since 1953, only in recent years have courts begun to take the First Amendment seriously as a limit on the extent to which sports figures and other celebrities can use the doctrine to control the use of their images. It is widely recognized that the government may prohibit false and misleading speech, such as an advertisement that falsely implies an endorsement of a product by an individual, without violating the First Amendment. Similarly, it is generally acknowledged that the First Amendment protects the depiction of celebrities in …


Charitable Choice And The Critics, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 2000

Charitable Choice And The Critics, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

First, the statute prohibits the government from discriminating with regard to religion when determining whether providers are eligible to deliver social services under these programs. Second, the statute imposes on government the duty not to intrude into the religious autonomy of faith-based providers. Third, the statute imposes on both government and participating FBOs the duty not to abridge certain rights of the ultimate beneficiaries of these programs. I will touch on these three principles below, and do so in reverse order.


Silencing John Doe: Defamation And Discourse In Cyberspace, Lyrissa Lidsky Jan 2000

Silencing John Doe: Defamation And Discourse In Cyberspace, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons — some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat …


Reinvigorating Autonomy: Freedom And Responsibility In The Supreme Court's First Amendment Jurisprudence, Christina E. Wells Jan 1997

Reinvigorating Autonomy: Freedom And Responsibility In The Supreme Court's First Amendment Jurisprudence, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article explores the conception of autonomy that scholars have generally attributed to the Court and discusses problems with that conception. Part II sets forth an alternative, Kantian conception of autonomy and discusses its implications for a system of laws regulating free expression. Part III analyzes the Court's free speech jurisprudence and its autonomy rationale. It specifically examines both the Court's distinction between content-based and content-neutral regulations of speech and its approach to low-value speech, demonstrating that they reflect a Kantian notion of autonomy. Finally, Part IV discusses the implications of Kantian autonomy for hate speech regulation, …


Parading The First Amendment Through The Streets Of South Boston, Dwight G. Duncan Jan 1996

Parading The First Amendment Through The Streets Of South Boston, Dwight G. Duncan

Faculty Publications

The real question that presented itself about this case is why all this litigation was necessary, if the legal principle was so clear? The fact is that GLIB was interested in the confrontation, and while it takes two to make a fight, it only takes one to start one. GLIB wanted to make a statement similar to the one made by ILGO. GLIB filed the original suit. The Veterans, on the defensive, simply kept appealing, all the way to the United States Supreme Court. By then, GLIB may have preferred to walk away, but the battle lines had already been …


A Restatement Of The Supreme Court's Law Of Religious Freedom: Coherence, Conflict Or Chaos?, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1995

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 …


Antitrust And First Amendment Implications Of Professional Real Estate Investors, Gary Myers Oct 1994

Antitrust And First Amendment Implications Of Professional Real Estate Investors, Gary Myers

Faculty Publications

This article begins with a discussion of the development of Noerr-Pennington immunity as it applies to litigation behavior. Parts III and IV describe the litigation in Professional Real Estate Investors and then analyze the effect of this new decision on predatory litigation law. Part V discusses possible ramifications of the case for other areas of federal and state law in which subjective intent is the sole keystone for the imposition of liability on petitioning activity. Because Professional Real Estate Investors interprets the First Amendment to preclude antitrust liability in these cases, other laws that deter bad faith litigation may no …


Government Regulation Of Religiously Based Social Services: The First Amendment Considerations, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1992

Government Regulation Of Religiously Based Social Services: The First Amendment Considerations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

A daunting welter of variables confronts anyone who sets out to systematize the First Amendment's effect on the government's role in regulating social services operated by religious organizations. The task is further complicated because the regulations in question often were promulgated as a consequence of the monitoring that inevitably accompanies government spending on private-sector welfare programs. The most suitable methodology should take into account: 1) the nature of the organizations that are the object of the government's regulation or program of aid; 2) the interrelationship between government and religious organizations that results from the regulation or aid; and 3) the …


Litigation As A Predatory Practice, Gary Myers Jan 1992

Litigation As A Predatory Practice, Gary Myers

Faculty Publications

This article reviews and evaluates the sham litigation case law, finding that many courts have allowed immunity too readily or on inappropriate grounds. It attempts to develop comprehensive standards for antitrust claims based on sham litigation.


The Lemon Test: Should It Be Retained, Reformulated Or Rejected?, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1990

The Lemon Test: Should It Be Retained, Reformulated Or Rejected?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This essay addresses the Supreme Court's three-part establishment clause test originally set down in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Part I concerns the manner in which the Lemon test has substantially evolved. Part II explores what the evolved test has to offer by way of solving the seemingly conflicting duties not to inhibit free speech and political rights, while at the same time refraining from passing laws "respecting an establishment of religion." Finally, Part III addresses some of the proposals to supplant Lemon altogether.


First Freedom: Religion And The Bill Of Rights, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1990

First Freedom: Religion And The Bill Of Rights, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This volume is a collection of seven papers delivered at a symposium assembled in April 1989 upon the occasion, almost two hundred years hence, of the passage of the Bill of Rights by the First Congress. The unifying theme is stated to be the historical context of both Religion Clauses in the First Amendment, but the authors are driven primarily by Establishment Clause concerns. The Thrust of the essays deal with the originalism advanced during the years of Reagan Administration, and nonpreferentialism comes in for particular criticism, both pejoratively characterized as that "growing clamor".


The Establishment Clause As A Structural Restraint On Governmental Power, Carl H. Esbeck Oct 1989

The Establishment Clause As A Structural Restraint On Governmental Power, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This Article inquires into whether the singular purpose of the Establishment Clause is to secure individual rights, as is conventionally believed, or whether its role is more properly understood as a structural restraint on governmental power. If the Clause is indeed structural in nature, then its task is to negate from the purview of civil governance all matters “respecting an establishment of religion.” Conceptualizing the role of the Establishment Clause as either rights-securing or structural has profound consequences for the nation's constitutional settlement concerning the interrelationship of government and religion.


Mandatory Student Fees: First Amendment Concerns And University Discretion, Christina E. Wells Jan 1988

Mandatory Student Fees: First Amendment Concerns And University Discretion, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This Comment analyzes the constitutional issues raised by the use of mandatory student fees to fund speech at public universities. Part I examines the interests of students and universities with respect to the use of such fees. Part II examines court decisions in this area. Part III looks to the nature of student fees and demonstrates that they are permissible exercises of university discretion. Parts IV and V discuss whether the Constitution requires a university, if it funds student organizations by mandatory fees, to fund all organizations equally, without regard to other students' objections to those organizations' viewpoints.


Five Views Of Church-State Relations In Contemporary American Thought, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1986

Five Views Of Church-State Relations In Contemporary American Thought, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Views concerning the appropriate relationship between church and state are rapidly becoming almost as numerous as America's religious sects. The Constitution's treatment of religious liberty, thought by many to be a matter long settled, has now erupted into a many-sided debate. Not only lawyers, judges and legal commentators are involved; historians and sociologists, theologians and ecclesiastics, political theorists and statesmen also participate in the debate. It is part of a much larger struggle over a redefinition, or for some a reclamation, of the role of religion in American public life. At times this debate focuses on discrete environments, such as …


Tort Claims Against Churches And Ecclesiastical Officers: The First Amendment Considerations, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1986

Tort Claims Against Churches And Ecclesiastical Officers: The First Amendment Considerations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Federal and state courts are increasingly confronted with the unenviable task of giving legal definition to matters affecting relations between religion and government.' Many of the lawsuits pitting church against state are surface manifestations of a more fundamental disintegration of an American public philosophy.


The Naked Public Square: Religion And Democracy In America , Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1985

The Naked Public Square: Religion And Democracy In America , Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

A crisis of confidence in our institutions and talk about loss of life's purpose are everywhere. Sociologists describe the modern individual's sense of isolation, his so-called spiritual homelessness, his weakening sense of values, and his bewilderment in the face of seemingly impersonal forces before which he feels helpless and often victimized.


Toward A General Theory Of Church-State Relations And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1985

Toward A General Theory Of Church-State Relations And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Although government intervention in religious affairs is a new and understandably worrisome experience for many American churches, history instructs us that the confrontation is not novel. We can find some comfort in the fact that this double wrestle of state with church and state with individual believers is a perennial match. After all, it has been nearly sixty years since a brutish measure in Oregon making parochial school education unlawful had to be sidelined by the United States Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.' Over forty-five years ago the Supreme Court decided Lovell v. City of Griffin, snuffing …


Establishment Clause Limits On Governmental Interference With Religious Organizations, Carl H. Esbeck Apr 1984

Establishment Clause Limits On Governmental Interference With Religious Organizations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In this article it will be argued that the establishment clause, properly viewed, functions as a structural provision regimenting the nature and degree of involvement between government and religious associations." The degree of involvement should be a limited one, although it is clear that the interrelationship need not nor cannot be eliminated altogether. Although the degree of desired separation has proven to be a continuing controversy, the goal of separation is not so divisive. The aim of separation of church and government is for each to give the other sufficient breathing space. The ordering principle is reciprocity in which "both …


Religion And A Neutral State: Imperative Or Impossibility?, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1984

Religion And A Neutral State: Imperative Or Impossibility?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The thesis of this Article is that the myth-of-neutrality argument is partially right and partially wrong. For reasons of religious liberty, the state can and should avoid any involvement with matters of religious worship, and the propagation or inculcation of matters that comprise the very heart of one's belief concerning the nature and destiny of mankind. Conversely, the state cannot retreat from the regulation of certain conduct which is arguably immoral and still claim its neutrality concerning the rightness of the conduct. The very decision by the state to withdraw its regulation, leaving the morality of the conduct up to …


State Regulation Of Social Services Ministries Of Religious Organizations, Carl H. Esbeck Jan 1981

State Regulation Of Social Services Ministries Of Religious Organizations, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Religiously motivated civil disobedience in the area of social and human services ministries of religious organizations has become increasingly widespread. With growing governmental involvement in the lives of citizens and moves by federal and state agencies to narrowly confine and define religious activities, it comes as no surprise that conflict over the proper role of the state has crept as well into the arena of social and human services conducted from religious motivation. The current litigation and legislation is principally focused on state regulation by certification or licensing requirements that are expanding from health, fire, and safety concerns into the …