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Full-Text Articles in Law
Public Discourse, Expert Knowledge, And The Press, Joseph Blocher
Public Discourse, Expert Knowledge, And The Press, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay identifies and elaborates two complications raised by Robert Post’s Democracy, Expertise, and Academic Freedom, and in doing so attempts to show how Post’s theory can account for constitutional protection of the press. The first complication is a potential circularity arising from the relationships between the concepts of democratic legitimation, public discourse, and protected social practices. Democratic legitimation predicates First Amendment coverage on participation in public discourse, whose boundaries are defined as those social practices necessary for the formation of public opinion. But close examination of the relationships between these three concepts raises the question of whether public discourse …
Second Things First: What Free Speech Can And Can’T Say About Guns, Joseph Blocher
Second Things First: What Free Speech Can And Can’T Say About Guns, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Blocher responds to Gregory Magarian’s article on the implications of the First Amendment for the Second.
The Right Not To Keep Or Bear Arms, Joseph Blocher
The Right Not To Keep Or Bear Arms, Joseph Blocher
Faculty Scholarship
Sometimes a constitutional right to do a particular thing is accompanied by a right not to do that thing. The First Amendment, for example, guarantees both the right to speak and the right not to speak. This Article asks whether the Second Amendment should likewise be read to encompass both the right to keep or bear arms for self-defense and the inverse right to protect oneself by avoiding them, and what practical implications, if any, the latter right would have. The Article concludes - albeit with some important qualifications - that a right not to keep or bear arms is …