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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Law
First Amendment Envelope Pushers: Revisiting The Incitement-To-Violence Test With Messrs. Brandenburg, Trump, & Spencer, Clay Calvert
First Amendment Envelope Pushers: Revisiting The Incitement-To-Violence Test With Messrs. Brandenburg, Trump, & Spencer, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article examines weaknesses with the United States Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohio incitement test as its fiftieth anniversary approaches. A lawsuit targeting Donald Trump, as well as multiple cases pitting white nationalist Richard Spencer against public universities, provide timely springboards for analysis. Specifically, In re Trump: 1) illustrates difficulties in proving Brandenburg’s intent requirement via circumstantial evidence; and 2) exposes problems regarding the extent to which past violent responses to a person’s words satisfy Brandenburg’s likelihood element. Additionally, the Spencer lawsuits raise concerns about: 1) whether Brandenburg should serve as a prior restraint mechanism for blocking potential speakers …
Gag Clauses And The Right To Gripe: The Consumer Review Fairness Act Of 2016 & State Efforts To Protect Online Reviews From Contractual Censorship, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
This article examines new legislation, including the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, signed into law in December 2016, targeting non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts. Such “gag clauses” typically prohibit or punish the posting of negative reviews of businesses on websites, such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. This article asserts that state and federal statutes provide the best means, from a pro-free-expression perspective, of attacking such clauses, given the disturbingly real possibility that the First Amendment has no bearing on contractual obligations between private parties.
Filtering Fake News Through A Lens Of Supreme Court Observations And Adages, Clay Calvert, Austin Vining
Filtering Fake News Through A Lens Of Supreme Court Observations And Adages, Clay Calvert, Austin Vining
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Essay analyzes multiple issues affecting fake news. It does so through a prism of seven observations by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the First Amendment, free speech, and other matters. The Court's wisdom in these quotations provides propitious points of entree for exploring how to address and remedy problems many fear fake news causes. The Essay concludes that because fake news will never be eradicated from the metaphorical marketplace of ideas, greater effort must be spent making real news - fake news's constructive flipside - more appetizing to the public.
Symposium: Truth, Trust And The First Amendment In The Digital Age: Foreword: Whither The Fourth Estate?, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
Symposium: Truth, Trust And The First Amendment In The Digital Age: Foreword: Whither The Fourth Estate?, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
UF Law Faculty Publications
As a professor of Media Law, I have devoted my career over the past quarter of a century to the idea that the press plays a special role in our democracy. That role is largely encapsulated by the concept of the press as Fourth Estate – an unofficial branch of government in our scheme of separation of powers that checks the power of the three official branches. In our constitutional scheme, the press is the watchdog that informs us what the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government are up to and continually replenishes the stock of news – real …
Reconsidering Incitement, Tinker And The Heckler’S Veto On College Campuses: Richard Spencer And The Charlottesville Factor, Clay Calvert
Reconsidering Incitement, Tinker And The Heckler’S Veto On College Campuses: Richard Spencer And The Charlottesville Factor, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Essay analyzes key First Amendment issues surrounding Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos speaking on public university campuses. Some institutions (Ohio State University, Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University) have flatly banned Spencer, citing fears of incitement to violence but also sparking federal lawsuits. Other schools have permitted Spencer to speak, but at massive security costs, in an attempt to prevent a so-called heckler’s veto. This Essay examines the tension between providing a public platform for controversial speakers and the costs associated with doing so, including the relevance of the Supreme Court’s aging incitement test created in Brandenburg v. …
Beyond Headlines & Holdings: Exploring Some Less Obvious Ramifications Of The Supreme Court's 2017 Free-Speech Rulings, Clay Calvert
Beyond Headlines & Holdings: Exploring Some Less Obvious Ramifications Of The Supreme Court's 2017 Free-Speech Rulings, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
Digging behind the holdings, this Article analyzes less conspicuous, yet highly consequential aspects of the United States Supreme Court’s First Amendment rulings during the opening half of 2017. The four facets of the opinions addressed here— items both within individual cases and cutting across them—hold vast significance for future free-speech battles. Nuances of the justices’ splintering in Matal v. Tam, Packingham v. North Carolina, and Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman are examined, as is the immediate impact of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Packingham dicta regarding online social networks. Furthermore, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s solo concurrence in the threats case of …
Fake News And The First Amendment: Reconciling A Disconnect Between Theory And Doctrine, Clay Calvert, Stephanie Mcneff, Austin Vining, Sebastian Zarate
Fake News And The First Amendment: Reconciling A Disconnect Between Theory And Doctrine, Clay Calvert, Stephanie Mcneff, Austin Vining, Sebastian Zarate
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article analyzes calls for regulating so-called “fake news” through the lens of both traditional theories of free expression – namely, the marketplace of ideas and democratic self-governance – and two well-established First Amendment doctrines, strict scrutiny and underinclusivity. The Article argues there is, at first glance, a seeming disconnect between theory and doctrine when it comes to either censoring or safeguarding fake news. The Article contends, however, that a structural rights interpretation of the First Amendment offers a viable means of reconciling theory and doctrine. A structural rights approach focuses on the dangers of collective power in defining the …
Defamation Per Se And Transgender Status: When Macro-Level Value Judgments About Equality Trump Micro-Level Reputational Injury, Clay Calvert, Ashton T. Hampton, Austin Vining
Defamation Per Se And Transgender Status: When Macro-Level Value Judgments About Equality Trump Micro-Level Reputational Injury, Clay Calvert, Ashton T. Hampton, Austin Vining
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article uses the September 2017 defamation decision in Simmons v. American Media, Inc. as a springboard for examining defamatory meaning and reputational injury. Specifically, it focuses on cases in which judges acknowledge that plaintiffs have suffered reputational harm yet rule for defendants because promoting the cultural value of equality weighs against redress. In Simmons, a normative, axiological judgment--that the law should neither sanction nor ratify prejudicial views about transgender individuals-- prevailed at the trial court level over a celebrity's ability to recover for alleged reputational harm. Simmons sits at a dangerous intersection: a crossroads where a noble judicial desire …
The Open Mic, Unplugged: Challenges To Viewpoint-Based Constraints On Public-Comment Periods, Frank D. Lomonte, Clay Calvert
The Open Mic, Unplugged: Challenges To Viewpoint-Based Constraints On Public-Comment Periods, Frank D. Lomonte, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
Perhaps the purest form of citizen political expression is addressing a government body directly during the public-comment period. Despite its salutary civic benefits, the public-comment period faces escalating threats, with local elected officials imposing rigid controls on speakers. Disturbingly, these rules sometimes are enforced via arrest. The U.S. Supreme Court recently confronted this scenario in Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, involving the arrest of a citizen-critic who refused to stop using his city council's open-mic period to decry public corruption. While narrowly fact-specific, the Court's June 2018 resolution of the case reaffirms the importance of protecting speakers at …
#I🔫U: Considering The Context Of Online Threats, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Linda Riedemann Norbutt
#I🔫U: Considering The Context Of Online Threats, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Linda Riedemann Norbutt
UF Law Faculty Publications
The United States Supreme Court has failed to grapple with the unique interpretive difficulties presented by social media threats cases. Social media make hateful and threatening speech more common but also magnify the potential for a speaker's innocent words to be misunderstood People speak differently on different social media platforms, and architectural features of platforms, such as character limits, affect the meaning of speech. The same is true of other contextual clues unique to social media, such as gifs, hashtags, and emojis. Only by understanding social media contexts can legal decision-makers avoid overcriminalization of speech protected by the First Amendment. …