Law Commons^™

Terrible Freedom, Ambiguous Authenticity, And The Pragmatism Of The Endangered: Why Free Speech In Law School Gets Complicated, Leonard M. Niehoff

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We idealize colleges and universities as places of unfettered inquiry, where freedom of expression flourishes. The Supreme Court has described the university classroom as “peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’” It declared: “The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.” The exchange of competing ideas takes place not only in classrooms, but also in public spaces, dormitories, student organizations, and in countless other campus contexts.

The Everyday First Amendment, Leonard M. Niehoff, Thomas Sullivan

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On June 26 and June 27, 2019, some twenty contenders for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States participated in two evenings of political debate. The outsized group included Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who was struggling to gain traction with voters. Shortly after the debate, while many viewers were conducting online searches to learn more about the candidates, Google temporarily suspended her campaign’s advertising account.

Google claimed that the interruption occurred because an automated system flagged unusual activity on the account. But Gabbard did not accept this explanation; she believed that Google deliberately had tried to undermine …

Race And The First Amendment: A Compendium Of Resources, Solomon F. Worlds, Leonard M. Niehoff

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This article provides summaries of law review articles and books that consider the complex relationship between racial justice and free speech. It seeks to assist law students, legal scholars, judges, and practitioners to think more deeply about the intersection between these critically important values. It describes scholarship that views these values as complementary, but also scholarship that views them as conflicting.

The Second Founding And The First Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

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Constitutional doctrine generally proceeds from the premise that the original intent and public understanding of pre-Civil War constitutional provisions carries forward unchanged from the colonial Founding era. This premise is flawed because it ignores the Nation’s Second Founding: i.e., the constitutional moment culminating in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the civil rights statutes enacted pursuant thereto. The Second Founding, in addition to providing specific new individual rights and federal powers, also represented a fundamental shift in our constitutional order. The Second Founding’s constitutional regime provided that the underlying systemic rules and norms of the First Founding’s Constitution …

The Supreme Court’S Two Constitutions: A First Look At The “Reverse Polarity” Cases, Arthur D. Hellman

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In the traditional approach to ideological classification, “liberal” judicial decisions are those that support civil liberties claims; “conservative” decisions are those that reject them. That view – particularly associated with the Warren Court era – is reflected in numerous academic writings and even an article by a prominent liberal judge. Today, however, there is mounting evidence that the traditional assumptions about the liberal-conservative divide are incorrect or at best incomplete. In at least some areas of constitutional law, the traditional characterizations have been reversed. Across a wide variety of constitutional issues, support for claims under the Bill of Rights or …

Government Employee Religion, Caroline Mala Corbin

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Picture a county clerk who refuses to issue a marriage license to an LGBT couple or a city bus driver who insists on wearing a hijab. The clerk is fired for failing to fulfill job responsibilities and the bus driver for violating official dress codes. Both claim that their termination violates the First Amendment speech and religion clauses.

There is a well-developed First Amendment government employee speech jurisprudence. Less developed is the doctrine and literature for First Amendment government employee religion. The existing Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence usually does not specifically account for the government employee context. This Article attempts …

A Free Speech Tale Of Two County Clerk Refusals, Caroline Mala Corbin

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The ever-expanding Free Speech Clause has made possible claims that would have been unthinkable until recently. This symposium Essay examines the compelled speech claims of two hypothetical county clerks who believe that marriage should be limited to unions between one man and one woman, and who argue that forcing them to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples compels them to speak in favor of same-sex marriage in violation of the Free Speech Clause.

When a government employee such as a county clerk speaks, she may not be speaking as just a private individual. She may also be speaking …

Bankrupt Marketplace: First Amendment Theory And The 2016 Presidential Election, Leonard M. Niehoff

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In this article I advance two arguments. The first is that 2016 was a particularly important year for freedom of speech and the press, although not for conventional reasons. The second is that hte events of 2016 revealed that one of the essential components of our democracy - the central role that free expression plays in the democratic process - is in a state of serious dysfunction, if not crisis.

Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz

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Four years ago, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that for-profit corporations possess a First Amendment right to make independent campaign expenditures. In so doing, the United States Supreme Court invited speculation that such corporations might possess other First Amendment rights as well. The petitioners in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius are now arguing that for-profit corporations are among the intended beneficiaries of the Free Exercise Clause and, along with the respondents in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, that they also qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Neither suggestion follows inexorably from Citizens United, …

Three Puzzling Things About New York Times V. Sullivan: Beginning The Anniversary Conversation, Leonard M. Niehoff

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This is the 50th anniversary of a watershed year in the history of the civil rights movement. During that year, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference mounted its anti-segregation campaign in Alabama; Commissioner "Bull" Connor turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators; activists were attacked; riots flared; George Wallace blocked the doors of a public university to keep black students out; President Kennedy dispatched troops to Alabama and called for the passage of a civil rights bill; Medgar Evers was murdered; the then-largest human rights demonstration in U.S. history converged on Washington; Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic speech at …

The Four Eras Of Fcc Public Interest Regulation, Lili Levi

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No abstract provided.

Out Of Thin Air: Using First Amendment Public Forum Analysis To Redeem American Broadcasting Regulation, Anthony E. Varona

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American television and radio broadcasters are uniquely privileged among Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensees. Exalted as public trustees by the 1934 Communications Act, broadcasters pay virtually nothing for the use of their channels of public radiofrequency spectrum, unlike many other FCC licensees who have paid billions of dollars for similar digital spectrum. Congress envisioned a social contract of sorts between broadcast licensees and the communities they served. In exchange for their free licenses, broadcast stations were charged with providing a platform for a "free marketplace of ideas" that would cultivate a democratically engaged and enlightened citizenry through the broadcasting of …

Free Speech And Valuable Speech: Silence, Dante, And The 'Marketplace Of Ideas', James Boyd White

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This Essay is a slightly expanded version of the inaugural Mellinkoff Lecture in Law and Humanities, presented at the UCLA School of Law last April in honor of the memory of Professor David Mellinkoff, the distinguished author of ground-breaking work on the nature of legal language. It addresses four related questions. What is the nature of the kind of speech and expression that realizes most completely the human capacity for finding and expressing meaning? How does our own world of public speech measure up to that standard? How, indeed, does our own talk in the law measure up, especially our …

Democratic Credentials, Donald J. Herzog

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We've made a mistake, urges Bruce Ackerman. We've failed to notice, or have forgotten, that ours is a dualist democracy: ordinary representatives passing their statutes are in fact the democratic inferiors of We the People, who at rare junctures appear on the scene and affirm new constitutional principles. (Actually, he claims in passing that we have a three-track democracy.)' Dwelling lovingly on dualism, Ackerman doesn't quite forget to discuss democracy, but he comes close. I want to raise some questions about the democratic credentials of Ackerman's view. Not, perhaps, the ones he anticipates. So I don't mean to argue that …

Comment On Preliminary Report On Freedom Of Expression And Campus Harassment Codes, Terrance Sandalow

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Campus harassment codes pose an unprecedented problem for the AAUP, not only because the issues of academic freedom they raise are novel, but also because the academic community is itself deeply divided over those issues. Historically, the major assaults upon academic freedom have come from outside the academy--from politicians, trustees, and donors who have sought to limit inquiry and restrict the expression of unpopular views. Ideas about academic freedom have been shaped in the course of repelling these assaults and in constructing barricades that will safeguard the freedoms to teach and to learn that are at the center of the …

Free Speech And Corporate Freedom: A Comment On First National Bank Of Boston V. Bellotti, Carl E. Schneider

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The corporation was born in chains but is everywhere free. That freedom was recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. In Bellotti, the Court overturned a Massachusetts criminal statute forbidding banks and business corporations to make expenditures intended to influence referenda concerning issues not "materially affecting" the corporation's "property, business, or assets." In doing so, the Court confirmed its discovery that commercial speech is not unprotected by the first amendment and announced a novel doctrine that corporate speech is not unprotected by the first amendment. Although several years have …

Free Speech Or Economic Weapon? The Persisting Problem Of Picketing, Theodore J. St. Antoine

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"Peaceful picketing," the United States Supreme Court has said, "is the workingman's means of communication."' One line of analysis is that, as a means of communication, picketing is free speech and is therefore entitled to every constitutional protection afforded other forms of expression. This means that it cannot be subjected to special restrictions, such as antiboycott curbs, simply because it is picketing. The opposing line of analysis is that picketing is not simply speech; it is "speech plus." The "plus" element removes picketing from the realm of pure speech and enables it to be regulated in ways that the Constitution …

Elfbrandt V. Russell: The Demise Of The Loyalty Oath, Jerold H. Israel

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In Elfbrandt v. Russell, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, declared unconstitutional Arizona's requirement of a loyalty oath from state employees. At first glance, Elfbrandt appears to be just another decision voiding a state loyalty oath on limited grounds relating to the specific language of the particular oath. Yet, several aspects of Mr. Justice Douglas' opinion for the majority suggest that Elfbrandt is really of far greater significance: it may sharply limit the scope and coverage of loyalty oaths generally and, indeed, may presage a ruling invalidating all such oaths. Of course, only the Supreme Court can determine this. …