Law Commons^™

Jurisprudential Revolution Unlocking Human Potential In Lawrence And Grutter, Wilson R. Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

The decisions of the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas and Grutter v. Bollinger, stripped to their bare holdings, have little immediate effect on existing law. After Grutter, colleges and graduate schools will continue to take race into account in admitting students to enroll a diverse student body, just as they have done for the past quarter century in conformity with Justice Lewis Powell's opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. After Lawrence, laws against gay sex may no longer be enforced, but only a handful of states still had these laws on the books at the …

Scienter, Causation, And Harm: The Right-Hand Side Of The Constitutional Calculus, Wilson R. Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

But, although the rights of free speech and assembly are fundamental, they are not in their nature absolute. Their exercise is subject to restriction, if the particular restriction proposed is required in order to protect the state from destruction or from serious injury, political, economic or moral.

Laws that infringe on freedom of expression, like all prohibitory laws, are enacted to prevent harm from occurring. The Supreme Court has refused to confer absolute protection upon freedom of expression, a position that would render all laws restricting expression unconstitutional. Instead, to determine the constitutionality of laws restricting expression, the Court has …

Assessing The Constitutionality Of Laws That Are Both Content Based And Content Neutral, Wilson R. Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

Such a multi-faceted analysis cannot be conflated into two dimensions. Whatever the allure of absolute doctrines, it is just too simple to declare expression "protected" or "unprotected" or to proclaim a regulation "content-based" or "content-neutral." John Paul Stevens (1992)

American legal doctrine evolved from a formalistic categorical approach that dominated legal thinking during the nineteenth century to a realistic balancing approach that developed over the course of the twentieth century. A similar process is now occurring in the constitutional doctrine governing freedom of expression-a process that may culminate in the adoption of what United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul …