Law Commons^™

Don't Be So Quick To Ban Violent Videogames, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Hate Funeral Protests? Then Ignore Them, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Patriotism For Profit And Persuasion: The Trademark, Free Speech, And Governance Problems With Protection Of Governmental Marks In The United States, Malla Pollack

Malla Pollack

“Governmental marks” are words or phrases which involve the identity of a social group that is partly defined in terms of its citizenship in a government-institution. The power to name a social group (especially one from which exit is difficult) confers enormous power over the group’s members. Legally classifying such words as trademarks commodifies them, increasing the namer’s power: both by giving the word monetary value and by providing the mark-holder with the legal right to prevent others from manipulating the word’s meaning.

Destination marketing employing governmental marks has become ubiquitous. The municipal governments of both New York City and …

Rights Bring Responsibility: Clear Constitutional Protections May Be Only The Beginning Of The Discussion, Alan E. Garfield

Alan E Garfield

No abstract provided.

Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, Jennifer E. Rothman

All Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have often turned to the First Amendment to limit the scope of ever-expanding copyright law. This approach has mostly failed to convince courts that independent review is merited and has offered little to individuals engaged in personal rather than political or cultural expression. In this Article, I consider the value of an alternative paradigm using the lens of substantive due process and liberty to evaluate users’ rights. A liberty-based approach uses this other developed body of constitutional law to demarcate justifiable personal, identity-based uses of copyrighted works. Uses that are essential for mental integrity, intimacy promotion, communication, or religious …

What The Abortion Disclosure Cases Say About The Constitutionality Of Persuasive Government Speech On Product Labels, Leslie Gielow Jacobs

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Enforcing The Bill Of Rights Against The States: The History And The Future, Richard Aynes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article traces, in broad strokes, the history of the disputes about whether or not the Bill of Rights can be enforced against the states.

It begins with pre-Fourteenth Amendment claims and recounts the actions of the 39th Congress: The Freedman’s Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Several speeches on the Amendment from the Congressional elections of 1866 are utilized, including those of Section 1 author John Bingham, Congressmen Columbus Delano, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Wilson, James Garfield, and Senator John Sherman, as well as Democrats who participated in what has been termed the most …

Enforcing The Bill Of Rights Against The States: The History And The Future, Richard Aynes

Richard L. Aynes

This article traces, in broad strokes, the history of the disputes about whether or not the Bill of Rights can be enforced against the states. It begins with pre-Fourteenth Amendment claims and recounts the actions of the 39th Congress: The Freedman’s Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Several speeches on the Amendment from the Congressional elections of 1866 are utilized, including those of Section 1 author John Bingham, Congressmen Columbus Delano, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Wilson, James Garfield, and Senator John Sherman, as well as Democrats who participated in what has been termed the most …

The Government-Speech Doctrine: “Recently Minted,” But Counterfeit, Steven H. Goldberg

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The foci of this Article are the ill-advised creation of a government-speech doctrine in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 129 S. Ct. 1125 (2009), and its potential for substantial First Amendment mischief particularly with respect to the establishment of religion. Created out of whole cloth, with no regard for precedent, and in a case that did not even raise the issue of government speech, the doctrine permits the government to speak with viewpoint about controversial cultural issues upon which the government has no constitutional right to act. Asked to find unconstitutional the refusal of a municipality to allow a Summum …

Regulating Student Speech: Suppression Versus Punishment, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the Supreme Court’s student speech framework and argues that, in focusing exclusively on the types of student speech that can be restricted, the framework fails to build in any differentiation as to how such speech can be restricted. This is true even though there are two very distinct types of speech restrictions in schools: suppression of the speech itself; and after-the-fact punishment of the student speaker. As the student speech landscape itself gets more complex – given schools’ experimentation with new disciplinary regimes along with the tremendous rise in student cyber-speech – the blurring of that distinction …

Free Speech At What Cost?: Snyder V. Phelps And Speech-Based Tort Liability, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is always a hard case when fundamental interests collide, but the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Snyder v. Phelps, 580 F.3d 206 (4th Cir. 2009), cert. granted, 130 S. Ct. 1737 (2010), tilts doctrine too far in the direction of free speech, upsetting the Supreme Court’s careful weighing of interests that takes into account both the need for robust political debate and the need to protect private individuals from personal abuse. Where speech is directed at a private individual, especially one unwilling to hear but unable to escape the speaker’s message, the elements of the emotional distress claim more than …

When Is Religious Speech Outrageous?: Snyder V. Phelps And The Limits Of Religious Advocacy, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Constitution affords great protection to religiously motivated speech. Religious liberty would mean little if it did not mean the right to profess and practice as well as to believe. But are there limits beyond which religious speech loses its constitutional shield? Would it violate the First Amendment to subject a religious entity to tort liability if its religious profession causes emotional distress? When is religious speech outrageous?

These are vexing questions, to say the least; but the United States Supreme Court will take them up next term—and it will do so in a factual context that has generated as …

The Inherent Structure Of Free Speech Law, Joshua Davis, Joshua

Joshua P. Davis

To date no one has discovered a set of organizing principles for free speech doctrine, an area of the law that has been criticized as complex, ad hoc, and even incoherent. We provide a framework that distills free speech law down to three judgments: the first about the role of government; the second about the target of government regulation; and the third a constrained cost-benefit analysis. The framework can be summarized by three propositions: first, the Constitution constrains government if it regulates private speech, but not if government speaks, sponsors speech, or restricts expression in managing an internal governmental function; …