Law Commons^™

Ada And The Internet: Standardizing The Accessibility Of Web Sites, Laura Corcoran

Laura Corcoran

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently considering what standards should be applied to commercial web sites to make online information and services accessible to people with disabilities. Should the overall performance of a website be the measuring standard, or would compliance with technical rules be a sufficient measure of web accessibility?

There are dangers in adopting technical standards in DOJ regulations. The process of updating regulations is slow and will not keep pace with changing technology. Accessibility issues involving detailed technical standards would likely deteriorate into battles about computer programming techniques. Compliance with technical standards does not necessarily guarantee …

Cultural Cognition As A Tool To Combat The Compelled-Commercial-Speech Conundrum, Dayna B. Royal

Dayna B. Royal

In the last decade the Supreme Court has modified the compelled-speech and commercial-speech doctrines by creating a hybrid of the two—compelled-commercial speech. This nascent doctrine leaves unanswered serious questions about how it coexists with other doctrines in the First Amendment landscape. This paper proposes a principled means to resolve these questions by drawing on an innovative behavioral-science theory called Cultural Cognition to provide a system for categorizing forced commercial-speech regulations. By establishing which test applies to determine whether regulations violate the First Amendment, this framework should help bring consistency and predictability into a murky area of First Amendment law.

William H. Sorrell, Attorney General Of Vermont, Et Al. V. Ims Health Inc., Et Al. - Amicus Brief In Support Of Petitioners, Kevin Outterson, David Orentlicher, Christopher T. Robertson, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

On April 26, 2011, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Vermont data mining case, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. Respondents claim this is the most important commercial speech case in a decade. Petitioner (the State of Vermont) argues this is the most important medical privacy case since Whalen v. Roe.

The is an amicus brief supporting Vermont, written by law professors and submitted on behalf of the New England Journal of Medicine

Can Speech By Fda-Regulated Firms Ever Be Noncommercial?, Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article considers whether speech by pharmaceutical, medical device, and other FDA-regulated companies can ever be noncommercial and thus subject to heightened protection under the First Amendment. Since the U.S. Supreme Court first recognized a right to commercial speech in 1976, there have been 24 published federal judicial opinions in which an FDA-regulated firm has argued that its speech was protected. Courts have categorized the speech as commercial in all but two cases, neither of which involved FDA rules or enforcement.

I examine the tests and factors courts claim they use when making this threshold distinction, then identify the various …