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Threading The First Amendment Needle: Anonymous Speech, Online Harassment, And Washington's Cyberstalking Statute, Sarah E. Smith
Threading The First Amendment Needle: Anonymous Speech, Online Harassment, And Washington's Cyberstalking Statute, Sarah E. Smith
Washington Law Review
This Comment examines the constitutionality of Washington’s cyberstalking statute, RCW 9.61.260, and its treatment of anonymous online speech. While the statute was drafted to ensure that women are free from domestic and gender-based violence, the statute as currently written and enforced infringes on the constitutionally protected right to free speech. There has only been one action, Moriwaki v. Rynearson, enforcing the provision of the statute related to anonymous speech. The court ultimately overturned the stalking protection order, which the plaintiff brought to halt political speech, on First Amendment grounds. While the Moriwaki court concluded that the stalking protection order …
Exposing Secret Searches: A First Amendment Right Of Access To Electronic Surveillance Orders, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Exposing Secret Searches: A First Amendment Right Of Access To Electronic Surveillance Orders, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Washington Law Review
Although, as a rule, court proceedings and judicial records are presumptively open to the public, electronic surveillance documents are exceptions. Like ordinary search warrants, surveillance applications are considered ex parte. But court orders frequently remain sealed indefinitely, even when there is no basis for continued secrecy. Indeed, secrecy—in the form of gag orders, local judicial rules, and even clerical filing and docketing practices—is built into the laws that regulate electronic surveillance. This Article argues that this widespread secrecy violates the First Amendment right of access to court proceedings and documents. The history of search and seizure shows that, far from …
Snake Oil Speech, Jane R. Bambauer
Snake Oil Speech, Jane R. Bambauer
Washington Law Review
Snake oil is dangerous only by way of the claims that are made about its healing powers. It is a speech problem, and its remedy involves speech restrictions. But First Amendment doctrine has struggled to find equilibrium in the balance between free speech and the reduction of junk science. Regulation requires the government to take an authoritative position about which factual claims are “true” and “false,” which is anathema to open inquiry. As a result, free speech jurisprudence overprotects factual claims made in public discourse out of respect for any remote possibility that the scientific consensus might be wrong but …
Privacy, Press, And The Right To Be Forgotten In The United States, Amy Gajda
Privacy, Press, And The Right To Be Forgotten In The United States, Amy Gajda
Washington Law Review
When the European Court of Justice in effect accepted a Right to Be Forgotten in 2014, ruling that a man had a right to privacy in his past economic troubles, many suggested that a similar right would be neither welcomed nor constitutional in the United States given the Right’s impact on First Amendment-related freedoms. Even so, a number of state and federal courts have recently used language that embraces in a normative sense the appropriateness of such a Right. These court decisions protect an individual’s personal history in a press-relevant way: they balance individual privacy rights against the public value …