Law Commons^™

Blackness As Fighting Words, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

The resurgence of worldwide protests by activists of the Movement for Black Lives (BLM) has ushered a global reckoning with the meaning of this generation’s rallying cry – “Black Lives Matter.” As citizens emblazon their streets with this expression in massive artistic murals, the Trump administration has responded with the militarized policing of non-violent public demonstrations, revealing not merely a disregard for public safety, but far worse, a concerted dismantling of protestors’ First Amendment rights. Nevertheless, BLM protests have persisted. Accordingly, this Essay considers the implications of this generation’s acclamation of Black humanity amidst the social tensions exposed during the …

Sonograms And Speech: Informed Consent, Professional Speech, And Physicians' First Amendment Rights, Oliana Luke

Washington Law Review

Abortion is an extremely divisive topic that has caused waves of litigation. The right to access abortion has traditionally been challenged based on due process, equal protection, and privacy grounds. However, in a more recent string of cases, physicians have been challenging laws that require the physician to narrate an ultrasound before an abortion as an abridgment of their First Amendment rights. These cases require courts to balance the government’s ability to reasonably regulate a physician through professional licensing with the physician’s First Amendment protections against government-compelled speech. This Comment argues that, to balance these ideals and survive First Amendment …

Buckeyes Against The Boycott: Why Ohio's Law Opposing Bds Is Protected Under The First Amendment, Hannah Kraus

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2016, Ohio became the fourteenth state to enact legislation denouncing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. Codified as § 9.76 of the Ohio Revised Code, this legislation prohibits any state agency from contracting with a company that boycotts Israel during the contractual period. While the constitutionality of § 9.76 has not been challenged, anti-BDS statutes passed by other state legislatures have faced First Amendment challenges. This Note argues that § 9.76 of the Ohio Revised Code complies with the First Amendment under the government speech doctrine. In 1991, the Supreme Court applied the government speech doctrine in …

Death Sentence: A Compendium Against Assailment, John F. Serafine

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

Getting people to kill themselves is the oldest trick in the book. There ought to be a constitutional law against it. This Article proposes one.“Assailment” means asking, telling, or tempting a person under the age of eighteen to attempt or complete suicide. It also includes extorting or blackmailing a child into suicidal behavior. Such a law is necessary because of the skyrocketing rate of youth suicide. Death Sentence: A Compendium Against Assailment encourages lawmakers to enact an assailment statute. It further tells the stories of 41 completed youth suicides, 15 attempts, and 8 cases of suicidal ideation. The rigors of …

As Winding As The Serpentine Wall: Tennessee's Adoption Statute Under Lemon, Thomas Rader

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

This comment argues that Tenn. Code Ann. 36-1-147 is unconstitutional under both the Tennessee and U.S. Constitutions by demonstrating that the test outlined in Lemon v. Kurzman is appropriate for legislation of this kind, as it is a statute regulating a secular activity in which religious institutions participate. The Comment continues by diving into the legislative history of 36-1-147 before faithfully applying the Lemon test to the statute at hand.

Essay: The Fighting Words Doctrine: Alive And Well In The Lower Courts, David L. Hudson, Jr.

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

No abstract provided.

Alternatives To California’S Sb 27: Incentivizing The Release Of Tax Returns Without Restricting Ballot Access, Matthew Tang

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Donald Trump is the first President since 1977, and the first major- party nominee since 1980, to refuse to release any of his federal income tax returns. This break in tradition has led lawmakers in at least twenty- five states to propose legislation requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to appear on state ballots. California is one of those states. On July 30, 2017, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 27 into law, effectively barring presidential candidates who have not made available for public inspection the last five years of their income tax returns from appearing …

Government Tweets, Government Speech: The First Amendment Implications Of Government Trolling, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Seattle University Law Review

President Trump has been accused of using @realDonaldTrump to troll his critics. While the President’s tweets are often attributed to his personal views, they raise important Constitutional questions. This article posits that @realDonaldTrump tweets are government speech and, where they troll government critics, they violate the Free Speech Clause. I begin the article with an exploration of President Trump’s use of @realDonaldTrump from his time as a private citizen to President. The article then chronicles the development of the government speech doctrine and the Supreme Court’s factors that differentiate private speech from government speech. I argue that, based on the …

“Dress Coded” A Distraction And Disruption: Sex-And-Race-Based Discrimination And Speech Restriction In Public School Dress Codes, Elizabeth "Bitsy" Skerry

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The Fourth Amendment At Home, Thomas P. Crocker

Indiana Law Journal

A refuge, a domain of personal privacy, and the seat of familial life, the home holds a special place in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Supreme Court opinions are replete with statements affirming the special status of the home. Fourth Amendment text places special emphasis on securing protections for the home in addition to persons, papers, and effects against unwarranted government intrusion. Beyond the Fourth Amendment, the home has a unique place within constitutional structure. The home receives privacy protections in addition to sheltering other constitutional values protected by the Due Process Clause and the First Amendment. For example, under the Due …

"Water Is Life!" (And Speech!): Death, Dissent, And Democracy In The Borderlands, Jason A. Cade

Indiana Law Journal

Decades of stringent immigration enforcement along the Southwest border have pushed migrants into perilous desert corridors. Thousands have died in border regions, out of the general public view, yet migrants continue to attempt the dangerous crossings. In response to what they see as a growing humanitarian crisis, activists from organizations such as No More Deaths seek to expand migrant access to water, to honor the human remains of those who did not survive the journey, and to influence public opinion about border enforcement policies. Government officials, however, have employed a range of tactics to repress this border-policy "dissent," including blacklists, …

Immoral Trademarks After Brunetti, Ned Snow

Faculty Publications

For more than a century, marks that were vulgar, profane, and obscene could not receive trademark protection. In 2019, however, the Supreme Court in Iancu v. Brunetti invalidated the statutory provision that had prevented such marks from receiving protection—the bars to “immoral” and “scandalous” marks. Those bars violated the First Amendment because they enabled the government to judge whether ideas in marks were inappropriate. Similarly, two years prior to Brunetti, the Court in Matal v. Tam struck down a bar to marks that could “disparage” others. The Court reasoned that to disparage is to offend, and the ability to offend …

Legal Scholars & Theologians Partner On An Ambitious Vision For Religious Liberty, Elizabeth Reiner Platt

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Oct. 6, 2020—To safeguard the right to religious freedom, the next presidential administration must end the hyper-surveillance of Muslims, welcome religious refugees, protect land sacred to Native communities, restore church-state separation, and withdraw policies that favor particular religious beliefs, argues a new report co-authored by the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia University (LRRP) and Auburn Seminary.

The First Amendment And The Right(S) Of Publicity, Jennifer E. Rothman, Robert C. Post

All Faculty Scholarship

The right of publicity protects persons against unauthorized uses of their identity, most typically their names, images, or voices. The right is in obvious tension with freedom of speech. Yet courts seeking to reconcile the right with the First Amendment have to date produced only a notoriously confused muddle of inconsistent constitutional doctrine. In this Article, we suggest a way out of the maze. We propose a relatively straightforward framework for analyzing how the right of publicity should be squared with First Amendment principles.

At the root of contemporary constitutional confusion lies a failure to articulate the precise state interests …

Foreseeably Uncertain: The (In)Ability Of School Officials To Reasonably Foresee Substantial Disruption To The School Environment, Maggie Geren

Arkansas Law Review

“Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” While the name of this Facebook page is perhaps a bit harsh, most would hardly view it as grounds for school suspension. The very heart of the First Amendment, and indeed the notion for which our Framers drafted it, is the right of citizens to “think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.” Without this fundamental freedom—one that has persevered despite countless efforts to narrow its reach—the American people would live in constant fear of backlash and suppression for merely voicing their opinions.

Recent Developments, Peyton Hildebrand

Arkansas Law Review

The Eighth Circuit upheld preliminary injunctive relief in favor of the plaintiffs who challenged Arkansas's anti-loitering law for violating their free speech rights. Though Arkansas claimed that it would not enforce the anti-loitering statute against "'polite' and 'courteous' beggars like [plaintiffs]," because the law's plain language applied to the plaintiffs' intended activities, they had an objectively reasonable fear of prosecution.' Thus, they had a constitutional injury as required for standing.

Pandora's Cake, Mark R. Killenbeck

Arkansas Law Review

Most of us are familiar with the spectre of Pandora's Box, the "present which seems valuable, but which in reality is a curse."' Robert Graves described Pandora as "the most beautiful [woman] ever created.",2 She was sent by Zeus as a gift to Epimetheus, who initially "respectfully" declined to marry her.3 But chastened by the fate of his brother Prometheus, he changed his mind and wed a women who was "as foolish, mischievous, and idle as she was beautiful.",4 She opened a jar that she and her husband had been "warned. .. to keep closed in which"5 Prometheus had "imprison[ed …

Democracy, Deference, And Compromise: Understanding And Reforming Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Scott P. Bloomberg

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court interpreted the government’s interest in preventing corruption as being limited to preventing quid pro quo— cash-for-votes—corruption. This narrow interpretation drastically circumscribed legislatures’ abilities to regulate the financing of elections, in turn prompting scholars to propose a number of reforms for broadening the government interest in campaign finance cases. These reforms include urging the Court to recognize a new government interest such as political equality, to adopt a broader understanding of corruption, and to be more deferential to legislatures in defining corruption.

Building upon that body of scholarship, this Article begins with a descriptive …

What The Lawyers Who Sue The Press Think Of The Press, And Media Law, Jonathan Peters

Popular Media

“HAVE A SCORE TO SETTLE WITH THE PRESS? Charles Harder, the media lawyer who ground Gawker.com to dust, is your man.”

That was the subhead of a GQ profile of Harder published in 2016, after he won a $140 million jury verdict for Hulk Hogan against Gawker (later settled for $31 million). The profile went on to say that Harder had established himself “as perhaps the greatest threat in the United States to journalists, the First Amendment, and the very notion of a free press.”

Whether or not that’s true, Harder has said it would be “awesome” if the Gawker …

The First Amendment And Data Privacy: Securing Data Privacy Laws That Withstand Constitutional Muster, Kathryn Peyton

Pepperdine Law Review

Given the growing ubiquity of digital technology’s presence in people’s lives today, it is becoming increasingly more necessary to secure data privacy protections. People interact with technology constantly, ranging from when engaging in business activates, such as corresponding through emails or doing research online, to more innocuous activities like driving, shopping, or talking with friends and family. The advances in technology have made possible the creation of digital trails whenever someone interacts with such technology. Companies aggregate data from data trails and use predictive analytics to create detailed profiles about citizen-consumers. This information is typically used for profit generating purposes. …

Policing The Wombs Of The World's Women: The Mexico City Policy, Samantha Lalisan

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment argues that the Policy should be repealed because it undermines

firmly held First Amendment values and would be considered unconstitutional if

applied to domestic nongovernmental organizations (DNGOs). It proceeds in four

parts. Part I describes the inception of the Policy and contextualizes it among other

antiabortion policies that resulted as a backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s

landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. Part II explains the Policy’s actual effect on

FNGOs, particularly focusing on organizations based in Nepal and Peru, and argues

that the Policy undermines democratic processes abroad and fails to achieve its stated

objective: reducing …

Signed Opinions, Concurrences, Dissents, And Vote Counts In The U.S. Supreme Court: Boon Or Bane? (A Response To Professors Penrose And Sherry), Joan Steinman

Akron Law Review

Some commentators recently have argued for changes in how United States Supreme Court Justices communicate with everyone except perhaps other Justices of the Supreme Court and the Justices' assistants. Specifically, some commentators have urged that signed opinions and separate opinions, such as concurrences and dissents, stop being published in the official reports. One commentator also has advocated non‑publication of the vote count in Supreme Court decisions. Another has demanded unanimity, as required by due process.

In this piece, I offer my thoughts in response to these proposals.

I argue several reasons to doubt that a prohibition on publication of concurring …

Contracts And The Constitution In Conflict: Why Judicial Deference To Religious Upbringing Clauses Infringes On The First Amendment, Elica Zadeh

Pepperdine Law Review

When a Hasidic person files for divorce under New York law, either party to the marriage may invoke a declaratory judgment action to establish certain rights in a settlement agreement. If children are involved, such an agreement may include a religious upbringing clause, dictating that the child is to be raised in accordance with their then-existing religion—Hasidism. Deviation from the contract risks removal from the aberrant parent who intentionally or unwittingly allows the child to wane into secularism. Although the child’s best interest is the cornerstone of custodial analysis, a problem emerges when his or her best interest is couched …

Compelled Speech And The Irrelevance Of Controversy, Seana Valentine Shiffrin

Pepperdine Law Review

NIFLA v. Becerra stealthily introduced a new First Amendment test for compelled speech that has injected chaos into the law of compelled disclosures. NIFLA reinterpreted the requirement that compelled disclosures contain only “purely factual and uncontroversial information” in a way that imbued independent force into the “uncontroversial” component of that test. Yet, the Court failed to supply criteria for what sort of purely factual information would fail to qualify as “uncontroversial information” and identified no important free speech concerns that this new prong protects. This Article distinguishes seven different interpretations of “uncontroversial information.” It then assesses them to ascertain whether …

Time, Place, And Manner Restrictions On Speech, R. George Wright

Northern Illinois University Law Review

The category of time, place, and manner restrictions on speech, as supposedly distinct from absolute bans, appears to be central to free speech law. Even a modest examination of the case law, however, suggests the arbitrariness of any such distinction. Any familiar time, place, or manner restriction on speech can be reasonably re-described as an absolute ban on speech, and vice versa. Any differences in how the relevant regulations of speech should be judicially tested, whether by differing degrees of rigor or otherwise, are correspondingly arbitrary. This Article recommends abandoning any attempt to substantively distinguish between time, place, and manner …

Disappearing Act: Are Free Speech Rights Decreasing?, Michael Conklin

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Review Law: New York Defamation Applied To Online Consumer Reviews, Ian Lewis-Slammon

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In early July 2017, Michelle Levine booked her first and only appointment with gynecologist Dr. Joon Song for an annual exam. Ms. Levine had a dissatisfying experience with the office. She claims that Dr. Song’s office did not follow up with her for almost a month, and that when she called to ask about the results of a blood test, Dr. Song’s staff falsely informed her that she tested positive for herpes. To top it off, Ms. Levine alleges that the office overcharged her. Following this experience, Ms. Levine did what many others do when dissatisfied with a product …

The Copyright Act’S Mandatory-Deposit Requirement: Unnecessary And Unconstitutional, Drew Thornley

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Many people are unaware of a federal copyright statute that requires owners of material published in the United States to furnish the federal government with two copies of each item published. Section 407(a) of the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 407) states that “the owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of publication in a work published in the United States shall deposit, within three months after the date of such publication—(1) two complete copies of the best edition; or (2) if the work is a sound recording, two complete phonorecords of the best edition, together with …

Private Schools' Role And Rights In Setting Vaccination Policy: A Constitutional And Statutory Puzzle, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

Measles and other vaccine-preventable childhood diseases are making a comeback, as a growing number of parents are electing not to vaccinate their children. May private schools refuse admission to these students? This deceptively simple question raises complex issues of First Amendment law and statutory interpretation, and it also has implications for other current hot-button issues in constitutional law, including whether private schools may discriminate against LGBTQ students. This Article is the first to address the issue of private schools’ rights to exclude unvaccinated children. It finds that the answer is “it depends.” It also offers a model law that states …

The Wrong Choice To Address School Choice: Espinoza V. Montana Department Of Revenue, Brooke Reczka

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

For many school-choice advocates, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue is the chance to extend the Supreme Court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer in 2017. In Trinity Lutheran, the Supreme Court held that a state’s exclusion of a church from a public benefit program to resurface playgrounds discriminated against religion in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. Many school-choice proponents hope to extend the Trinity Lutheran holding from playgrounds materials to school funding and thus strike down religion-based exclusions in school voucher programs. However, Espinoza is the wrong vehicle to do so. In …