Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutional Secrecy: Aligning National Security Letter Nondisclosure Provisions With First Amendment Rights, Brian D. Eyink
Constitutional Secrecy: Aligning National Security Letter Nondisclosure Provisions With First Amendment Rights, Brian D. Eyink
Duke Law Journal
First created in the 1980s, national security letters and their nondisclosure provisions evaded judicial review until 2004. These secretive investigative tools allow federal agencies such as the FBI to compel disclosure of information about hundreds of thousands of people while also allowing the same agencies to unilaterally issue gag orders that can silence the people who receive these letters. This Note examines the nondisclosure provisions in the national security letter statutes. It argues that the nondisclosure provisions are unconstitutional prior restraints on speech and content-based speech restrictions. This Note then proposes a three-part solution that constitutionally balances the government's need …
Rendering Turner Toothless: The Supreme Court’S Decision In Beard V. Banks, Jennifer N. Wimsatt
Rendering Turner Toothless: The Supreme Court’S Decision In Beard V. Banks, Jennifer N. Wimsatt
Duke Law Journal
The Supreme Court has long recognized that prisoners' constitutional rights must be balanced against the need for deference to the decisions of prison administrators when prisoners' rights are restricted incident to their incarceration. The Court, however, has never explicitly recognized a theory of proper incarceration, yet it has implicitly adopted such a theory through its decisions regarding the constitutionally permitted level of restriction on particular prisoners' rights. This Note argues that the Court's prisoners' rights jurisprudence evinces a particular definition of proper incarceration and then reads the multiple opinions in Beard v. Banks consistently with that theory.
Court-Ordered Restrictions On Trial Participant Speech, Jonathan Eric Pahl
Court-Ordered Restrictions On Trial Participant Speech, Jonathan Eric Pahl
Duke Law Journal
This Note considers court-ordered limitations on the extrajudicial speech of trial participants in high-profile cases. After providing a history of Supreme Court decisions, informative though not dispositive of the topic, it presents the divergent approaches lower courts take when faced with trial participants' extrajudicial speech. The Note highlights the extreme legal uncertainty facing trial participants who desire to speak publicly about court proceedings. Finally, it concludes that courts would better balance First Amendment and fair trial values by rejecting the reasonable likelihood of prejudice standard.