Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

The New Gender Panic In Sport: Why State Laws Banning Transgender Athletes Are Unconstitutional, Deborah Brake

Articles

The scope and pace of legislative activity targeting transgender individuals is nothing short of a gender panic. From restrictions on medical care to the regulation of library books and the use of pronouns in schools, attacks on the transgender community have reached crisis proportions. A growing number of families with transgender children are being forced to leave their states of residence to keep their children healthy and their families safe and intact. The breadth and pace of these developments is striking. Although the anti-transgender backlash now extends broadly into health and family governance, sport was one of the first settings—the …

Introduction: The Arc Of Race In Professional And Collegiate Sports Symposium, Kenneth D. Ferguson

Faculty Works

This introduction will highlight the five articles featured in the symposium issue of the UMKC Law Review and will also situate those articles in the Sports Law Symposium titled, The Arc of Race in Professional and Collegiate Sports. The goal of the two-day virtual symposium was to bring together leading legal, social science, and medical science scholars to engage in discourse concerning how race and gender have affected and continue to influence decision making in professional and collegiate sports. The symposium exposed how race, culture, ethnicity, and gender affect a wide range of phenomena in scientific fields such as neuropsychological …

Title Ix's Trans Panic, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

Sport is an agent of social change, but that change does not always track in a progressive direction. Sport can be a site for contesting and reversing the gains of progressive social movements as much as furthering the values of equality and justice for historically marginalized groups. This dynamic of contestation and reversal is now playing out in a new wave of anti-transgender backlash that has gained adherents among some proponents of equal athletic opportunities for girls and women. In this latest twist in the debate over who deserves the opportunity to compete, the sex-separate athletic programming permitted by Title …

Hip Hop And The Law : Presented By Intellectual Property Law Association 03/31/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Life And Death Of Confederate Monuments, Jessica Owley, Jess Phelps

Articles

Confederate monuments have again received increased attention in the aftermath of George Floyd's tragic death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. Momentum and shifting public opinion are working toward the removal of these problematic monuments across the country. This Article seeks to provide insight for monument-removal advocates: specifically focusing on the legal issues associated with the "death" or removal of these monuments, how property law shapes and defines these efforts, and briefly examining what happens to these statues after removal. Our exploration of Confederate monuments reveals that some removal efforts occur outside of legally created processes. Both public and …

Indecency Regulation Of The Fcc And Censorship Law In Republic Korea: Comparison And Contrasts, Min-Soo "Minee" Roh

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

Regulating music on radio or television is not a straightforward process, as the music is comprised of lyrics of words. On top of the lyrics, any music performance has an additional layer of choreography and dress code. If any individual elements or combined elements is obscene or indecent, the government attempts to regulate broadcasting both music and performance. This leads to regulating general speech on communications and it requires this paper to look into regulation of broadcasting in general and specific examples of music broadcasting regulation on radio and television, particularly, in the United States (“States”) and in Republic of …

Rwu First Amendement Blog: Jared Goldstein's Blog: The First Amendment And The Foxy Lady 01-08-2019, Jared A. Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Sports Betting, Federalism And The Constitution, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has described federalism - how the Constitution divides powers between the federal government and the states - as "perhaps our oldest question of constitutional law."

This past week, the United States Supreme Court returned to this oldest of constitutional questions to strike down a federal law that had prohibited stats from authorizing betting on competitive sporting events.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Intellectual Property Law Professors, Mark Mckenna, Rebecca Tushnet, Yvette Joy Liebesman, John A. Conway

Court Briefs

Untethered to a sufficient public policy interest, right of publicity claims have exploded nationwide. Plaintiffs have asserted claims against inspirational plaques featuring civil rights icons, Rosa and Raymond Parks Inst. for Self Dev. v. Target Corp., 812 F.3d 824 (11th Cir. 2016),artwork commemorating significant events, Moore v. Weinstein Co., LLC, 545 Fed. App’x. 405 , 407 (6th Cir. 2013); ETW Corp. v. Jireh Publ’g, Inc., 332 F.3d 915 (6th Cir. 2003), Wikipedia edits that truthfully connected an astronaut with the watch he wore on his Moon walk, Scott v. Citizen Watch Co. of Am., Inc., 17-CV-00436-NC, 2018 WL 1626773 (N.D. …

Sharing Stupid $H*T With Friends And Followers: The First Amendment Rights Of College Athletes To Use Social Media, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

This paper takes a closer look at the First Amendment rights of college athletes to access social media while simultaneously participating in intercollegiate athletics. The question posed is quite simple: can a coach or athletic department at a public university legally restrict a student-athlete's use of social media? If so, does the First Amendment provide any restraints on the type or length of restrictions that can be imposed? Thus far, neither question has been presented to a court for resolution. However, the answers are vital, as college coaches and athletic directors seek to regulate their athletes in a constitutional manner.

Tinkering With Success: College Athletes, Social Media And The First Amendment, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

Good law does not always make good policy. This article seeks to provide a legal assessment, not a policy directive. The policy choices made by individual institutions and athletic departments should be guided by law, but absolutely left to institutional discretion. Many articles written on college student-athletes' social media usage attempt to urge policy directives clothed in constitutional analysis.

In this author's opinion, these articles have lost perspective-constitutional perspective. This article seeks primarily to provide a legal and constitutional assessment so that schools and their athletic departments will have ample information to then make their own policy choices.

Wrestling With Gender: Constructing Masculinity By Refusing To Wrestle Women, Deborah Brake

Articles

In February of 2011, an Iowa high school boy captured national attention when he refused to wrestle a girl at the state championship meet. The media shaped the story into a tale that honored the boy for sacrificing personal gain out of a moral imperative to “never hurt a girl.” Unpacking this incident reveals several “fault lines” in U.S. culture that often derail gender equality projects: (1) religion/morality is interposed as an oppositional and equally weighty social value that neutralizes an equality claim; (2) the agency of persons supporting traditional gender norms is assumed, while the agency of persons contesting …

The Dialectic Of Obscenity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Until the 1960s, pornography was obscene, and obscenity prosecutions were relatively common. And until the 1970s, obscenity prosecutions targeted art, as well as pornography. But today, obscenity prosecutions are rare and limited to the most extreme forms of pornography.

So why did obscenity largely disappear? The conventional history of obscenity is doctrinal, holding that the Supreme Court’s redefinition of obscenity in order to protect art inevitably required the protection of pornography as well. In other words, art and literature were the vanguard of pornography.

But the conventional history of obscenity is incomplete. While it accounts for the development of obscenity …

Scary Monsters: Hybrids, Mashups, And Other Illegitimate Children, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Human creativity, like human reproduction, always makes new out of old in ways that copyright law has not fully recognized. The genre of vidding, a type of remix made mostly by women, demonstrates how creativity can be disruptive, and how that disruptiveness is often tied to ideas about sex and gender. The most frightening of our modern creations—the Frankenstein’s monsters that seem most appropriative and uncanny in light of old copyright doctrine—are good indicators of what our next generation of creativity may look like, especially if creators’ diversity in gender, race, and economic background is taken into account.

The Story Of Us: Resolving The Face-Off Between Autobiographical Speech And Information Privacy, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

Increasingly more “ordinary” Americans are choosing to share their life experiences with a public audience. In doing so, however, they are revealing more than their own personal stories, they are exposing private information about others as well. The face-off between autobiographical speech and information privacy is coming to a head, and our legal system is not prepared to handle it.

In a prior article, I established that autobiographical speech is a unique and important category of speech that is at risk of being undervalued under current law. This article builds on my earlier work by addressing the emerging conflict between …

A 'Ho New World: Raced And Gendered Insult As Ersatz Carnival And The Corruption Of Freedom Of Expression Norms, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

Carnivalization, a concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and later employed in broad social and cultural contexts, is the tearing down of social norms, the elimination of boundaries, and the inversion of established hierarchies. It is the world turned upside down. Ersatz carnival is a pernicious, inverted form of carnival, one wherein counter-discourses propounded by outsiders are appropriated by elites and frequently redeployed to silence and exclude those same outsiders. The use of the slur "'ho" by gangsta' rappers in the performance of songs that articulate a vision of urban culture is an example of carnivalization. Thus, when words …

Frozen In Time: The State Action Doctrine's Application To Amateur Sports, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

The state action doctrine has as its central goal the preservation of liberty by limiting the intrusion of the government into the "private" sphere. It achieves this by applying the Constitution only to government, and not private, action. Traditionally, amateur sports regulators such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) have been viewed by courts as private. As a result, this article explains that courts generally give great deference to amateur sports organizations such as the NCAA and USOC to regulate sports with little judicial interference, including in the area of constitutional litigation. …

How The United States Government Sacrifices Athletes' Constitutional Rights In The Pursuit Of National Prestige, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about the United States Government trading off athletes' constitutional rights in the pursuit of national prestige through sport. The Olympic Movement has for decades provided an incentive for governments of all ideologies to use elite athletes to enhance national prestige or demonstrate national supremacy. This phenomenon is commonly known as "sportive nationalism." Unlike countries such as the former East Germany and Soviet Union, the United States Government has not readily acknowledged its own practice of sportive nationalism, preferring instead to assert that Olympic Movement sport in the United States is a private endeavor. This Article, however, demonstrates …

Art As Speech, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does The Constitution Apply To The Actions Of The United States Anti-Doping Agency?, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

Since its formation in 2000, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has aggressively pursued athletes who are believed to have used performance-enhancing substances and has aggressively prosecuted those who ultimately test positive. To many, this is a long overdue response to the growing problem of doping in sports. But to others, USADA's actions, and the federal government's support of these efforts, has sparked enormous controversy. This article examines USADA and its relationship to the federal government to determine whether USADA's actions could be constrained by the Constitution. While it is clear that USADA has very close ties to the federal …

Balancing As Art: Justice White And The Separation Of Powers, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

In more than one key opinion, Justice Byron White cited Justice Robert H. Jackson's concept of the "art of governing" as the cornerstone of his own approach to separation-of-powers problems.' In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Justice Jackson had written:

The actual art of governing under our Constitution does not and cannot conform to judicial definitions of the power of any of its branches based on isolated clauses or even single Articles torn from context. While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable …

Antidiscrimination Laws & Artistic Expression, Steven H. Shiffrin, Gregory R. Smith

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Mandatory Hiv Testing Of Professional Boxers: An Unconstitutional Effort To Regulate A Sport That Needs To Be Regulated, Raymond C. O'Brien, Michael T. Flannery

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Sex As A Suspect Class: An Argument For Applying Strict Scrutiny To Gender Discrimination, Deborah Brake

Articles

In United States v. Commonwealth of Virginia' ("VMI"), the Supreme Court has a landmark opportunity to revisit the legal standard courts should use to review classifications which treat men and women differently. The VMI case involves an equal protection challenge to the state's exclusion of women from VMI and its establishment of an alternative, sex-stereotyped women's leadership program as a remedy to that exclusion. The United States, which brought the case against VMI, has asked the Supreme Court to rule that sex-based classifications, like classifications based on race, must be subjected to the highest level of constitutional scrutiny, or "strict …

James Madison And Public Choice At Gucci Gulch: A Procedural Defense Of Tax Expenditures And Tax Institutions, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

Few academic doctrines can claim the intellectual and political success of tax expenditure analysis. In roughly a generation's time, Professor Surrey's procedural and substantive critique of tax subsidies has become entrenched in the law school curriculum and in legal scholarship. More impressively, the tax expenditure concept has been enshrined in federal law and become part of the daily discourse of the national budget process.

Random Drug Testing Of Student Athletes By State Universities In The Wake Of Von Raab And Skinner, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

This article will focus on the particularly complicated question of the legality of drug testing at state universities. State universities comprise a significant number of the universities involved in intercollegiate athletics at the major conference level. The state university at the same time is a branch of the state and operates under color of state law. As such, its actions fall under the additional scrutiny of the constitutional principles contained in, and incorporated through, the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. In examining the legal significance of drug testing of student-athletes at a state university, this article will closely …

Law, Literature, And The Celebration Of Authority, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Richard Posner's new book, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation, is a defense of “liberal legalism” against a group of modern critics who have only one thing in common: their use of either particular pieces of literature or literary theory to mount legal critiques. Perhaps for that reason, it is very hard to discern a unified thesis within Posner's book regarding the relationship between law and literature. In part, Posner is complaining about a pollution of literature by its use and abuse in political and legal argument; thus, the “misunderstood relation” to which the title refers. At times, Posner suggests …

Communities, Texts, And Law: Reflections On The Law And Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

How do we form communities? How might we form better ones? What is the role of law in that process? In a recent series of books and articles, James Boyd White, arguably the modern law and literature movement's founder, has put forward distinctively literary answers to these questions. Perhaps because of the fluidity of the humanities, White's account of the nature of community is not nearly as axiomatic to the law and literature movement as is Posner's depiction of the "individual" to legal economists. Nevertheless, White's conception is increasingly representative of the literary-legalist's world view. Furthermore, with the exception of …

The Right To Speak, The Right To Hear, And The Right Not To Hear: The Technological Resolution To The Cable/Pornography Debate, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

The advent of cable television presented a new opportunity to consider the competing interests on each side of the free speech/pornography debate. This Article attempts to construct an analysis that will be consistent with Supreme Court teaching on how government, under the first amendment, may constitutionally regulate legal obscenity, particularly in the name of protecting those who wish to avoid exposure to such material.

The Article shows how, unlike earlier battles over technology and pornography, cable television presented the novel opportunity to have a technological rather than a censorial solution to this difficult problem.

Adjudication Is Not Interpretation: Some Reservations About The Law-As-Literature Movement, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among other achievements, the modern law-as-literature movement has prompted increasing numbers of legal scholars to embrace the claim that adjudication is interpretation, and more specifically, that constitutional adjudication is interpretation of the Constitution. That adjudication is interpretation -- that an adjudicative act is an interpretive act -- more than any other central commitment, unifies the otherwise diverse strands of the legal and constitutional theory of the late twentieth century.

In this article, I will argue in this article against both modern forms of interpretivism. The analogue of law to literature, on which much of modern interpretivism is based, although fruitful, …