Judges Commons^™

Disinformation And The Defamation Renaissance: A Misleading Promise Of “Truth”, Lili Levi

University of Richmond Law Review

Today, defamation litigation is experiencing a renaissance, with progressives and conservatives, public officials and celebrities, corporations and high school students all heading to the courthouse to use libel lawsuits as a social and political fix. Many of these suits reflect a powerful new rhetoric—reframing the goal of defamation law as fighting disinformation. Appeals to the need to combat falsity in public discourse have fueled efforts to reverse the Supreme Court’s press–protective constitutional limits on defamation law under the New York Times v. Sullivan framework. The anti–disinformation frame could tip the scales and generate a majority on the Court to dismantle …

Rural Bashing, Kaceylee Klein, Lisa R. Pruitt

University of Richmond Law Review

Anti-rural sentiment is expressed in the United States in three major threads. The first is a narrative about the political structure of our representative democracy—an assertion that rural people are over-represented thanks to the structural features of the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College. Because rural residents are less than a fifth of the U.S. population, complaints about this situation are often framed as “minority rule.”

The second thread is related to the first: rural people and their communities get more than their fair share from federal government coffers. The argument, often expressed in terms of “subsidies,” is that rural …

Solving Slapp Slop, Nicole J. Ligon

University of Richmond Law Review

In a substantial minority of states, wealthy and powerful individuals can, without much consequence, bring defamation lawsuits against the press and concerned citizens to silence and intimidate them. These lawsuits, known as “strategic lawsuits against public participation” (“SLAPP”s), are brought not to compensate a wrongfully injured person, but rather to discourage the defendants from exercising their First Amendment rights. In other words, when well resourced individuals feel disrespected by public criticism, they sometimes sue the media or concerned citizens, forcing these speakers to defend themselves in exorbitantly expensive defamation actions. In states without anti-SLAPP statutes—statutes aimed at protecting speakers from …

Replacing Tinker, Noah C. Chauvin

University of Richmond Law Review

In this Article, I wish to question whether reaffirming the animating spirit of Tinker is the best way to protect student speech rights. In allowing schools to punish student speech that school officials reasonably believe could be substantially disruptive, Tinker founds students’ free expression rights on unstable ground. This is true for two reasons. First, the Tinker standard allows school officials to regulate student speech based on their own perceptions of what its impacts will be. While these perceptions must be reasonable, courts have shown extraordinary deference to educators’ claims that student speech could be substantially disruptive. Second, the substantial …

Religious Exemptions As Rational Social Policy, Justin W. Aimonetti, M. Christian Talley

University of Richmond Law Review

In its 1963 decision Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court interpreted the Free Exercise Clause to permit religious exemptions from general laws that incidentally burdened religious practice. Sherbert, in theory, provided stringent protections for religious freedom. But those protections came at a price. Religious adherents could secure exemptions even if they had no evidence the laws they challenged unfairly targeted their religious conduct. And they could thereby undermine the policy objectives those laws sought to achieve. Because of such policy concerns, the Court progressively restricted the availability of religious exemptions. In its 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith …

Curating Campus Speakers, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

Curation—the picking and choosing of materials for pedagogical reasons—regularly occurs on college campuses both inside and outside of the classroom. This brief essay explains that curation in two contexts. Part I discusses the curation of courses inside the classroom. Part II discusses the curation of campus speakers outside the classroom. Though applied to different topics, the process of curation is similar in both contexts. Considering both forms of curation can help illuminate and resolve some of the most important issues underlying the debate regarding controversial campus speakers.

The First Amendment And The Great College Yearbook Reckoning, Maryann Grover

University of Richmond Law Review

I advance my argument in three parts. In Part I, I discuss the law as it currently applies to student publications. I begin by briefly addressing the law as it applies to student publications in high schools as a way of demonstrating the lack of clarity in the law as it applies to student publications on college campuses. I then discuss the current state of speech regulation for student publications, including yearbooks, on college campuses. In Part II, I discuss each of the categories of unprotected speech as they are currently interpreted by the Supreme Court, and I demonstrate how …

Closed Meetings Under Foia Turn Fifty: The Old, The New, And What To Do, Tyler C. Southall

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Free Exercise And Comer: Robust Entrenchment Or Simply More Of A Muddle?, Mark Strasser

University of Richmond Law Review

Several states are barred by their own constitutions from spending public monies in support of sectarian institutions. The United States Supreme Court has manifested great ambivalence about the constitutionality of such limitations. Sometimes, the Court has impliedly endorsed them as a reasonable measure to assure that Establishment Clause guarantees are respected. At other times, the Court has suggested that such limitations are constitutionally disfavored, although the Court has not yet held that such amendments are per se unconstitutional. The Court’s most recent decision addressing state constitutional spending limitations, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, adds another layer of …

Race, Speech, And Sports, Matthew J. Parlow

University of Richmond Law Review

Race, sports, and free speech rights intersected in a very controversial and public way during the 2016 and 2017 National Football League (“NFL”) seasons. On August 26, 2016, Colin Kaepernick spurred a national debate when he refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem before the NFL preseason game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick’s team at the time.

Reconsidering Selective Conscientious Objection, Andrew J. Haile

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the United States Supreme Court decided that to qualify as a conscientious objector (“CO”) one must oppose all war, and not just a particular war. The Court’s decision in Gillette v. United States turned on its interpretation of section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act. Section 6(j) provided, in relevant part, that no person shall “be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” According to …

Playing Games With The First Amendment: Are Video Games Speech And May Minors' Access To Graphically Violent Video Games Be Restricted?, Gregory K. Laughlin

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.