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Creating The Public Forum, Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

The public forum doctrine protects a right of access - “First Amendment easements” - to streets and parks and other traditional places for public expression. It is well known that the doctrine was articulated by the Supreme Court in a series of cases in the 1930s and 1940s. Lesser known are the historical circumstances that surrounded its creation. Critics believed that in a modern world where the mass media dominated public discourse - where the soap box orator and pamphleteer had been replaced by the radio and mass circulation newspaper - mass communications had undermined the possibility of widespread participation …