Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Public Library As A Public Forum: The (De)Evolution Of A Legal Doctrine, John N. Gathegi

School of Information Faculty Publications

When dealing with First Amendment free speech issues in the context of public libraries, courts have merely cited the supposition that constitutional public forum analysis leads to the conclusion that the public library is a limited public forum for the purposes of First Amendment analysis. By focusing narrowly on the issue of whether Internet access in libraries constitutes a public forum, and determining that it does not, the U.S. Supreme Court not only misses an opportunity to refine the concept of the public forum in modern-day terms but also somehow implies that public library activities are different from other speech …