Law Commons^™

Promoting Inclusion Through Exclusion: Higher Education's Assault On The First Amendment, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

To obtain a meaningful educational experience and achieve the benefits of a diverse student body, students should confront beliefs they find abhorrent and discuss topics that bring discomfort. As it stands now, universities are transforming classrooms and campuses into sanctuaries for the over-sensitive and shelters for the easily-offended. In so doing, higher education is embracing a new, and bizarre, form of homogeneity that subtly coerces faculty members and students into restricting, not expressing, their views, and creating a climate that favors less, not more, expressive conduct. This approach undermines First Amendment values and further divorces higher education from the real …

Can A One Star Review Get You Sued? The Right To Anonymous Speech On The Internet And The Future Of Internet “Unmasking” Statutes, Jesse D. Lively

Jesse D Lively

This Comment argues that the Supreme Court of Virginia should first reverse the Virginia Court of Appeal’s decision when it hears the Yelp case later this year. Secondly, the court hold that the Virginia statute for identifying persons communicating anonymously over the Internet violates the First Amendment's required showing of merit on both law and facts before a subpoena duces tecum to identify an anonymous speaker can be enforced. Lastly, it should adopt a new “unveiling standard” similar to the standards used in either Dendrite or Cahill. Part II examines the jurisprudential history of identifying anonymous Internet speakers in defamation …

The Case For Defamatory Opinion, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The law should not allow revenge porn in the name of the First Amendment, just as it should not allow private citizens to purchase AK-47’s in the name of the Second Amendment. Citizens can abuse fundamental rights just as governments can infringe them. At some point, courts have to acknowledge that the First Amendment was not intended to give people a fundamental right to trash an individual’s reputation while seeking cover under the self-serving blanket of opinion and taste. It is one thing to stroll into a courthouse with a shirt that says Fuck the Draft, but quite another to …

The Case For Defamatory Opinion, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The law should not allow revenge porn in the name of the First Amendment, just as it should not allow private citizens to purchase AK-47’s in the name of the Second Amendment. Citizens can abuse fundamental rights just as governments can infringe them. At some point, courts have to acknowledge that the First Amendment was not intended to give people a fundamental right to trash an individual’s reputation while seeking cover under the self-serving blanket of opinion and taste. It is one thing to stroll into a courthouse with a shirt that says Fuck the Draft, but quite another to …

The Internet Is The New Public Forum: Why Riley V. California Supports Net Neutrality, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Technology has ushered civil liberties into the virtual world, and the law must adapt by providing legal protections to individuals who speak, assemble, and associate in that world. The original purposes of the First Amendment, which from time immemorial have protected civil liberties and preserved the free, open, and robust exchange of information, support net neutrality. After all, laws or practices that violate cherished freedoms in the physical world also violate those freedoms in the virtual world. The battle over net neutrality is “is absolutely the First Amendment issue of our time,” just as warrantless searches of cell phones were …

When Art Becomes Free: On Artistic In-Expression & Personal Convictions, Amir H. Khoury

Amir Khoury

In this paper I argue that just as there are moral rights in copyright law, which secure attribution and integrity, so too, there should be 'inverse' moral rights that can protect artists from being impelled or compelled to create in the first place. This research comes against the backdrop of one of the most contentious issues in the Western world today, that pertaining to same-sex marriage. But the discussion applies to all other fields where creativity finds itself in a battle over personal convictions. In my view, the inverse moral rights construct is the true reflection of the extent of …

Lost In The Compromise: Free Speech, Criminal Justice, And Attorney Pretrial Publicity, Margaret Tarkington

Margaret C Tarkington

Publicity by the prosecution and defense in the criminal proceedings against George Zimmerman again raised the question of the appropriate scope of First Amendment protection for attorney pretrial publicity. The Supreme Court, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and many scholars have viewed restrictions on attorney pretrial publicity as a compromise between the constitutional guarantees of free speech and a fair trial. Nevertheless, scholars advocate widely divergent levels of free speech protection for attorney pretrial publicity—ranging from core free speech protection to extremely limited protection. Traditional First Amendment doctrines fail to elucidate the proper scope of free speech rights for …

Visual Gut Punch: Persuasion, Emotion, And The Constitutional Meaning Of Graphic Disclosure, Ellen P. Goodman

ellen p. goodman

The ability of government to “nudge” with information mandates, or merely to inform consumers of risks, is circumscribed by First Amendment interests that have been poorly articulated in the relevant law and commentary. New graphic cigarette warning labels supplied courts with the first opportunity to assess the informational interests attending novel forms of product disclosures. The D.C. Circuit enjoined them as unconstitutional, compelled by a narrative that the graphic labels converted government from objective informer to ideological persuader, shouting its warning to manipulate consumer decisions. This interpretation will leave little room for graphic disclosure and is already being used to …

Sex Is Less Offensive Than Violence: A Call To Update Obscenity Jurisprudence, Rachel Simon

Rachel Simon

This article addresses the gender bias presented by the disparate treatment of sex and violence under current obscenity jurisprudence. Under the controlling standard set forth by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, sexual works may readily be regulated as obscenity, while violent works unequivocally may not. This article posits that this disparate treatment is the product of entrenched stereotypes about the way men and women “should” react to sex and violence, and notes the hypocrisy of failing to apply the same reasoning to assessments of violent versus sexual material.

First, reliance on “community standards” to define what material …