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Articles 1 - 30 of 107
Full-Text Articles in Law
Disinformation And The Defamation Renaissance: A Misleading Promise Of “Truth”, Lili Levi
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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 …
The Invention Of First Amendment Federalism, Jud Campbell
The Invention Of First Amendment Federalism, Jud Campbell
Law Faculty Publications
When insisting that the Sedition Act of 1798 violated the First Amendment, Jeffersonian Republicans cast their argument in historical terms, claiming that the Speech and Press Clauses eliminated any federal power to restrict expression. Scholars, in turn, have generally accepted that Republicans had a consistent understanding of the First Amendment throughout the 1790s. But Founding Era constitutionalism was dynamic in practice, even while often conservative in rhetoric, and scholars have missed the striking novelty of the principal argument against the Sedition Act. Republicans had taken a rights provision and transformed it into a federalism rule.
Mostly ignored in the literature, …
Compelled Subsidies And Original Meaning, Jud Campbell
Compelled Subsidies And Original Meaning, Jud Campbell
Law Faculty Publications
The rule against compelled subsidization of speech is at the forefront of modem First Amendment disputes. Challenges to mandatory union dues, laws preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the federal "contraceptive mandate" have all featured variants of the anti-subsidization principle, reasoning that the government cannot compel people to support the objectionable activities of others. But the literature currently fails to evaluate modem compelled-subsidy doctrine in terms of the original meaning of the First Amendment. This Essay takes up that task.
Approaching any question of original meaning requires a willingness to encounter a constitutional world that looks very …
Closed Meetings Under Foia Turn Fifty: The Old, The New, And What To Do, Tyler C. Southall
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
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
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
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 …
Is It Bad Law To Believe A Politician? Campaign Speech And Discriminatory Intent, Shawn E. Fields
Is It Bad Law To Believe A Politician? Campaign Speech And Discriminatory Intent, Shawn E. Fields
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
What Did The First Amendment Originally Mean?, Jud Campbell
What Did The First Amendment Originally Mean?, Jud Campbell
Law Faculty Publications
The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” For Americans, this language is familiar. But what exactly does it mean? How far do the speech and press clauses restrict governmental power? The founders, as we will see, answered these questions very differently than we typically do today. And the reasons why highlight fundamental shifts in American constitutional thought.
Natural Rights And The First Amendment, Jud Campbell
Natural Rights And The First Amendment, Jud Campbell
Law Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court often claims that the First Amendment reflects an original judgment about the proper scope of expressive freedom. After a century of academic debate, however, the meanings of speech and press freedoms at the Founding remain remarkably hazy. Many scholars, often pointing to Founding Era sedition prosecutions, emphasize the limited scope of these rights. Others focus on the libertarian ideas that helped shape opposition to the Sedition Act of 1798. Still more claim that speech and press freedoms lacked any commonly accepted meaning. The relationship between speech and press freedoms is contested, too. Most scholars view these freedoms …
Indecency Four Years After Fox Television Stations: From Big Papi To A Porn Star, An Egregious Mess At The Fcc Continues, Clay Calvert, Minch Minchin, Keran Billaud, Kevin Bruckenstein, Tershone Phillips
Indecency Four Years After Fox Television Stations: From Big Papi To A Porn Star, An Egregious Mess At The Fcc Continues, Clay Calvert, Minch Minchin, Keran Billaud, Kevin Bruckenstein, Tershone Phillips
University of Richmond Law Review
Using the WDBJ case as an analytical springboard, this article examines the tumultuous state of the FCC's indecency enforcement regime more than three years after the Supreme Court's June 2012 opinion in Fox Television Stations. Part I of this article briefly explores the missed First Amendment opportunities in Fox Television Stations, as well as some possible reasons why the Supreme Court chose to avoid the free-speech questions in that case." Part II addresses the FCC's decision in September 2012 to target only egregious instances of broadcast indecency and, in the process, to jettison hundreds of thousands of complaints that had …
This Is Just Not Working For Us: Why After Ten Years On The Job- It Is Time To Fire Garcetti, Jason Zenor
This Is Just Not Working For Us: Why After Ten Years On The Job- It Is Time To Fire Garcetti, Jason Zenor
Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest
In Lane v. Franks, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public employees who give truthful testimony in court are protected so long as it was outside their ordinary job duties. This issue arose after ten years of the Garcetti rule which does not protect employee speech pursuant to their job duties- a nebulous topic in the digital era. In applying Garcetti, lower courts have extended it to include any speech that is a product of job duties, even if it would serve the public interest. In Lane v. Franks, the Court amended the employee speech doctrine to protect …
This Is Just Not Working For Us: Why After Ten Years On The Job It Is Time To Fire Garcetti, Jason Zenor
This Is Just Not Working For Us: Why After Ten Years On The Job It Is Time To Fire Garcetti, Jason Zenor
Richmond Public Interest Law Review
In Lane v. Franks, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public employees who give truthful testimony in court are protected so long as it was outside their ordinary job duties. This issue arose after ten years of the Garcetti rule which does not protect employee speech pursuant to their job duties- a nebulous topic in the digital era. In applying Garcetti, lower courts have extended it to include any speech that is a product of job duties, even if it would serve the public interest. In Lane v. Franks, the Court amended the employee speech doctrine to protect …
Speech-Facilitating Conduct, Jud Campbell
Speech-Facilitating Conduct, Jud Campbell
Law Faculty Publications
Free speech doctrine generally protects only expression, leaving regulations of nonexpressive conduct beyond the First Amendment’s scope. Yet the Supreme Court has recognized that abridgments of the freedom of speech “may operate at different points in the speech process.” This notion of protection for nonexpressive conduct that facilitates speech touches on many of the most contentious issues in First Amendment law— restrictions on photography and audiovisual recording, limits on campaign contributions, putative newsgathering privileges for journalists, compelled subsidization of speech, and associational rights, to name just a few. Scholars, however, have generally approached these topics in isolation, typically focusing on …
Content-Based Confusion And Panhandling: Muddling A Weathered First Amendment Doctrine Takes Its Toll On Society's Less Fortunate, Clay Calvert
Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest
This article examines multiple problems now plaguing the fundamental dichotomy in First Amendment jurisprudence between content-based and content-neutral regulations of speech. The troubles were highlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 divided decision in McCullen v. Coakley. Building from McCullen, this article uses a quartet of federal court rulings from 2014 and 2013 involving anti-begging ordinances affecting the homeless as analytical springboards for examining these issues in depth. Ultimately, the article proposes a three-step framework for mitigating the muddle and calls on the nation's high court to take action to clarify the proper test for distinguishing between content-based and content-neutral …
The Conforming Effect: First Amendment Implications Of Surveillance, Beyond Chilling Speech, Margot E. Kaminski, Shane Witnov
The Conforming Effect: First Amendment Implications Of Surveillance, Beyond Chilling Speech, Margot E. Kaminski, Shane Witnov
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
Content-Based Confusion And Panhandling: Muddling A Weathered First Amendment Doctrine Takes Its Toll On Society's Less Fortunate, Clay Calvert
Richmond Public Interest Law Review
This article examines multiple problems now plaguing the fundamental dichotomy in First Amendment jurisprudence between content-based and content-neutral regulations of speech. The troubles were highlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 divided decision in McCullen v. Coakley. Building from McCullen, this article uses a quartet of federal court rulings from 2014 and 2013 involving anti-begging ordinances affecting the homeless as analytical springboards for examining these issues in depth. Ultimately, the article proposes a three-step framework for mitigating the muddle and calls on the nation's high court to take action to clarify the proper test for distinguishing between content-based and content-neutral …
Not My Job: Determining The Bounds Of Public Employee Protected Speech, Stephen Allred
Not My Job: Determining The Bounds Of Public Employee Protected Speech, Stephen Allred
Law Faculty Publications
This article reviews the Supreme Court’s rulings in public employee free speech cases, discusses the significant departure from precedent that Garcetti made to those cases, summarizes the Court’s most recent ruling in Lane, and argues that the Court should return to the broader standard the Court originally announced in Pickering.
It's Time For Revenge Porn To Get A Taste Of Its Own Medicine: An Argument For The Federal Criminalization Of Revenge Porn, Taylor Linkous
It's Time For Revenge Porn To Get A Taste Of Its Own Medicine: An Argument For The Federal Criminalization Of Revenge Porn, Taylor Linkous
Law Student Publications
This comment analyzes the various potential legal approaches to dealing with revenge porn and posits that a federal law criminalizing the dissemination of revenge porn is necessary to combat this growing trend. Part II provides background information on revenge porn and further analyzes how the successful relationship between technology and pornography led to the rise of revenge porn. Part III analyzes the different civil remedies currently available to revenge porn victims and argues these are not practicable solutions. Part IV discusses the current state laws criminalizing revenge porn and the legal challenges faced by those affected by revenge porn and …
Advancing An Adaptive Standard Of Strict Scrutiny For Content-Based Commercial Speech Regulation, Nat Stern, Mark Joseph Stern
Advancing An Adaptive Standard Of Strict Scrutiny For Content-Based Commercial Speech Regulation, Nat Stern, Mark Joseph Stern
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
Back To The Bad Old Days: President Putin's Hold On Free Speech In The Russian Federation, Rebecca Favret
Back To The Bad Old Days: President Putin's Hold On Free Speech In The Russian Federation, Rebecca Favret
Law Student Publications
This paper addresses new laws promulgated in Russia that restrict freedom of speech. Each implicitly reflects the Kremlin's hostility toward political dissidence in the aftermath of serious protests following President Putin's reelection and elections to the legislature. Disturbed by the outcry, which took place in cities across Russia but also infiltrated the Internet, the Russian legislature passed strict laws censoring Internet speech, prohibiting behavior and speech deemed "extremist," and curbing the size and type of public gatherings.
The new legislation is examined through the lens of some of the Kremlin's most infamous and recent targets: namely, the Internet blacklist and …
Keeping The “Free” In Teacher Speech Rights: Protecting Teachers And Their Use Of Social Media To Communicate With Students Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates, Mark Schroeder
Richmond Journal of Law & Technology
Debate is raging within many school districts around the country about public school teachers’ interactions with their students outside of school through social media sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.
Religious Freedom Legislation In The 2013 Virginia General Assembly, Ellis M. West
Religious Freedom Legislation In The 2013 Virginia General Assembly, Ellis M. West
Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest
This article consists of the following sections: Section one presents the content of the proposed amendment and explains the ways in which it is unclear, redundant, and otherwise poorly written. Section two addresses the issue of whether the provisions intended to protect religious expression, including prayer, are necessary and can solve the problems they are intended to solve. It also identifies the crucial challenge in cases involving religious expression - namely, determining correctly whether it is the government or a private individual or group that is expressing or promoting a religious belief or practice. This determination must be made because …
Reclaiming Hazelwood: Public School Classrooms And A Return To The Supreme Court's Vision For Viewpoint-Specific Speech Regulation Policy, Brad Dickens
Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest
Federal and circuit courts continue to fiercely debate whether the Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in Hazelwood v. Kuhineier requires school policies regulating student speech and expression to be viewpoint neutral. However, this note suggests that the language of Hazelwood itself shows that the Circuit debate may be misguided. The Supreme Court intended Hazelwood to stand as a narrow exception to its earlier holding in Tinker, and Hazelwood only applies in instances where the government's own voice is implicated, largely in a public context. When the school, and in effect the government, is speaking with its own voice, the school must …