Law Commons^™

Free Speech And Off-Label Rights, Amy J. Sepinwall

Georgia Law Review

When a litigant invokes a constitutional right to
protect interests different from the ones underpinning
the right, he engages in what this Article calls an
off-label rights exercise. The Free Speech Clause has
recently become an especially prominent, and troubling,
site of off-label rights exercises. Two of the most
prominent cases in the Supreme Court’s last term
involved litigants who invoked their constitutional
rights to free speech to protect interests unrelated to
speech or expression. In Janus v. American Federation
of State, County, & Municipal Employees, a state
employee argued that forcing him to pay for the union’s
bargaining activities …

Trade Secrets And The Right To Information: A Comparative Analysis Of E.U. And U.S. Approaches To Freedom Of Expression And Whistleblowing, Sharon Sandeen, Ulla-Maija Mylly

Faculty Scholarship

Both the EU Trade Secrets Directive and US trade secret law seek to balance the protection of trade secrets against other values, including freedom of expression, but the EU Trade Secret Directive is more explicit about the need to do so. This article examines EU and US trade secret law through the right to information, a recognized human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and implementing laws and conventions. In particular, it discusses how principles of freedom of expression and whistleblowing should apply in the trade secret context in the EU and U.S.

Conflicting Reports: When Gun Rights Threaten Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article catalogs and analyzes collisions between free speech and gun rights. The most important and hotly debated of those collisions is the clash between the First Amendment rights to assemble and speak in public political protests and the asserted Second Amendment right to carry firearms openly in public places. Beyond protests, public university students’ First Amendment rights to speak and learn clash with the asserted Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons on university campuses; First Amendment interests in robust political deliberation clash with Second Amendment interests in promoting and securing the right to keep and bear arms; and …

Taming Uncivil Discourse, Gregory P. Magarian, James L. Gibson, Lee Epstein

Scholarship@WashULaw

In an era of increasingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in American politics. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or re-appropriate, the slurs directed against them. Using a Supreme Court decision about whether “The Slants” – a band named after a traditional slur against Asians – can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about re-appropriation processes, …

Memorializing The Right To Free Speech: Hess V. Indiana And The Iu Bicentennial, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Political Activist + Public Servant?, Sharon Murchie

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

How do we write as political activists while also working as public servants? Do we have freedom of speech as public school teachers? Can—and should—our writing and our speech be censored? How can we write and work for social and political change, when we are charged with remaining apolitical in the classroom? This article outlines the limitations on teachers’ First Amendment Rights and is both a call to action and a call to caution.

Janus, Union Member Speech, And The Public Employee Speech Doctrine, M. Linton Wright

Pace Law Review

In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (“AFSCME”), the Supreme Court held that public sector unions can no longer collect fees from nonmembers to fund the costs of representing them in collective bargaining and grievance proceedings. The Court determined that virtually all union speech is political speech and that collection of these fees is impermissible compelled speech under the First Amendment. However, not everything in Janus harms public union interests. The Janus Court’s discussion of Garcetti v. Cabellos and Connick v. Myers actually helps protect union member speech in the context of First Amendment retaliation cases. …

Campus Speech And Harassment, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

No abstract provided.

Categorizing Student Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

No abstract provided.

Multifactoral Free Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

This Article presents a multifactoral approach to free speech analysis. Difficult cases present a variety of challenges that require judges to weigh concerns for the protection of robust dialogue, especially about public issues, against concerns that sound in common law (such as reputation), statutory law (such as repose against harassment), and in constitutional law (such as copyright). Even when speech is implicated, the Court should aim to resolve other relevant individual and social issues arising from litigation. Focusing only on free speech categories is likely to discount substantial, and sometimes compelling, social concerns warranting reflection, analysis, and application. Examining the …

Censoring Hate In The Music Industry: Shifting Perspectives In Pursuit Of Cultural Equity, Joey A. Tan

Backstage Pass

Music is intended to be expressive and unconstrained, a tool of communicating emotion and bridging humanity. As such, censorship is widely despised among music creators, listeners, publishers, distributors, and other music industry stakeholders. “Freedom of expression,” however, proves to be an applicable argument for both sides of the matter when the censorship concerns hate directed at marginalized communities. Analyzing the concept of censorship through the lens of those with privilege and power fails to recognize the extent to which hate speech impacts its victims and the indirect recipients of the message. As a powerful influencer of popular and youth cultures, …

Hush Don't Say A Word: Safeguarding Student's Freedom Of Expression In The Trump Era, Laura R. Mcneal

Laura R. McNeal

The controversy surrounding NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s act of kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality against people of color continues to permeate public discourse. In March 2017, President Trump referenced Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic act during a rally in Louisville, Kentucky, in an effort to illustrate his strong opposition to anyone kneeling during the national anthem. In this speech, President Trump stated that although many NFL franchise owners were interested in signing Colin Kaepernick, many were afraid of receiving a nasty tweet from him. Likewise, in another speech, President Trump stated, “I think it’s a great lack …

When The First And Second Amendments Collide: The Free Speech Implications Of West Virginia's Business Liability Protection Act Of 2018, Alex A. Tsiatsos

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Panel 3: Free Speech And Freedom Of Religion

Georgia State University Law Review

Moderator: Eric Segall

Panelists: Mike Dorf and Eugene Volokh

No Place For Speech Zones: How Colleges Engage In Expressive Gerrymandering, A. Celia Howard

Georgia State University Law Review

This note takes a critical look at the shortcomings of the current tests applied to speech zone litigation as well as the constitutional violations that occur when public schools carve out speech areas. Part I examines the evolution of First Amendment law in education, with a focus on university free speech zones. Part II analyzes the convoluted First Amendment jurisprudence, suggesting that the time, place, and manner test, typically used in conjunction with a forum analysis when examining the constitutionality of speech zones, allows universities to practice what is known as “expressive gerrymandering.” Finally, Part III proposes that courts eliminate …

Hush Don't Say A Word: Safeguarding Student's Freedom Of Expression In The Trump Era, Laura R. Mcneal

Georgia State University Law Review

The controversy surrounding NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s act of kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality against people of color continues to permeate public discourse. In March 2017, President Trump referenced Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic act during a rally in Louisville, Kentucky, in an effort to illustrate his strong opposition to anyone kneeling during the national anthem. In this speech, President Trump stated that although many NFL franchise owners were interested in signing Colin Kaepernick, many were afraid of receiving a nasty tweet from him. Likewise, in another speech, President Trump stated, “I think it’s a great lack …

Data Subjects' Privacy Rights: Regulation Of Personal Data Retention And Erasure, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The European Union's right to erasure came into effect May 25, 2018, as Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"). Unlike the U.S. "marketplace of ideas" model of free speech, the GDPR gives greater weight to data subjects' privacy interests than to audiences' curiosity about others' intimate lives. The U.S. and EU models advance human thirst for knowledge through open and uninhibited debates, whereas the internet marketplace tends to favor social media companies' commercial interests: put more specifically, free speech is not entirely harmonious with the interests of social media intermediaries whose algorithms tend to favor companies' bottom …

Marketplace Of Ideas, Privacy, And The Digital Audience, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

The availability of almost limitless sets of digital information has opened a vast marketplace of ideas. Information service providers like Facebook and Twitter provide users with an array of personal information about products, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. While this data enriches the lives of those who share content on the internet, it comes at the expense of privacy. Social media companies disseminate news, advertisements, and political messages, while also capitalizing on consumers' private shopping, surfing, and traveling habits. Companies like Cambridge Analytica, Amazon, and Apple rely on algorithmic programs to mash up and scrape enormous amounts of online and otherwise …

The Trouble With Tinker: An Examination Of Student Free Speech Rights In The Digital Age, Allison N. Sweeney

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The boundaries of the schoolyard were once clearly delineated by the physical grounds of the school. In those days, it was relatively easy to determine what sort of student behavior fell within an educator’s purview, and what lay beyond the school’s control. Technological developments have all but erased these confines and extended the boundaries of the school environment somewhat infinitely, as the internet and social media allow students to interact seemingly everywhere and at all times. As these physical boundaries of the schoolyard have disappeared, so too has the certainty with which an educator might supervise a student’s behavior.

Because …

Whose Market Is It Anyway? A Philosophy And Law Critique Of The Supreme Court’S Free-Speech Absolutism, Spencer Bradley

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In the wake of Charlottesville, the rise of the alt-right, and campus controversies, the First Amendment has fallen into public scrutiny. Historically, the First Amendment’s “marketplace of ideas” has been a driving source of American political identity; since Brandenburg v. Ohio, the First Amendment protects all speech from government interference unless it causes incitement. The marketplace of ideas allows for the good and the bad ideas to enter American society and ultimately allows the people to decide their own course.

Yet, is the First Amendment truly a tool of social progress? Initially, the First Amendment curtailed war-time dissidents and …

Political And Non-Political Speech And Guns, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

Constitutional rights depend on justifications. Some combination of theory, his- tory, and practical reasoning needs to establish why and to what extent a given right warrants legal protection. The justifications that courts and theorists articulate for a given right determine the right’s breadth and the specific contours of its protection. Justification has particular importance at the formative stage of a newly recognized constitutional right. At present, courts are building doctrine around the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms,”1 recognized as an individ- ual right just over a decade ago in District of Columbia v. Heller.2 …

When Audiences Object: Free Speech And Campus Speaker Protests Articles & Essays, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

In March 2017, conservative author Charles Murray arrived to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont, invited by a student affiliate of the American Enterprise Institute. Murray planned to discuss his 2013 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Many Middlebury students and faculty, however, deplored Murray for an earlier book, 1994’s The Bell Curve, where he drew specious connections between race and intelligence. Others simply considered Murray an intellectual lightweight who didn’t warrant a speaking slot at the prestigious college. Murray’s critics objected to the Political Science Department’s co-sponsorship of his ppearance and the college president’s plan to …

Born In Dissent: Free Speech And Gay Rights, Dale Carpenter

SMU Law Review

It is no stretch to say that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes created the modern First Amendment a hundred years ago in his opinions in Schenck and Abrams. It is equally true that the First Amendment created gay America. For advocates of gay legal and social equality, there has been no more reliable and important constitutional text. The freedoms it guarantees protected gay cultural and political institutions from state regulation designed to impose a contrary vision of the good life. Gay organizations, clubs, bars, politicians, journals, newspapers, radio programs, television shows, web sites—all of these—would have been swept away in …

Digitizing Brandenburg: Common Law Drift Toward A Causal Theory Of Imminence, J. Remy Green

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohio test provides an exception to the First Amendment’s broad guarantee of freedom of speech. Where speech is (1) directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action, the First Amendment withdraws its promise of protection. Thus, where the “imminence” of lawless action cannot be shown, free speech cannot be restricted. Since Brandenburg, Courts have applied a test for imminence that turns on proximity in space and in time — that is, the test evaluates how spatiotemporally imminent lawless activity is. In this Article, I argue …

Sb 339 - Education, Daniel F. Barrett, Alexander Hegner

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends the statutes in the Georgia Code applicable to the University System and Board of Regents statutes in the Georgia Code. It adds new sections that place affirmative requirements on the Board of Regents to adopt and publish new policies, which aim to encourage the dissemination of free speech across university campuses. Further, the Act directs that universities must implement disciplinary sanctions for anyone subject to the jurisdiction of the University System who interferes with the free speech of invited speakers and others on campus. Finally, the Board of Regents must publish annual reports regarding any barriers to …

The Meaning Of Wrongdoing - A Crime Of Disrespecting The Flag: Grounds For Preserving National Unity, Mohammed Saif-Alden Wattad

San Diego International Law Journal

To conclude on this issue, the rights of others, as individuals and as a whole, are formulated as the social protected interest that criminal law seeks to protect through criminal means, and it is with these rights that criminal law theory should be concerned in the first level of scrutiny. However, in the second level of scrutiny, an additional set of rights are brought into play; these are the rights of the individual, namely the actor, to exercise their constitutional rights e.g., free speech, liberty, free exercise of religion. The second level of scrutiny requires balancing those rights with the …

Cheers To Central Hudson: How Traditional Intermediate Scrutiny Helps Keep Independent Craft Beer Viable, Daniel J. Croxall

NULR Online

Independent craft breweries contributed approximately $68 billion to the national economy last year. However, an arcane regulatory scheme governs the alcohol industry in general and the craft beer industry specifically, posing both obstacles and benefits to independent craft brewers. This Essay examines regulations that arguably infringe on free speech: namely, commercial speech regulations that prohibit alcohol manufacturers from purchasing advertising space from retailers. Such regulations were enacted to prohibit undue influence and anticompetitive behavior stemming from vertical and horizontal integration in the alcohol market. Although these regulations are necessary to prevent global corporate brewers from dominating the craft beer market …

Inciting Terrorism On The Internet: The Limits Of Tolerating Intolerance, Amos N. Guiora

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Internet is a limitless platform for information and data sharing. It is, in addition, however, a low-cost, high-speed dissemination mechanism that facilitates the spreading of hate speech, including violent and virtual threats. Indictment and prosecution for social media posts that transgress from opinion to incitable hate speech are appropriate in limited circumstances. Several real-world examples discussed here help to explore when limitations on Internet-based hate speech are appropriate.

In October 2015, twenty thousand Israelis joined a civil lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Supreme Court for the State of New York. Led by the civil rights organization Shurat HaDin, …

Categorizing Student Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Four Principles For Digital Expression (You Won't Believe #3!), Neil M. Richards, Danielle Keats Citron

Scholarship@WashULaw

At the dawn of the Internet’s emergence, the Supreme Court rhapsodized about its potential as a tool for free expression and political liberation. In ACLU v. Reno (1997), the Supreme Court adopted a bold vision of Internet expression to strike down a federal law–the Communications Decency Act–that restricted digital expression to forms that were merely “decent.” Far more than the printing press, the Court explained, the mid-90s Internet enabled anyone to become a town crier. Communication no longer required the permission of powerful entities. With a network connection, the powerless had as much luck reaching a mass audience as the …