Law Commons^™

Clouded Precedent: Tandon V. Newsom And Its Implications For The Shadow Docket, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket”—the decisions issued outside its procedures for deciding cases on the merits—has drawn increasing attention and criticism from scholars, commentators, and elected representatives. Shadow docket decisions have been criticized on the grounds that they are made without the benefit of full briefing and argument, and because their abbreviated, per curiam opinions can be difficult for lower courts to interpret.

A spate of shadow docket decisions in the context of free-exercise challenges to COVID-19 public health orders culminated in Tandon v. Newsom, a potentially groundbreaking decision that may upend longstanding doctrines governing claims brought under the Free …

Assumptions About Terrorism And The Brandenburg Incitement Test, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

The incitement standard announced in Brandenburg v. Ohio is one of the most familiar tests in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. It prohibits government officials from punishing advocacy of illegal activity unless it is directed and likely to imminently incite such activity. Brandenburg's standard has become a pillar of free speech law, allowing government officials to protect public safety by punishing only speech intended and likely to create an imminent danger of harm, while protecting even the most abhorrent of speakers from suppression of their speech simply because government officials fear or dislike it. Terrorist advocacy, however, is putting pressure on …

Speech As Speech: “Professional Speech” And Missouri’S Informed Consent For Abortion Statute, Michael J. Essma

Missouri Law Review

Does life begin at conception? Do women need to see a sonogram to make an informed decision about whether they want an abortion? Some state legislatures believe so. Laws mandating politically driven doctor-patient dialogue affect one of the hallmarks of the physician-patient relationship: a patient’s trust in the physician’s expertise. The common law and statutory requirement that a patient provide informed consent for a medical procedure facilitates the development of trust between patient and physician by allowing the patient to understand the procedure and discuss her options with her physician. However, provisions of abortion-specific informed consent statutes that require physicians …

Symposium: Truth, Trust And The First Amendment In The Digital Age: Foreword: Whither The Fourth Estate?, Lyrissa Lidsky

Missouri Law Review

As a professor of Media Law, I have devoted my career over the past quarter of a century to the idea that the press plays a special role in our democracy. That role is largely encapsulated by the concept of the press as Fourth Estate – an unofficial branch of government in our scheme of separation of powers that checks the power of the three official branches. In our constitutional scheme, the press is the watchdog that informs us what the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government are up to and continually replenishes the stock of news – real …

Free Speech Hypocrisy: Campus Free Speech Conflicts And The Sub-Legal First Amendment, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This Article is modest in scope. It seeks primarily to illuminate the role of free speech conflicts, especially those involving contentious speech, within the Court's jurisprudence, and to illustrate how arguments characterizing the protestors' speech as censorship misperceive the important role such conflicts play. Using both the Court's doctrinal framework and conflict resolution literature, this article attempts to bring deeper understanding to the purposes for the Court's approach, the context underlying the current conflicts, and the flaws underlying the argument that the protestors' actions are censorial. Part I briefly reviews three illustrative free speech conflicts at the University of Missouri, …

The First Amendment, The University And Conflict: An Introduction To The Symposium, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Universities across the country have experienced a dramatic increase in free speech conflicts - i.e., an experience of discord between individuals or groups of speakers. These conflicts occur in various forms. For example, members of university communities (e.g., students, staff, or faculty) have protested controversial speakers. Some have called for universities to disinvite controversial speakers. Others have heckled or shouted down speakers. Finally, some members of university communities - usually students - have protested university officials' or other students' expression by occupying buildings, camping or interrupting meetings in order to disseminate their message. It is common to view resolution of …

Restoring The Balance Between Secrecy And Transparency: The Prosecution Of Nationai Security Leaks Under The Espionage Act, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This Issue Brief reviews the relationship between secrecy, transparency and accountability in the United States, including the role of anonymous leaks. It also examines the threat that increased Espionage Act prosecutions pose to government accountability and discusses why changes to the Espionage Act are necessary to preserve an appropriate balance between government secrecy and transparency.

Of Reasonable Readers And Unreasonable Speakers: Libel Law In A Networked World, Lyrissa Lidsky, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Faculty Publications

Social-media libel cases require courts to map existing defamation doctrines onto social-media fact patterns in ways that create adequate breathing space for expression without lincensing character assassination. This Article explores these challenges by investigating developments involving two important constitutional doctrines - the so-called opinion privlege, which protects statements that are unverifiable or cannot be regarded as stating actual facts about a person, and the actual malice rule, which requires defamation plaintiff's who are public officials or public figures to prove that the defendant made a defamatory statement with knowledge of or reckless disregard for, its falsity. Given the critical role …

Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

The United States has a long and complicated history concerning religious rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., has done little to clear up the jurisprudence in this field. Although the decision will doubtless generate a great deal of commentary as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, the better approach is to consider whether and to what extent the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the fundamental principles of religious liberty. Only in that context can the merits of such a novel decision be evaluated free from political and other biases.

This …

Protest, Policing, And The Petition Clause: A Review Of Ronald Krotoszynski's Reclaiming The Petition Clause, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This essay, a short book review of Ronald Krotoszynski Jr.'s book, Reclaiming the Petition Clause Seditious Libel, "Offensive" Protest, and the Right to Petition the Government for Redress of Grievances, examines the variety of restrictions that actually affect protestors in the modern landscape. Professor Krotoszynski effectively argues that the Supreme Court's current use of content neutral time place and manner restrictions allows government officials to engage in surreptitious content censorship and also revives the defunct crime of seditious libel. His proposal to locate protestors' rights in the petition clause of the First Amendment is both historically grounded and attempts to …

Defining Religion Down: Hasanna-Tabor, Martinez, And The U.S. Supreme Court, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

While two recent Supreme Court cases on religious freedom appear sharply at odds, in one material respect they harmonize around an understanding that religion is fully protected only when exercised in private. CLS v. Martinez involved Hastings College of Law. Hastings' regulation of extracurricular organizations was unusual in requiring that any student can join an organization. This all-comers rule had a discriminatory impact on organizations with exclusionary memberships, such as the Christian Legal Society (CLS) which required subscribing to a statement of faith and conduct. The Court acknowledged the discriminatory effect, but said that the Free Speech Clause protects speech …

Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Public colleges and universities increasingly are using Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media communications tools. Yet public colleges and universities are government actors, and their creation and maintenance of social media sites or forums create difficult constitutional and administrative challenges. Our separate experiences, both theoretical and practical, have convinced us of the value of providing guidance for public higher education institutions wishing to engage with their constituents-including prospective, current, and former students and many others-through social media.

Together, we seek to guide public university officials through the complex body of law governing their social media use and …

Government Sponsored Social Media And Public Forum Doctrine Under The First Amendment: Perils And Pitfalls, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Between the extremes of no interactivity and complete interactivity, it is difficult to predict whether courts will label a government sponsored social media site a public forum or not. But it is precisely "in between" where government actors are likely to wish to engage citizens and where citizens are most likely to benefit from government social media initiatives. The goal of this article, therefore, is to provide guidance to lawyers trying to navigate the morass that is the U.S. Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence in order to advise government actors wishing to establish social media forums.

Recognizing The Public Schools' Authority To Discipline Students' Off-Campus Cyberbullying Of Classmates, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

The American Medical Association, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified bullying in the public elementary and secondary schools as a "public health problem". This article explains the schools' comprehensive authority, consistent with the First Amendment, to impose discipline on cyberbullies, by suspension or expulsion if necessary. Ever since Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions have granted the schools authority to discipline student speech that causes, or reasonably threatens, (1) "substantial disruption of or material interference with school …

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …

Religious Freedom, Church-State Separation, & The Ministerial Exception, Carl H. Esbeck, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Richard W. Garnett

Faculty Publications

The Hosanna-Tabor case concerns the separation of church and state, an arrangement that is often misunderstood but is nevertheless a critical dimension of the freedom of religion protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. For nearly a thousand years, the tradition of Western constitutionalism - the project of protecting political freedom by marking boundaries to the power of government - has been assisted by the principled commitment to religious liberty and to church-state separation, correctly understood. A community that respects - as ours does - both the importance of, and the distinction between, the spheres of political and religious …

Panel Discussion At "Signs Of The Times: The First Amendment And Religious Symbolism", Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regulating Offensiveness: Snyder V. Phelps, Emotion, And The First Amendment, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

In its upcoming term, the Court will decide in Snyder v. Phelps whether Albert Snyder can sue the Reverend Fred Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress for protesting near his son’s funeral. Those arguing in favor of tort liability claim that the Phelps’ speech during a time of mourning and vulnerability is especially outrageous and injurious and that the First Amendment allows such regulation. Their arguments, however, effectively rely on the offensiveness of the Phelps’ message rather than on any external indicia of harm, such as noisy …

Educating The United States Supreme Court At Summers' School: A Lesson On The "Special Character Of The Animal", Rafael Gely, Ramona L. Paetzold, Leonard Bierman

Faculty Publications

In this article, we explore the implications that Professor Summers' insights regarding public employment have for the Garcetti and Davenport decisions. In particular, we focus on the extent to which the political nature of public employment affects public employees' rights to freedom of speech as well as matters regarding the representational functions of public employee unions.

Nobody's Fools: The Rational Audience As First Amendment Ideal, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Assumptions about audiences shape the outcomes of First Amendment cases. Yet the Supreme Court rarely specifies what its assumptions about audiences are, much less attempts to justify them. Drawing on literary theory, this Article identifies and defends two critical assumptions that emerge from First Amendment cases involving so-called "core" speech. The first is that audiences are capable of rationally assessing the truth, quality, and credibility of core speech. The second is that more speech is generally preferable to less. These assumptions, which I refer to collectively as the rational audience model, lie at the heart of the "marketplace of ideas" …

Privacy And Funeral Protests, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This article examines the free speech implications of funeral protest statutes. Enacted in response to the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members protest at funerals to spread their antigay message, such statutes restrict a broad array of peaceful expressive activity. This Article focuses on the states’ interest underlying these statutes - protecting mourners’ right to be free from unwanted intrusions while at funeral services. Few would argue against protecting funeral services from intrusive protests. These statutes, however, go far beyond that notion and protect mourners from offensive, rather than intrusive, protests. As such, they do not conceive of privacy as protection …

Where's The Harm?: Free Speech And The Regulation Of Lies, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to accord a measure of protection to outright lies. This essay seeks to explain why. Using Holocaust denial as an example of verifiably false speech, this essay poses the question of whether such speech poses a more serious danger than First Amendment jurisprudence traditionally has acknowledged. This essay also probes the unintended consequences of governmental attempts to impose criminal punishment on lies.

When Accommodations For Religion Violate The Establishment Clause: Regularizing The Supreme Court's Analysis, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This article sets forth five rules with respect to what government may do to accommodate religious practice and five rules with respect to what government may not do. As it turns out the Supreme Court has said that most religious accommodations are left to the broad discretion of legislators and public officials. So long as the object of the accommodation is to protect or expand religious freedom, as distinct from expanding religion, the accommodation will be permitted.

Authorship, Audiences, And Anonymous Speech, Thomas F. Cotter, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

A series of United States Supreme Court decisions establishes that the First Amendment provides a qualified right to speak and publish anonymously, or under a pseudonym. But the Court has never clearly defined the scope of this right. As a result, lower courts have been left with little guidance when it comes to dealing both with the Internet-fueled growth of torts and crimes committed by anonymous speakers, and with the increasing number of lawsuits aimed at silencing legitimate anonymous speech. In this Article, we provide both positive and normative foundations for a comprehensive approach to anonymous speech. We first draw …

Dissent And Disestablishment: The Church/State Settlement Of The New American Republic, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This paper has two aims. They are more in the nature of history than law. The first aim is to show that since the fourth century Western civilization has presupposed that there are not one but two sovereigns. Each has a jurisdiction of legitimate operation, and while there are areas of shared cognizance, there are other subject matter areas in which each is noncompetent to perform the tasks of the other. The second aim of this paper is to uncover historical figures that advanced a proposition concerning religious freedom that became the American church-state settlement.

Discussing The First Amendment , Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Despite its many good qualities, Eternally Vigilant nevertheless suffers from a flaw common to First Amendment scholarship--a tendency to give short shrift to study of the social, psychological, historical, and political factors that influence the Court's decision making and, thus, free speech doctrine. Discussion including these influences would facilitate an even greater understanding of free speech doctrine and the principles that underlie it.

The Establishment Clause As A Structural Restraint: Validations And Ramifications, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The opening phrase of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The free exercise clause functions as an individual right with its purpose being to forestall personal religious harm. Its underlying principle is that in religious matters a person ought to be free of coercion caused by the government and thereby not made to suffer for cause of conscience. The function of the establishment clause is altogether different, for its purpose is to restrain government from using its powers to act on matters …

Brandenburg And The United States War On Incitement Abroad: Defending A Double Standard, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

While it is perfectly legitimate for the United States to attempt to persuade foreign citizens and media not to engage in advocacy of violent acts, the administration's rhetoric suggests that the United States expects foreign governments to take action against speech that would be protected by the First Amendment in the United States. What explains this apparent hypocrisy? Is this simply another example of the United States touting democracy at home while supporting despotism abroad? Or is the Brandenburg incitement standard so socially and culturally contingent that it is not appropriate for export, at least to the Arab Middle East? …

Religion And The First Amendment: Some Causes Of The Recent Confusion, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court is surely guilty of making the matter of religion and the First Amendment harder than it ought to be. But it is others who have kept the debate over church/state relations either poisoned with culture-war rhetoric or so shrouded in mystery that seemingly only experts can untangle the juris-prudential snarls. By surrounding this venerable Amendment with a pseudocomplexity concerning the matter of religion these disinformation specialists create confusion, and confusion begets opportunities for further distortion and manipulation. Disagreements over the free exercise of religion and the no-establishment thereof are far simpler to resolve than these …

Cybergossip Or Securities Fraud? Some First Amendment Guidance In Drawing The Line., Lyrissa Lidsky, Michael Pike

Faculty Publications

Fifteen-year-old Jonathan Lebed, the youngest person ever pursued by the SEC in an enforcement action, made over $800,000 in six months by promoting stocks on Internet message boards. Using several fictitious screen names, Jonathan posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo! Finance, hyping selected over-the-counter stocks and then promptly selling his pre-purchased shares as soon as the stock prices rose.

Publicly, the SEC painted a picture-perfect case of securities fraud. Yet, the SEC forced disgorgement of only $285,000 of Jonathan's profits, leaving many observers to wonder why the resolution of this supposedly clear-cut case left its teenaged perpetrator with over $500,000. …