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Full-Text Articles in Law
Nobody's Business: A Novel Theory Of The Anonymous First Amendment, Jordan Wallace-Wolf
Nobody's Business: A Novel Theory Of The Anonymous First Amendment, Jordan Wallace-Wolf
Faculty Scholarship
Namelessness is a double-edged sword. It can be a way of avoiding prejudice and focusing attention on one's ideas, but it can also be a license to defame and misinform. These points have been widely discussed. Still, the breadth of these discussions has left some of the depths unplumbed, because rarely is the question explicitly faced: what is the normative significance of namelessness itself, as opposed to its effects under different conditions? My answer is that anonymity is an evasion of responsibility for one's conduct. Persons should ordinarily be held responsible for what they do, but in some cases, where …
Beyond The Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment And Class Entrenchment, Jedediah S. Purdy
Beyond The Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment And Class Entrenchment, Jedediah S. Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court’s “weaponized” First Amendment has been its strongest antiregulatory tool in recent decades, slashing campaign-finance regulation, public-sector union financing, and pharmaceutical regulation, and threatening a broader remit. Along with others, I have previously criticized these developments as a “new Lochnerism.” In this Essay, part of a Columbia Law Review Symposium, I press beyond these criticisms to diagnose the ideological outlook of these opinions and to propose an alternative. The leading decisions of the antiregulatory First Amendment often associate free speech with a vision of market efficiency; but, I argue, closer to their heart is antistatist fear of entrenchment …
The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones
The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones
Faculty Scholarship
The United States Supreme Court has engaged in an unusual pattern of excessive dicta in cases involving the press. Indeed, a close examination of such cases reveals that it is one of the most consistent, defining characteristics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s media law jurisprudence in the last half century. The Court’s opinions in cases involving the media, while almost uniformly reaching conclusions based on other grounds, regularly include language about the constitutional or democratic character, duty, value, or role of the press — language that could be, but ultimately is not, significant to the constitutional conclusion reached. Although scholars …
Algorithms And Speech, Stuart M. Benjamin
Algorithms And Speech, Stuart M. Benjamin
Faculty Scholarship
One of the central questions in free speech jurisprudence is what activities the First Amendment encompasses. This Article considers that question in the context of an area of increasing importance – algorithm-based decisions. I begin by looking to broadly accepted legal sources, which for the First Amendment means primarily Supreme Court jurisprudence. That jurisprudence provides for very broad First Amendment coverage, and the Court has reinforced that breadth in recent cases. Under the Court’s jurisprudence the First Amendment (and the heightened scrutiny it entails) would apply to many algorithm-based decisions, specifically those entailing substantive communications. We could of course adopt …
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Sorrell V. Ims Health And The End Of The Constitutional Double Standard, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Ten Commandments, Nine Judges, And Five Versions Of One Amendment - The First. (“Now What?”), William W. Van Alstyne
Ten Commandments, Nine Judges, And Five Versions Of One Amendment - The First. (“Now What?”), William W. Van Alstyne
Faculty Scholarship
This article explores the variety of opinions expressed by the Justices in the two “Ten Commandments” cases, specifically Justice O’Connor’s dissent and Justice Breyer’s concurrence in Van Orden v. Perry.
Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, And The First Amendment Right Of Association, Guy-Uriel Charles
Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, And The First Amendment Right Of Association, Guy-Uriel Charles
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rouge Et Noir Reread: A Popular Constitutional History Of The Angelo Herndon Case, Kendall Thomas
Rouge Et Noir Reread: A Popular Constitutional History Of The Angelo Herndon Case, Kendall Thomas
Faculty Scholarship
In 1932, Eugene Angelo Braxton Hemdon, a young Afro-American member of the Communist Party, U.S.A., was arrested in Atlanta and charged with an attempt to incite insurrection against that state's lawful authority. Some five years later, in Herndon v. Lowry, Herndon filed a writ of habeas corpus asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the Georgia statute under which he had been convicted. Two weeks before his twenty-fourth birthday, the Court, voting 5-4, declared the use of the Georgia political-crimes statute against him unconstitutional on the grounds that it deprived Herndon of his rights to freedom …
A Judicial Postscript To The Church-State Debates Of 1989: How Porous The Wall, How Civil The State?, William W. Van Alstyne
A Judicial Postscript To The Church-State Debates Of 1989: How Porous The Wall, How Civil The State?, William W. Van Alstyne
Faculty Scholarship
This work is a continuation of the debate regarding the Establishment Clause. The focus lies with Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in County of Allegheny v. ACLU and how this opinion harkens back to a concept shared by Jefferson and Madison, that the establishment clause is designed to prevent government favoritism.
Constitutional Fact Review, Henry Paul Monaghan
Constitutional Fact Review, Henry Paul Monaghan
Faculty Scholarship
Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States held that the clearly erroneous standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a) does not prescribe the scope of appellate review of a finding of actual malice in defamation cases governed by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Rather, as a matter of "federal constitutional law," appellate courts "must exercise independent judgment and determine whether the record establishes actual malice with convincing clarity." Thus, in addition to the familiar judicial duty to "say what the law is," the first amendment imposes a special duty with respect to law application: both …
Constitutional Law As Moral Philosophy, Gerard E. Lynch
Constitutional Law As Moral Philosophy, Gerard E. Lynch
Faculty Scholarship
The seemingly inexhaustible debate over the proper role of the Supreme Court in constitutional adjudication concerns an issue of enormous practical importance: whether the Court has or should have the power to overturn the decision of a democratically elected legislature to, say, prohibit abortions, affects not only the allocation of significant political power, but also the moral lives and indeed the very bodies of millions of citizens. For this reason, many contributions to that debate, from academics as well as from practicing politicians, have burned with the passion of political commitment, seeking to influence events directly by persuading judges (or …
American Influence On Israel's Jurisprudence Of Free Speech, Pnina Lahav
American Influence On Israel's Jurisprudence Of Free Speech, Pnina Lahav
Faculty Scholarship
This is a study of the role played by judicial development of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in shaping the jurisprudence of free speech in Israel - a country without a bill of rights. Rivalry and contrast between opposing modes of legal thought, judicial styles, doctrines, and finally, models of democracy within Israel's Supreme Court are major themes. Most of the adversarial elements reflect competing ideas in the intellectual history of American free speech law. Thus, the tension within Israel's Supreme Court reflects the tension between American free speech jurisprudence as it now is and as it …
First Amendment "Due Process", Henry Paul Monaghan
First Amendment "Due Process", Henry Paul Monaghan
Faculty Scholarship
A number of recent Supreme Court opinions, primarily in the obscenity area, have fastened strict procedural requirements on governmental action aimed at controlling the exercise of first amendment rights. Professor Monaghan believes that there are two basic principles that can be distilled from these cases: that a judicial body, following an adversary hearing, must decide on the protected character of the speech, and that the judicial determination must either precede or immediately follow any governmental action which restricts speech. The author argues that these two broad principles should limit any governmental activity which affects freedom of speech, no matter how …