Law Commons^™

The “Ample Alternative Channels” Flaw In First Amendment Doctrine, Enrique Armijo

Washington and Lee Law Review

In reviewing a content-neutral regulation affecting speech, courts ask if the regulation leaves open “ample alternative channels of communication” for the restricted speaker’s expression. Substitutability is the underlying rationale. If the message could have been expressed in some other legal way, the ample alternative channels requirement is met. The court then deems the restriction’s harm to the speaker’s expressive right as de minimis and upholds the law. For decades, courts and free speech scholars have assumed the validity of this principle. It has set First Amendment jurisprudence on the wrong course. Permitting a speech restriction because the speaker could have …

To Accommodate Or Not To Accommodate: (When) Should The State Regulate Religion To Protect The Rights Of Children And Third Parties?, Hillel Y. Levin, Allan J. Jacobs, Kavita Shah Arora

Washington and Lee Law Review

When should we accommodate religious practices? When should we demand that religious groups instead conform to social or legal norms? Who should make these decisions, and how? These questions lie at the very heart of our contemporary debates in the field of Law and Religion.

Particularly thorny issues arise where religious practices may impose health-related harm to children within a religious group or to third parties. Unfortunately, legislators, courts, scholars, ethicists, and medical practitioners have not offered a consistent way to analyze such cases, so the law is inconsistent. This Article suggests, first, that the lack of consistency is a …