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Full-Text Articles in Law
Righting The Balance: An Inquiry Into The Foundations And Limits Of Freedom Of Expression, Steven J. Heyman
Righting The Balance: An Inquiry Into The Foundations And Limits Of Freedom Of Expression, Steven J. Heyman
All Faculty Scholarship
Contemporary disputes over the First Amendment often result in deadlock. One side stresses the paramount value of free speech, while the other side points to the harms that particular kinds of speech can cause. It is difficult to see how this impasse can be broken without a more general account of the scope of free expression: a view that integrates both the justifications and the limits of freedom of speech into a coherent whole. This Article makes a start toward developing such a theory. Its central thesis is that freedom of speech is a right that is limited by the …
Permissible Content Discrimination Under The First Amendment: The Strange Case Of The Public Employee, Lawrence Rosenthal
Permissible Content Discrimination Under The First Amendment: The Strange Case Of The Public Employee, Lawrence Rosenthal
Lawrence Rosenthal
The speech of public employees poses special problems under the First Amendment. As Justice O'Connor once explained, a rule that forbids employees who deal with the public from being rude to customers should be permissible in the public sector, even though a statute containing the very same prohibition would be considered impermissibly vague when applied to private-sector employees. Recognizing that a special rule for public employees is necessary, the Supreme Court has held that only when public employees speak on a matter of public concern does their speech qualify for constitutional protection, and even then, the employee's interest must be …