Law Commons^™

The Long Shadow Of United States V. Rosenberg: A Biographical Perspective On The Hon. Irving Robert Kaufman, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And The Lies They Tell, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Noting that the First Amendment protects lies about the government made in the public square, this article explores whether lawyers’ free speech rights ought to be different from that of other speakers. The law holds lawyers to a more demanding standard of conduct than others when it comes to aspects of lawyers’ fiduciary relationships with courts and clients. But how much more demanding can the law be when it comes to lawyers’ speech — in this case, false political speech? Applying the current First Amendment framework, we question the bar’s assumption that lawyers’ speech outside of these contexts can be …

Lawyer Speech, Investigative Deception, And The First Amendment, Rebecca Aviel, Alan K. Chen, False

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

It seems unassailable that attorneys must refrain from deception or dishonesty of any kind as a condition of professional licensure. But this principle, one of the foundational norms of the legal profession, may well infringe upon First Amendment rights, at least in certain applications. In this Article, we confront the tension between an attorney’s expressive and associational rights and her professional duty of absolute honesty. We explain that the latter must yield to the former in the unique circumstances presented by undercover investigations, where attorneys work side-by-side with journalists, civil rights testers, political activists, and others who seek to expose …

Lawyers For White People?, Jessie Allen

Articles

This article investigates an anomalous legal ethics rule, and in the process exposes how current equal protection doctrine distorts civil rights regulation. When in 2016 the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct finally adopted its first ever rule forbidding discrimination in the practice of law, the rule carried a strange exemption: it does not apply to lawyers’ acceptance or rejection of clients. The exemption for client selection seems wrong. It contradicts the common understanding that in the U.S. today businesses may not refuse service on discriminatory grounds. It sends a message that lawyers enjoy a professional prerogative to discriminate against …

(At Least) Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Election Lies, Helen Norton

Publications

Lies take many forms. Because lies vary so greatly in their motivations and consequences (among many other qualities), philosophers have long sought to catalog them to help make sense of their diversity and complexity. Legal scholars too have classified lies in various ways to explain why we punish some and protect others. This symposium essay offers yet another taxonomy of lies, focusing specifically on election lies — that is, lies told during or about elections. We can divide and describe election lies in a wide variety of ways: by speaker, by motive, by subject matter, by audience, by means of …

When Should The First Amendment Protect Judges From Their Unethical Speech?, Lynne H. Rambo

Faculty Scholarship

Judges harm the judicial institution when they engage in inflammatory or overtly political extrajudicial speech. The judiciary can be effective only when it has the trust of the citizenry, and judicial statements of that sort render it impossible for citizens to see judges as neutral and contemplative arbiters. This lack of confidence would seem especially dangerous in times like these, when the citizenry is as polarized as it has ever been.

Ethical codes across the country (based on the Model Code of Judicial Conduct) prohibit judges from making these partisan, prejudicial or otherwise improper remarks. Any discipline can be undone, …

Newsroom: Good Reason For Secrecy On 38 Studios 8/12/2016, Niki Kuckes, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Endless Pursuit: Capturing Technology At The Intersection Of The First Amendment And Attorney Advertising, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Gayland O. Heathcote Ii

Articles

No abstract provided.

Betraying Truth: Ethics Abuse In Middle East Reporting, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article presents a brief overview of press freedom under the First Amendment, attempts to create a working definition of media “objectivity,” examines various codes of professional ethics for journalists, and analyzes specific cases in which such standards have allegedly been abused or abandoned in Middle East reporting.

Medium-Specific Regulation Of Attorney Advertising: A Critique, Lyrissa Lidsky, Tera Peterson

Faculty Publications

Florida has been one of the most aggressive states in regulating attorney advertising. The Florida Supreme Court recently adopted new and more stringent rules regulating broadcast advertising by attorneys, and the court appears poised to adopt new and more stringent rules governing Internet advertising by attorneys. As this Article details, the problem is that Florida's new and proposed rules violate both the First Amendment and sound public policy principles. This Article provides guidance to states contemplating further regulation of attorney advertising, and it indirectly critiques current commercial speech doctrine.

Law Casebook Description And Table Of Contents: Constitutional Environmental And Natural Resources Law [Outline], Jim May, Robin Craig

The Future of Natural Resources Law and Policy (Summer Conference, June 6-8)

6 pages.

"James May, Widener University School of Law" -- Agenda

Free Speech For Lawyers, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the most important unanswered questions in legal ethics is how the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression ought to apply to the speech of attorneys acting in their official capacity. The Supreme Court has addressed numerous First Amendment issues involving lawyers, of course, but in all of them has declined to consider directly the central conceptual issue of whether lawyers possess diminished free expression rights, as compared with ordinary, non-lawyer citizens.

The arguments of this Article are synthetic in structure. I do not aim just to criticize reported cases, but rather to show how the regulation of lawyers' …

Prying, Spying, And Lying: Intrusive Newsgathering And What The Law Should Do About It, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

The media’s use of intrusive newsgathering techniques poses an increasing threat to individual privacy. Courts currently resolve the overwhelming majority of conflicts in favor of the media. This is not because the First Amendment bars the imposition of tort liability on the media for its newsgathering practices. It does not. Rather, tort law has failed to seize the opportunity to create meaningful privacy protection. Most torts that affect newsgathering protect privacy only incidentally, and the tort of intrusion, which addresses newsgathering more directly, has been interpreted so narrowly that it provides little or no protection from the most common types …

The Thomas Hearings: Watching Ourselves, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.