Law Commons^™

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

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

False factual information has no First Amendment value, and yet the United States Supreme Court has accorded lies a measure of First Amendment protection. The First Amendment imposes something in the nature of a presumption against government interference in public discourse. This presumption is rooted in suspicion of the State's ability to distinguish facts from falsehoods as well as its motives for doing so. However, the presumption against regulation of false speech is not absolute. It can be overcome when verifiably false speech poses a direct threat of harm to individual interests. Unlike other countries, the United States has never …

The Right To Be Forgotten V. Free Speech (Symposium) (Forthcoming), Edward Lee

Edward Lee

No abstract provided.

Ex Post Modernism: How The First Amendment Framed Nonrepresentational Art, Sonya G. Bonneau

Sonya G Bonneau

Nonrepresentational art repeatedly surfaces in legal discourse as an example of highly valued First Amendment speech. It is also systematically described in constitutionally valueless terms: nonlinguistic, noncognitive, and apolitical. Why does law talk about nonrepresentational art at all, much less treat it as a constitutional precept? What are the implications for conceptualizing artistic expression as free speech?

This article contends that the source of nonrepresentational art’s presumptive First Amendment value is the same source of its utter lack thereof: modernism. Specifically, a symbolic alliance between abstraction and freedom of expression was forged in the mid-twentieth century, informed by social and …

Policing Terrorists In The Community, Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F. Aziz

Twelve years after the September 11th attacks, countering domestic terrorism remains a top priority for federal law enforcement agencies. Using a variety of reactive and preventive tactics, law enforcement seeks to prevent terrorism before it occurs. Towards that end, community policing developed in the 1990s to combat violent crime in inner city communities is being adopted in counterterrorism as a means of collaborating with Muslim communities and local police to combat “Islamist” homegrown terrorism. Developed in response to paramilitary policing models, community policing is built upon the notion that effective policing requires mutual trust and relationships among law enforcement and …

The Implausibility Of Secrecy, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Government secrecy frequently fails. Despite the executive branch’s obsessive hoarding of certain kinds of documents and its constitutional authority to do so, recent high-profile events—among them the WikiLeaks episode, the Obama administration’s celebrated leak prosecutions, and the widespread disclosure by high-level officials of flattering confidential information to sympathetic reporters—undercut the image of a state that can classify and control its information. The effort to control government information requires human, bureaucratic, technological, and textual mechanisms that regularly founder or collapse in an administrative state, sometimes immediately and sometimes after an interval. Leaks, mistakes, open sources—each of these constitutes a path out …

Occupy Wall Street And The U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division: A Hypothetical Examination Of The Slippery Slope Of Military Intervention During Civil Disturbance, Mckay Smith

McKay Smith

Throughout 2011, the world was an incredibly angry place. The global economy was in disarray. The streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria had erupted in unprecedented violence. While Americans watched events spiral out of control abroad, a new movement was taking shape domestically. The Occupy movement is a self-described, nonpartisan protest movement targeting economic injustice and social inequality. At its core, however, many domestic protestors also vocally deride the current state of U.S. politics. This article analyzes the Army’s authority to collect information in support of domestic operations, particularly operations aimed at quelling civil disturbance. Historically, the use of …

"A Necessary Cost Of Freedom"? The Incoherence Of Sorrell V. Ims, Tamara R. Piety

Tamara R. Piety

No abstract provided.

"A Necessary Cost Of Freedom"? The Incoherence Of Sorrell V. Ims, Tamara R. Piety

Tamara R. Piety

On June 23, 2011 the Supreme Court announced its decision in a closely watched case, Sorrell v. IMS, striking down Vermont’s law prohibiting pharmacies from selling physicians’ prescription records without their permission for use in marketing brand name drugs. The Court’s majority struck down Vermont’s statute as unconstitutional on the grounds that the law was not “content neutral” because it singled out marketing for disparate treatment. It in effect applied a strict scrutiny test to a category of speech that has technically if not in practice been subject to intermediate scrutiny. This ruling effectively does away with the commercial speech …

Limited Government And The Bill Of Rights, Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

No abstract provided.

Representative Self-Government And The Declaration Of Independence, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

Legal scholars typically treat the Declaration of Independence as a purely historical document, but as this article explains, the Declaration is relevant to legislative and judicial decisionmaking. After describing why this founding document contains legal significance, I examine two contemporary legal issues through the lens of the Declaration’s prescriptions.

Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment grants Congress the power to make laws that enforce the civil rights clauses in the amendment’s first four sections. In City of Boerne v. Flores and its progeny, however, the Supreme Court decided that it alone can identify fundamental rights and relegated Congress’s power under …

The Dark Side Of The Force: The Legacy Of Justice Holmes For First Amendment Jurisprudence, Steven J. Heyman

Steven J. Heyman

Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical. On one hand, freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual self-fulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth. At the same time, however, many leading decisions protect speech that appears to undermine these values by attacking the dignity and personality of others or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this Article, I explore where this Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of First Amendment jurisprudence comes from. I argue that the American free speech tradition consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that emphasizes …

The Dark Side Of The Force: The Legacy Of Justice Holmes For First Amendment Jurisprudence, Steven J. Heyman

Steven J. Heyman

Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical. On one hand, freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual self-fulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth. At the same time, however, many leading decisions protect speech that appears to injure these values by attacking the dignity and personality of others or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this Article, I explore where the Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of First Amendment jurisprudence comes from. I argue that the American free speech tradition actually consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that …

The Dark Side Of The Force: The Legacy Of Justice Holmes For First Amendment Jurisprudence, Steven J. Heyman

Steven J. Heyman

Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical in nature. On one hand, freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual self-fulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth. At the same time, however, many decisions protect speech that appears to harm these values by attacking the dignity and personality of other people or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this Article, I explore where this Jekyll-and-Hyde quality comes from. I argue that the American free speech tradition actually consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that emphasizes the …

Corporate Social Responsibility After Citizens United, David G. Yosifon

David G. Yosifon

The Supreme Court recently held Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010) that the First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting the political speech of corporations. While corporate theory did very little to inform the Court’s thinking in Citizens United, this article argues that the holding in Citizens United requires us to rethink corporate theory. Specifically, this article demonstrates that the shareholder primacy norm in American corporate governance relies on the assumption that corporations can be restrained from influencing external governmental operations. We can enjoy the efficiencies generated by shareholder primacy, mainstream corporate theorists have long argued, because we can rely …

Corporate Social Responsibility After Citizens United, David G. Yosifon

David G. Yosifon

The Supreme Court recently held in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010) that the First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting the political speech of corporations. While corporate theory did very little to inform the Court’s thinking in Citizens United, this article argues that the holding in Citizens United requires us to rethink corporate theory. Specifically, this article demonstrates that the shareholder primacy norm in American corporate governance relies on the assumption that corporations can be restrained from influencing external governmental operations. We can enjoy the efficiencies generated by shareholder primacy, mainstream corporate theorists have long argued, because we can …

The Inherent Structure Of Free Speech Law, Joshua P. Davis, Joshua D. Rosenberg

Joshua P. Davis

To date no one has discovered a set of organizing principles for free speech doctrine, an area of the law that has been criticized as complex, ad hoc, and even incoherent. We provide a framework that distills free speech law down to three judgments: the first about the role of government; the second about the target of government regulation; and the third a constrained cost-benefit analysis. The framework can be summarized by three propositions: first, the Constitution constrains government if it regulates private speech, but not if government speaks, sponsors speech, or restricts expression in managing an internal governmental function; …

Burning Crosses On Campus: University Hate Speech Codes, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

Debates about the value and constitutionality of hate speech regulations on college campuses have deeply divided academics for over a decade. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Virginia v. Black, recognizing a state’s power to criminalize intentionally intimidating cross burning, at long last provides the key to resolving this heated dispute. The opponents of hate speech codes argue that such regulation guts our concept of free speech. One prominent scholar claims that this censorship would nullify the First Amendment and have “totalitarian implications.” Another constitutional expert, Erwin Chemerinsky, asserts that the “public university simply cannot prohibit the expression of hate, …

The First Amendment And The Legal Profession: Is Silence Golden?, Jan L. Jacobowitz Ms.

Jan L Jacobowitz

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of The Press 2.0, Edward Lee

Edward Lee

No abstract provided.

Towards An Explicit Balancing Inquiry: R.A.V. And Black Through The Lens Of Foreign Freedom Of Expression Jurisprudence , Matthew S. Melamed

Matthew S Melamed

The article concerns the balancing inquiry that currently provides implicit structure to recent United States Supreme Court decisions concerning the constitutionality of laws banning cross burning, as exemplified in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul and Virginia v. Black. Part I identifies the historical antipathy towards balancing inspired by the First Amendment, simultaneously considering the jurisprudential failure of First Amendment fundamentalism and the powerful ideological hold that it nevertheless still exerts. Part II briefly introduces the motivation and means by which the European Court of Human Rights and the Canadian Constitutional Court utilize explicit balancing tests in freedom of expression …

Wrestling With God: The Courts' Tortuous Treatment Of Religion (Paperback), Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

The relationship between church and state is both controversial and unsettled. For decades, the courts have vacillated dramatically in their rulings on when a particular governmental accommodation rises to the level of an impermissible state establishment of religion. Without a comprehensive theory of the First Amendment establishment clause, religion cases have devolved into a jurisprudence of minutiae. Seemingly insignificant occurrences, such as a student reading a religious story or a teacher wearing a cross on a necklace, have led to years of litigation. And because of the constant threat of judicial intrusion, a pervasive social anxiety exists about the presence …

Wrestling With God: The Courts' Tortuous Treatment Of Religion, Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

The relationship between church and state is both controversial and unsettled. For decades, the courts have vacillated dramatically in their rulings on when a particular governmental accommodation rises to the level of an impermissible state establishment of religion. Without a comprehensive theory of the First Amendment establishment clause, religion cases have devolved into a jurisprudence of minutiae. Seemingly insignificant occurrences, such as a student reading a religious story or a teacher wearing a cross on a necklace, have led to years of litigation. And because of the constant threat of judicial intrusion, a pervasive social anxiety exists about the presence …

Thomas Maule, Colonial American Writer, 1643-1724, Truth Held Forth…, Theological Treatise, 1695, James Edward Maule

James Edward Maule

No abstract provided.

"Merchants Of Discontent:" An Exploration Of The Psychology Of Advertising, Addiction And Its Implications For Commercial Speech, Tamara R. Piety

Tamara R. Piety

This article compares the psychology of addition and the psychology of advertising and argues that the parallels suggest that some regulation of advertising is in the public interest.

Scrambling For Protection: The New Media And The First Amendment (Paperback Ed.), Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

In Scrambling for Protection, Patrick Garry asserts that such dramatic developments in electronic communications will radically change the way society communicates. Already, computer networks and bulletin boards are creating, in essence, electronic editorial pages on which people can register their viewpoints. Indeed, the new and increasingly interactive media promise to more significantly involve the public in the process of social communication. This concept of change lies at the heart of Scrambling for Protection. Garry offers models and guidelines for constitutionally redefining the press and asserts that, as both the press and the First Amendment move away from an apparently exclusive …

Scrambling For Protection: The New Media And The First Amendment, Patrick Garry

Patrick M. Garry

In Scrambling for Protection, Patrick Garry asserts that such dramatic developments in electronic communications will radically change the way society communicates. Already, computer networks and bulletin boards are creating, in essence, electronic editorial pages on which people can register their viewpoints. Indeed, the new and increasingly interactive media promise to more significantly involve the public in the process of social communication. This concept of change lies at the heart of Scrambling for Protection. Garry offers models and guidelines for constitutionally redefining the press and asserts that, as both the press and the First Amendment move away from an apparently exclusive …