Law Commons^™

The Big Chill: Are Public Participation Rights Being Slapp-Ed?, Rachel E. Deming

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article focuses on the Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and addresses a confounding situation caused by Supreme Court precedents that give greater protection to persons who engage in illegal business practices than to citizens who petition their governments. This dichotomy is especially detrimental to environmental protection.

The crux of the conflict lies in which standard courts should use to determine whether the petitioning activity is protected: the subjective Free Speech standard grafted onto Petition Clause activities or the objective standard initially developed by the Supreme Court for petition activities in antitrust cases. The result …

The Fossil Fuel Industry’S Push To Target Climate Protesters In The U.S., Grace Nosek

Pace Environmental Law Review

At the very moment when the United Nations has called for profound shifts in social and economic systems to avert climate catastrophe, state and non-state actors in the United States (U.S.) are using a series of tactics to target and stifle climate protesters. Although the move to stifle climate protesters is often framed as a government effort, this Article argues it is critical to draw out the role of the fossil fuel industry in initiating, amplifying, and supporting such tactics.

This Article highlights the role the fossil fuel industry has played in supporting the targeting and restricting of climate protesters …

America's Newest Boogeyman For Deviant Teen Behavior: Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, Joseph C. Alfe, Grant D. Talabay

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Are violent video games harming America’s youth? Is it possible a series of interconnected circuit boards can influence children (or even adults) to become, themselves, violent? If so, how should our society-- and government-- respond?

To properly answer this last query, violent video games must be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. Simply put: do games depicting grotesque acts of depravity so profound as to negatively influence the psyche warrant the full constitutional protections ordinarily guaranteed under the mantle of free speech and expression? Are these guarantees without limit? If not, how far may the government go in …

Unreasonable Revelations: God Told Me To Kill, Linda Ross Meyer

Pace Law Review

This Article focuses on one extreme example of the law’s response to unreasonable revelations that is starkly presented in a series of unsettling murders: those involving criminal defendants who claim they committed their crime because God told them to do it—known as “deific decree” cases. This example of the conflict between revelation and reason tests the limits of law’s ability to understand and countenance revelation when the stakes are highest. The deific decree cases also present the hardest epistemological problems, because the defendant claims that the experience of God’s command is self-authenticating—a position fundamentally at odds with both scientific and …

Janus, Union Member Speech, And The Public Employee Speech Doctrine, M. Linton Wright

Pace Law Review

In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (“AFSCME”), the Supreme Court held that public sector unions can no longer collect fees from nonmembers to fund the costs of representing them in collective bargaining and grievance proceedings. The Court determined that virtually all union speech is political speech and that collection of these fees is impermissible compelled speech under the First Amendment. However, not everything in Janus harms public union interests. The Janus Court’s discussion of Garcetti v. Cabellos and Connick v. Myers actually helps protect union member speech in the context of First Amendment retaliation cases. …

The Indecency Of The Communications Decency Act § 230: Unjust Immunity For Monstrous Social Media Platforms, Natalie Annette Pagano

Pace Law Review

The line between First Amendment protection and the innovation of social media platforms is hazy at best. Not only do these platforms increasingly encompass the lives of many individuals, but they provide incredible new opportunities to interact from near and far, through sharing photographs, videos, and memories. The Internet provides countless outlets that are available at the tip of users’ fingers: thriving forums to communicate nearly whenever and wherever desired. Users effortlessly interact on these platforms and are consistently exposed to numerous forms of speech, including messages through posts, chat room discussions, videos, polls, and shared statements. From 2010 to …

Platforms, The First Amendment And Online Speech: Regulating The Filters, Sofia Grafanaki

Pace Law Review

In recent years, online platforms have given rise to multiple discussions about what their role is, what their role should be, and whether they should be regulated. The complex nature of these private entities makes it very challenging to place them in a single descriptive category with existing rules. In today’s information environment, social media platforms have become a platform press by providing hosting as well as navigation and delivery of public expression, much of which is done through machine learning algorithms. This article argues that there is a subset of algorithms that social media platforms use to filter public …

Comrades Or Foes: Did The Russians Break The Law Or New Ground For The First Amendment?, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar

Pace Law Review

This Article discusses the recent decision by the United States Federal Government to indict more than a dozen Russian nationals for conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. The Government accused the Russians of staging protests, distributing false propaganda, and spreading political messages and ideologies online in an effort to affect the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election. We argue that while the Defendants violated several other laws, the majority of the acts the Government classifies as a conspiracy to defraud the United States should not be considered criminal. Rather, these acts are protected political speech under the First …

Freedom Of Religion And Belief In India And Australia: An Introductory Comparative Assessment Of Two Federal Constitutional Democracies, Paul T. Babie, Arvind P. Bhanu

Pace Law Review

This article considers the freedom of religion and belief (“free exercise”) in two secular federal constitutional democracies: India and Australia. Both constitutional systems emerged from the former British Empire and both continue in membership of the Commonwealth of Nations, which succeeded it. However, the similarities end there, for while both separate church and state, and protect free exercise, they do so in very different ways. On the one hand, the Indian Constitution contains express provisions which comprehensively deal with free exercise. On the other hand, while one finds what might appear a protection for free exercise in the Australian Constitution, …

Ministerial Magic: Tax-Free Housing And Religious Employers, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Religious organizations enjoy many of the same benefits that other non-profit organizations do. Churches, temples and mosques, for example, generally are exempt from local real estate taxes. Economically speaking, a tax exemption has the same effect as a subsidy; freedom from tax liability means that the organization can devote its financial resources to other activities. But where an exemption afforded to a religious employee is broader than the equivalent exemption available to a secular employee, a significant Establishment Clause concern is raised. The parsonage exemption of Internal Revenue Code Section 107 presents such an issue: ministers are permitted to exclude …

Religion Lessons From Europe: Intolerant Secularism, Pluralistic Neutrality, And The U.S. Supreme Court, Antony Barone Kolenc

Pace International Law Review

Case law from the European Court of Human Rights demonstrates to the U.S. Supreme Court how a pluralistic neutrality principle can enrich the American society and harness the value of faith in the public sphere, while at the same time retaining the vigorous protection of individual religious rights. The unfortunate alternative to a jurisprudence built around pluralistic neutrality is the inevitability of intolerant secularism—an increasingly militant separation of religious ideals from the public life, leading ultimately to a repressive society that has no room in its government for religious citizens. The results of intolerant secularism are seen in a recent …

Fair Use And First Amendment: Without Fair Use, What Would You Freely Speak About?, Adam Blaier

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The question this paper tries to answer is: Without fair use, what would you freely speak about? This paper will seek to demonstrate that the Copyright Clause’s Fair Use doctrine, and the First Amendment are cousins who help each other, rather than enemies sworn to destroy each other as some believe. First I will give a brief overview and history of each doctrine. Next I will speak about three areas where I believe fair use and the First Amendment cross paths extensively. These areas are: (1) school/education; (2) social media and news; and (3) sports images/broadcasting. Finally, I will demonstrate …

Fourth & Inches: Marking The Line Of Athletes’ Free Speech (A Colin Kaepernick Inspired Discussion), Ryan J. Mcginty

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This note addresses the ongoing controversial stance that was ignited when Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the national anthem in protest of what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States. The scope of this note does not surround Kaepernick himself, but rather the professional NFL football player in general. Specifically, players are entitled to the full rights of free expression and free speech as human beings and public figures, up and until the line where that right is abused on the field or “on the job,” thereby threatening an increase …

Sony, Cyber Security, And Free Speech: Preserving The First Amendment In The Modern World, Conrad Wilton

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Reprinted from 16 U.C. Davis Bus. L.J. 309 (2016). This paper explores the Sony hack in 2014 allegedly launched by the North Korean government in retaliation over Sony’s production of The Interview and considers the hack’s chilling impact on speech in technology. One of the most devastating cyber attacks in history, the hack exposed approximately thirty- eight million files of sensitive data, including over 170,000 employee emails, thousands of employee social security numbers and unreleased footage of upcoming movies. The hack caused Sony to censor the film and prompted members of the entertainment industry at large to tailor their communication …

On The Categorical Approach To Free Speech – And The Protracted Failure To Delimit The True Threats Exception To The First Amendment, Wayne Batchis

Pace Law Review

On June 1, 2015, the Supreme Court decided Elonis v. United States on statutory rather than constitutional grounds. In doing so, it turned away an important opportunity to provide needed clarification of true threats, a category of expression relegated to a lower level of protection by the Court almost a half-century ago. The categorical approach to free speech made its first explicit appearance in Supreme Court case law in 1942. Since that time, the Court has relied heavily on this method of constitutional interpretation, carving out discrete exceptions from the seemingly absolutist mandate of the First Amendment that Congress make …

The Wrong Of Publicity, Albert Vetere

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The right of publicity has been, since at least 1977, a recognized concept. It was used, much like the other areas of intellectual property law to protect what a person had worked hard to create, in this case the concept of themselves. Their creativity in making themselves known and in having an "act" was worth protecting. However, the right of publicity has drastically changed since its conception. What is has become in the past almost forty years is a strange amalgamation of concepts, protected by laws that were never meant to be used to protect it in the first place. …

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us: Defining The Line Between Personal And Professional Context On Social Media, Raizel Liebler, Keidra Chaney

Pace Law Review

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow individuals and companies to connect directly and regularly with an audience of peers or with the public at large. These websites combine the audience-building platforms of mass media with the personal data and relationships of in-person social networks. Due to a combination of evolving user activity and frequent updates to functionality and user features, social media tools blur the line of whether a speaker is perceived as speaking to a specific and presumed private audience, a public expression of one’s own personal views, or a representative viewpoint of an entire …

Social Media Thoughtcrimes, Daniel S. Harawa

Pace Law Review

As people live out their lives online, what is protected expression and what is criminal speech? This article begins to explore this fine distinction, and advocates for a shift in the way online speech is protected vis-à-vis the First Amendment. Part I provides examples of criminalized social media activity and explores why people seemingly treat online speech as private communications. Part II looks at existing jurisprudence regarding the criminalization of speech and First Amendment protections. And Part III attempts to determine where to draw the line by advocating for a return to simpler times in First Amendment jurisprudence.

The Constitution And Revenge Porn, John A. Humbach

Pace Law Review

While the Supreme Court has recognized a number of circumstances that justify government impingements on free expression, the Court has been extremely reluctant to permit speech restrictions that discriminate based on a message’s content, its viewpoint, or the speaker. It has nearly always refused to tolerate such discrimination unless the case falls within one of the several historically established exceptions to First Amendment protection. Because of the special place that the modern First Amendment cases accord to content discrimination (and the allied discriminations based on viewpoint and speaker), any statutes designed specifically to outlaw revenge porn as such would seem …

Social Justice, Social Norms And The Governance Of Social Media, Tal Z. Zarsky

Pace Law Review

This article proceeds as follows: Part II briefly addresses the theoretical arguments regarding the pros and cons of various governance strategies, focusing on the advantages, disadvantages and pitfalls of reliance on private parties. In Part III, the article describes, in general terms, the above-mentioned empirical study, explaining its methodology, the specific challenges to its design and implementation, and how these were met. The discussion specifically centers on a survey taken to establish the nature of social norms. Part IV presents a specific test case: whether pseudonymity should be permitted in social media or should “real names” be mandatory. Part V …

Tinkering With Success: College Athletes, Social Media And The First Amendment, Mary Margaret Meg Penrose

Pace Law Review

Good law does not always make good policy. This article seeks to provide a legal assessment, not a policy directive. The policy choices made by individual institutions and athletic departments should be guided by law, but absolutely left to institutional discretion. Many articles written on college student-athletes’ social media usage attempt to urge policy directives clothed in constitutional analysis.

In this author’s opinion, these articles have lost perspective – constitutional perspective. This article seeks primarily to provide a legal and constitutional assessment so that schools and their athletic departments will have ample information to then make their own policy choices.

Abuse And Harassment Diminish Free Speech, Anita Bernstein

Pace Law Review

Owen Fiss focused on “the robustness of public debate” to conclude on his last page: “The autonomy protected by the First Amendment and rightly enjoyed by individuals and the press is not an end in itself, as it might be in some moral code, but is rather a means to further the democratic values underlying the Bill of Rights.”

This article embraces the same values but more conservatively. Whereas Fiss defended state-sponsored coercion, I leave the government mostly outside the descriptions and arguments presented here. Scholars have sought to apply the law—of crimes, torts, intellectual property, and statutory allotments and …

Beef Products, Inc. V. Abc News: (Pink) Slimy Enough To Determine The Constitutionality Of Agricultural Disparagement Laws?, Nicole C. Sasaki

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Comment analyzes the likelihood of whether BPI’s case against ABC News will be decided on the merits, whether South Dakota’s agricultural disparagement statute will be upheld as constitutional, and thus the likelihood that other states’ statutes will be struck down, thereby preserving the public’s freedom to question and criticize the safety of our food system. First, Part I offers a brief introduction to agricultural disparagement laws, their historical application, and BPI’s pending lawsuit. Next, Part II reviews the context of the enactment of agricultural disparagement laws, summarizes the common elements of these laws, and discusses Texas Beef Group v. …

Fraud And First Amendment Protections Of False Speech: How United States V. Alvarez Impacts Constitutional Challenges To Ag-Gag Laws, Larissa U. Liebmann

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article first explains the background and functions of undercover investigations of agricultural production facilities, and explains the bases upon which states pass laws intended to prevent these investigations. It then gives a background of research already conducted on the constitutionality of Ag-Gag laws, and examines the relevance of the Supreme Court case Alvarez. Based on the analysis provided in Alvarez, the article demonstrates that Ag-Gag laws would not be exempt from heightened First Amendment scrutiny as fraud statutes. Moreover, it demonstrates that, in particular, the Iowa and Utah Ag-Gag laws would not survive the heightened scrutiny outlined in Alvarez.

First Amendment Rights For Publishers And The Distribution Of Unsolicited Magazines To Inmates, Samantha Halpern

Pace Law Review

This Article discusses whether inmates have a First Amendment interest in receiving unsolicited publications, and whether a publisher has a First Amendment interest in distributing unsolicited publications. Part II will discuss the history of prisoners’ First Amendment rights, specifically in relation to publications and communications, and how the standard for First Amendment violations of prisoner rights has evolved over time. Part III will focus on the Supreme Court case Turner v. Safley and how the test articulated in Turner applied to cases that followed. Part IV will address whether the Turner standard was the appropriate test to apply to whether …

Protecting Children? The Evolution Of The First Amendment: A Historical Timeline Of Children And Their Access To Pornography And Violence, Nicole Digiose

Pace Law Review

This paper will explore the evolving relationship between children and their access to potentially harmful materials. The timeline will start at Part II.A with the landmark decision of Prince v. Massachusetts, a 1940’s case, wherein children were afforded the most constitutional protection. In Part II.B, this paper will evaluate another landmark decision: Ginsberg v. New York. In this 1968 case, the Supreme Court declared that children shall not have access to harmful, pornographic materials. By the 1990s, there appeared to be a notable shift in how the Supreme Court decided cases pertaining to children and their access to …

University Imprimaturs On Student Speech: The Certification Cases, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Article begins in Part I by describing these three student speech cases and then examining what makes them a distinct category within the larger student speech landscape. As I discuss, the student speech framework was largely developed by the Supreme Court in the K-12 public school context. Conflicts over student speech in universities, in turn, have generally centered on the extent to which the K-12 framework should carry over to the higher education context, given the greater independence and maturity of university students. Recent cases about universities' ability to control student publications, for example, fall into this mold, with …

No Jokes About Dope: Morse V. Frederick's Educational Rationale, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This piece begins with a “protective” reading of Morse v. Frederick, showing how this rationale provides a good starting point in understanding Morse but is ultimately incomplete. Indeed, Justice Stevens’ dissent is largely an argument that the protective rationale falls short here. I then re-examine Morse from the perspective of the educational rationale and conclude that the underlying, largely unstated premise of the Morse majority is that schools—as part of teaching students about the gravity of drug use—should be able to convey disapproval of messages suggesting that drug use is a joking or trivial matter. This helps to explain why …

Privacy Rights: The Virtue Of Protecting A False Reputation, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

What is the virtue of protecting a false reputation? The thesis of this paper is that there is none. There is none, at least, that justifies the suppression of free speech. Yet, there is a growing trend to see the protection of reputation from truth as a key function of the so-called “right of privacy.”

Unfortunately, people often do things that they are not proud of or do not want others to know about. Often, however, these are precisely the things that others want or need to know. For our own protection, each of us is better off being aware …

Privacy And The Right Of Free Expression, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Nobody likes to be talked about but everybody likes to talk. Trying to stop the dissemination of private information is, however, an impingement on free expression and the freedom to observe. A freestanding “right of privacy” that violates these interests is constitutionally permissible only if it can be justified using one of the standard bases for allowing restrictions on First Amendment rights. The three most likely possibilities are that the law in question: (1) can pass strict scrutiny, (2) fall within a recognized “categorical” exception, or (3) places only an “incidental” burden on First Amendment interests. Of these three, only …