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Full-Text Articles in Law
California's Interest In Schwarzenegger V. Entertainment Merchants Association, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks
California's Interest In Schwarzenegger V. Entertainment Merchants Association, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks
Deana A Pollard
The issue pending before the Supreme Court in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association is whether a California law prohibiting the sale of the most violent “morbid or deviant” video games to minors violates the minors’ First Amendment right to receive the video game “speech.” The manner in which the Ninth Circuit has framed this issue, however, fails to identify fully all of the minors’ First Amendment interests at risk on both sides of the controversy. The most recent and credible scientific evidence concerning the risks that violent video games pose to the mental health of minors has constitutional implications that …
Negligent Speech Torts, Deana Pollard Sacks
Negligent Speech Torts, Deana Pollard Sacks
Deana A Pollard
Recent research on the effects of violent media on children has elevated longstanding controversy over civil liability for speech to a new level. NEGLIGENT SPEECH TORTS reviews and challenges prevailing negligent speech jurisprudence and proposes wholesale reform to the rules governing civil liability for unreasonably dangerous speech. The prevailing Brandenburg incitement test is inapposite as applied to modern dangerous speech cases and should be replaced by a “constitutionalized” negligence paradigm to reconcile First Amendment and tort policies. The Supreme Court has constitutionalized various other speech torts – such as defamation, privacy, and emotional torts – by raising their prima facie …
State Actors Beating Children: A Call For Judicial Relief, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks
State Actors Beating Children: A Call For Judicial Relief, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks
Deana A Pollard
Controversy over public school corporal punishment is at an all-time high. On August 20, 2008, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU brought public attention to the issue by releasing its report on corporal punishment of children in American public schools. Lawsuits challenging this state action on constitutional grounds continue to be filed, as advocates seeking to ban school paddling refuse to accept that beating students is constitutionally permissible, despite their repeated losses in the federal courts, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the issue again on June 23, 2008. Ignoring the uproar, nearly half of the United States continue to employ …