Law Commons^™

Pragmatism, Paternalism, And The Constitutional Protection Of Commercial Speech, Allen K. Rostron

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Two key perspectives have emerged in the Supreme Court’s decisions about First Amendment protection of commercial speech. The anti-paternalism view, originally embraced by the Court’s most liberal members but now advanced by Clarence Thomas, holds that the government has only a narrow interest in preventing false advertising. To the extent that commercial speech is not fraudulent or misleading, the government must simply let people hear it and decide for themselves whether they find it persuasive. Other judges argue that courts need to be more pragmatic about the effects of advertising and more deferential to government attempts to promote public health …

Intellectual Seriousness And The First Amendment's Protection Of Free Speech For Students, Allen K. Rostron

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Constitutional protection of student speech has been a mixed blessing. There is still something quite inspiring about the notion that young people have worthwhile thoughts to share, and that the Constitution guarantees their right to do so. At the same time, courts have struggled to figure out what limits on student expression should be permitted, and much of the litigation has involved student speech that is disappointingly mindless. The Supreme Court’s seminal ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District concerned students who wore armbands to express a serious message about an important national issue. Judges and school …

Falwell V. Flynt Trial, 1984, Douglas O. Linder

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Asked about his first sexual experience by an interviewer, Reverend Jerry Falwell said, "I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I thought 'What the hell!'" Falwell went on to describe a a Campari-fueled sexual encounter with his mother in an outhouse near Lynchburg, Virginia. Neither the incestuous sex nor the interview ever happened, of course. They sprang from the imagination of a parody writer for Hustler Magazine. When the Campari parody ad appeared in the November 1983 issue of Hustler, the founder of …

The Trials Of Lenny Bruce, Douglas O. Linder

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In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lenny Bruce was the spirit of hipness and rebellion. His underdog, idealistic humor took on every American sacred cow, from capitalism to organized religion to sexual mores. Fans were attracted to Bruce's dark sexiness and brutal honesty. Kenneth Tyson described Bruce as fully, quiveringly conscious. Bruce's rise to the status of cultural icon began in the mid-1950s in the strip clubs of southern California where Bruce began to develop the iconoclastic edginess that would be his trademark. In his autobiography, "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People", Bruce described the importance of the …

The Supreme Court Report 2005-06, Julie M. Cheslik, Jamie Landes, Leah Pollema, Michael Shelton

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This article reviews the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2005-2006 term focusing on decisions of particular relevance to state and local government. The Court's 2005-06 Term began with much speculation as one, then a second new Justice joined the Court. After the close of the 2004-05 Term, the Court suffered the loss of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who succumbed to the thyroid cancer that had plagued him during that Term. President Bush ultimately replaced him with Judge John G. Roberts, who began the new Term and authored his fi rst opinion, the traditional 9-0 opinion of a …

Demythologizing The Legal History Of The Jehovah’S Witnesses And The First Amendment, Allen K. Rostron

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In 2002, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case involving the First Amendment rights of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Court ruled that Witnesses cannot be required to give their names to local government authorities in order to obtain permits before going door-to-door to distribute their publications and preach their religious message.

While the amount of new law being generated by the religion's followers has slowed, scholars have finally begun in recent years to give significant attention to the legal history of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and, in particular, to their …

Return To Hot Wheels: The Fcc, Program-Length Commercials, And The Children's Television Act Of 1990, Allen K. Rostron

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During the 1970s, the FCC closely examined the commercial content of children's television programming. However, in the 1980s, it declined to adopt any specific advertising or programming standards to replace those of the abandoned National Association of Broadcasters' code. The result, according to critics, was "program-length commercials," advertising for toys and other children's products contained in children's programs.

The Children's Television Act of 1990 directed the FCC to address this problem, but the agency failed to respond to the concern of Congress that children's television had become the "video equivalent of a Toys-R-Us catalog." It rejected proposals submitted during the …