Law Commons^™

The Everyday First Amendment, Leonard M. Niehoff, Thomas Sullivan

Articles

On June 26 and June 27, 2019, some twenty contenders for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States participated in two evenings of political debate. The outsized group included Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who was struggling to gain traction with voters. Shortly after the debate, while many viewers were conducting online searches to learn more about the candidates, Google temporarily suspended her campaign’s advertising account.

Google claimed that the interruption occurred because an automated system flagged unusual activity on the account. But Gabbard did not accept this explanation; she believed that Google deliberately had tried to undermine …

Learned Hand's Seven Other Ideas About The Freedom Of Speech, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

I say “other” because, regarding the freedom of speech, Learned Hand has suffered the not uncommon fate of having his best ideas either drowned out or credited exclusively to others due to the excessive attention that has been bestowed on one of his lesser ideas. Sitting as a district judge in the case of Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten, Hand wrote the earliest judicial opinion about the freedom of speech that has attained canonical status. He ruled that under the recently passed Espionage Act of 1917, writings critical of government cannot be grounds for imposing criminal punishment or the …

Bankrupt Marketplace: First Amendment Theory And The 2016 Presidential Election, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

In this article I advance two arguments. The first is that 2016 was a particularly important year for freedom of speech and the press, although not for conventional reasons. The second is that hte events of 2016 revealed that one of the essential components of our democracy - the central role that free expression plays in the democratic process - is in a state of serious dysfunction, if not crisis.

Common Sense And Key Questions, Stuart M. Benjamin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Three Puzzling Things About New York Times V. Sullivan: Beginning The Anniversary Conversation, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

This is the 50th anniversary of a watershed year in the history of the civil rights movement. During that year, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference mounted its anti-segregation campaign in Alabama; Commissioner "Bull" Connor turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators; activists were attacked; riots flared; George Wallace blocked the doors of a public university to keep black students out; President Kennedy dispatched troops to Alabama and called for the passage of a civil rights bill; Medgar Evers was murdered; the then-largest human rights demonstration in U.S. history converged on Washington; Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic speech at …

New Technologies And Constitutional Law, Thomas Fetzer, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Fcc's Affirmative Speech Obligations Promoting Child Welfare, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

Plurality Of Political Opinion And The Concentration Of Media In The United States, William B. Fisch

Faculty Publications

This paper reviews regulatory efforts of the U.S. federal govern- ment to promote viewpoint diversity in broadcast media (radio, television, cable, and satellite) in the face of increasing concentration of ownership of such media, and the impact on such efforts of the free- doms of speech and press embodied in the First Amendment to the federal constitution. With respect to this issue, the regulatory work has been done overwhelmingly by the Federal Communications Commis- sion, operating under an act of Congress which has been amended from time to time to push the FCC in particular directions. The anti- trust laws …

‘Right Of Selfishness’ Vis-À-Vis Media Pluralism In The Us And In Europe: The Crucial Role Of Broadcasting At The Verge Of Private Enterprise And Public Trusteeship, Niels Lutzhoeft

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Few areas of law raise the question as to the delimitation of the public vis-à-vis the private sphere as forcefully as broadcasting does. And few businesses display the dual nature inherent in nature radio and TV broadcasting: economic versus cultural good. In Continental Europe, until the 1980s, broadcasting was subject to State monopolies that ought to ensure media pluralism. Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court, embracing a scarcity rationale, qualified the First Amendment in the realm of broadcasting primarily as a right of the listeners and viewers to receive a wide array of information and opinions. In Red Lion, the Court …

The Four Eras Of Fcc Public Interest Regulation, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Independent Significance Of The Press Clause Under Existing Law, C. Edwin Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

The paper argues that only the assumption that the Press Clause has a meaning independent of the Speech Clause could explain either different First Amendment treatment of individuals and the press or different First Amendment treatment of the press and other businesses. Suggesting an interpretation of the Press Clause as protecting the institutional integrity of the Fourth Estate, it then examines fifteen areas of law and finds that in each area the press receives different treatment – precisely the different treatment that the Fourth Estate theory predicts. Moreover, no area of law is found to be inconsistent with this independent …

Out Of Thin Air: Using First Amendment Public Forum Analysis To Redeem American Broadcasting Regulation, Anthony E. Varona

Articles

American television and radio broadcasters are uniquely privileged among Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensees. Exalted as public trustees by the 1934 Communications Act, broadcasters pay virtually nothing for the use of their channels of public radiofrequency spectrum, unlike many other FCC licensees who have paid billions of dollars for similar digital spectrum. Congress envisioned a social contract of sorts between broadcast licensees and the communities they served. In exchange for their free licenses, broadcast stations were charged with providing a platform for a "free marketplace of ideas" that would cultivate a democratically engaged and enlightened citizenry through the broadcasting of …

A Law Antecedent And Paramount, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Banning Broadcasting – A Transatlantic Perspective, Geoffrey Bennett, Russel L. Weaver

Journal Articles

The British Government's decision to prohibit radio and television networks from airing interviews or statements by members of certain Northern Ireland organizations, or by allies and sympathizers of such organizations (the Broadcasting Ban or Ban) is analyzed in context. From an analysis of the Ban, some conclusions are drawn about the nature of judicial review.