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Series

First Amendment

Columbia Law School

Academic freedom

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Constitutional Moral Hazard And Campus Speech, Jamal Greene Jan 2019

Constitutional Moral Hazard And Campus Speech, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

One underappreciated cost of constitutional rights enforcement is moral hazard. In economics, moral hazard refers to the increased propensity of insured individuals to engage in costly behavior. This Essay concerns what I call “constitutional moral hazard,” defined as the use of constitutional rights (or their conspicuous absence) to shield potentially destructive behavior from moral or pragmatic assessment. What I have in mind here is not simply the risk that people will make poor decisions when they have a right to do so, but that people may, at times, make poor decisions because they have a right. Moral hazard is not …


Irb Licensing, Philip A. Hamburger Jan 2015

Irb Licensing, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines conflicting norms in the government's licensing of speech and the press on “human-subjects research” through institutional review boards (IRBs). It begins by discussing licensing and why the prohibition of it is so fundamental and prroceeds by providing an overview of the structure of institutional review board licensing. It then highlights the unconstitutionality of IRB laws, arguing that the use of IRBs violates the principles of academic freedom. It asserts that licensing of speech or the press was a method of controlling the press employed by the Inquisition and the Star Chamber, and the First Amendment unequivocally barred …


Getting Permission, Philip A. Hamburger Jan 2007

Getting Permission, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Institutional Review Boards ("IRBs") are the instruments of a system of licensing – a system under which scholars, students, and other researchers must get permission to do research on human subjects. Although the system was established as a means of regulating research, it regulates research by licensing speech and the press. It is, in fact, so sweeping a system of licensing speech and the press that it is reminiscent of the seventeenth century, when Galileo Galilei had to submit to licensing and John Milton protested against it. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine the constitutionality of IRB licensing and, more …


The Sedition Of Free Speech, Lee C. Bollinger Jan 1983

The Sedition Of Free Speech, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Several years ago, a story appeared in The New York Times which provided a graphic illustration of how the Soviet government manipulates the news about itself. Each year on May Day, the Times reported, the Soviet leadership poses for a photograph while standing atop the Lenin tomb in Red Square. In the year of the Times story, however, the photograph had undergone a number of noticeable alterations as it appeared in the various government-run media outlets. One official had been removed altogether, another had been positioned a bit closer to Brezhnev, some who had not in fact been present were …