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Tort Liability For Physical Harm To Police Arising From Protest: Common-Law Principles For A Politicized World, Ellen M. Bublick, Jane R. Bambauer
Tort Liability For Physical Harm To Police Arising From Protest: Common-Law Principles For A Politicized World, Ellen M. Bublick, Jane R. Bambauer
UF Law Faculty Publications
When police officers bring tort suits for physical harms suffered during protest, courts must navigate two critically important sets of values—on the one hand, protesters’ rights to free speech and assembly, and on the other, the value of officers’ lives, health, and rights of redress. This year courts, including the United States Supreme Court, must decide who, if anyone, can be held accountable for severe physical harms suffered by police called upon to respond to protest. Two highly visible cases well illustrate the trend. In one, United States Capitol Police officers were injured on January 6, 2021, during organized attempts …
Curing The First Amendment Scrutiny Muddle Through A Breyer-Based Blend Up? Toward A Less Categorical, More Values-Oriented Approach For Selecting Standards Of Judicial Review, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article argues that the United States Supreme Court should significantly alter its current categorical approach for discerning standards of judicial review in free-speech cases. The present system should become nondeterminative and be augmented with a modified version of Justice Stephen Breyer’s long-preferred proportionality framework. Specifically, the Article’s proposed tack fuses facets of today’s policy, which largely pivots on distinguishing content-based laws from content-neutral laws and letting that categorization determine scrutiny, with a more nuanced, values-and-interests methodology. A values-and-interests formula would allow the Court to climb up or down the traditional ladder of scrutiny rungs – strict, intermediate or rational …
#I🔫U: Considering The Context Of Online Threats, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Linda Riedemann Norbutt
#I🔫U: Considering The Context Of Online Threats, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Linda Riedemann Norbutt
UF Law Faculty Publications
The United States Supreme Court has failed to grapple with the unique interpretive difficulties presented by social media threats cases. Social media make hateful and threatening speech more common but also magnify the potential for a speaker's innocent words to be misunderstood People speak differently on different social media platforms, and architectural features of platforms, such as character limits, affect the meaning of speech. The same is true of other contextual clues unique to social media, such as gifs, hashtags, and emojis. Only by understanding social media contexts can legal decision-makers avoid overcriminalization of speech protected by the First Amendment. …
United States Media Law Update, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Rachael Jones
United States Media Law Update, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Rachael Jones
UF Law Faculty Publications
In June 2015 the United States Supreme Court completed what was hailed as its most ‘liberal term of the ages’, issuing major decisions on controversial issues, such as same-sex marriage, affirmative action and the Affordable Care Act. The Court’s free press jurisprudence, however, remained largely unchanged after its last term. The Court did not decide any significant press cases. Instead, the Court sidestepped the opportunity to resolve important questions about the constitutional limits on the prosecution of threats made via social media in one notable case, and set a new, more speech-protective standard for determining when a law is content-based …
Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky
UF Law Faculty Publications
Like most of us, public colleges and universities increasingly are communicating via Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, Twitter and other social media. Unlike most of us, public colleges and universities are government actors, and their social media communications present complex administrative and First Amendment challenges. The authors of this article — one the dean of a major public university law school responsible for directing its social media strategies, the other a scholar of social media and the First Amendment — have combined their expertise to help public university officials address these challenges. To that end, this article first examines current and …
New Restrictions On Academic Free Speech: Jeffries V. Harleston Ii, Richard H. Hiers
New Restrictions On Academic Free Speech: Jeffries V. Harleston Ii, Richard H. Hiers
UF Law Faculty Publications
Notwithstanding academic freedom's venerable and near-sacrosanct place among academicians in the United States today, the Supreme Court first accorded it constitutional status only in the 1950s. The Court did not recognize First Amendment speech rights of public employees generally until 1968. In subsequent years, the Court evolved two separate lines of cases: the one relating to, and generally protective of, academic freedom in public colleges and universities; the other, relating to the speech rights of public school teachers and public employees in other work contexts. The Supreme Court has yet to address the question whether the severely restrictive standards developed …