Law Commons^™

Constitutional Issues In Information Privacy, Fred H. Cate, Robert Litan

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The U.S. Constitution has been largely ignored in the recent flurry of privacy laws and regulations designed to protect personal information from incursion by the private sector despite the fact that many of these enactments and efforts to enforce them significantly implicate the First Amendment. Questions about the role of the Constitution have assumed new importance in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Recent efforts to identify and apprehend terrorists and to protect against future attacks threaten to weaken constitutional protections against government intrusions into personal privacy. However, these …

Justified Limits On Free Expression: The Collapse Of The General Approach To Limits On Charter Rights, Richard Moon

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The author argues that the apparent collapse or erosion of the Oakes test reflects the problem of fitting a right such as freedom of expression, which is social and relational in character, into a structure of constitutional adjudication, which is built on an individualist conception of rights. In the leading Canadian freedom of expression cases, the task for the courts under section I is not simply to strike the proper balance between competing interests, but rather to resolve the single but complex question of whether the expression contributes to, or undermines, human agency or autonomous judgment. In these cases, the …

Who Was That Masked Man? Online Defamation, Freedom Of Expression, And The Right To Speak Anonymously, Jonathon T. Feasby

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

As the internet continues to reach into the lives of people around the world, it facilitates interaction and the exchange of ideas between far-flung individuals and groups to an extent unprecedented in communications history. However, with this positive effect, the potential of the internet as a forum for defamation and other malfeasance has increased as well. Words online can be heard or read in places conventional forms of speech might never reach. As the United States Supreme Court put it, with the aid of the internet ". . . any person with a phone line can become a town crier …

The New Thought Police: Inside The Left’S Assault On Free Speech And Free Minds (Book Review), John W. Teeter Jr

Faculty Articles

Attacks on political correctness have grown both plentiful and rather tiresome. Such tomes occasionally score valid ideological points, but one grows weary of the bitter repetitiveness of it all. The New Thought Police might seem to offer a little novelty to the litany. Bruce is undeniably bright, impassioned, and edgy. Her book, however, is decidedly a mixed bag. The best parts center on her controversial role as a feminist spokeswoman during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Bruce cogently emphasized that the case was a tragic paradigm of domestic violence rather than a racist conspiracy against a black cultural icon.

Bruce’s …

Shoot First, Talk Later: Blowing Holes In Freedom Of Speech, Jacqueline Tresl

Animal Law Review

Ms. Tresl examines the constitutionality of hunter harassment laws. When a five-step doctrinal analysis is applied to hunter harassment statutes, it is clear that the statutes are content-based and subject to the strictest of scrutiny. Because the statutes fail the strict scrutiny test, they therefore violate the American citizenry’s First Amendment right to free expression.