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Public Corruption Concerns And Counter-Majoritarian Democracy Definition In Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission, Daaron Kimmel Dec 2011

Public Corruption Concerns And Counter-Majoritarian Democracy Definition In Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission, Daaron Kimmel

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In determining the shape of the free speech rights and anti-corruption concerns that courts must balance in campaign finance cases, judges are influenced by their own underlying understandings of what an ideal democracy should look like. For judges to decide whether the government is appropriately regulating the political process, the rules that allow all citizens to interact with and shape their democracy, judges must first decide what that democracy ought to look like. This affords judges a great deal of discretion in campaign finance cases. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a particularly bold judicial attempt to reshape the …


First Amendment Protects Crude Protest Of Police Action, Martin A. Schwartz Jul 2011

First Amendment Protects Crude Protest Of Police Action, Martin A. Schwartz

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.


Purpose And Effects: Viewpoint-Discriminatory Closure Of A Designated Public Forum, Kerry L. Monroe Jul 2011

Purpose And Effects: Viewpoint-Discriminatory Closure Of A Designated Public Forum, Kerry L. Monroe

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In early 2010, amidst a series of racially charged incidents on campus, the student government president at the University of California at San Diego revoked funding to all student media organizations in response to controversial speech on the student-run television station. It is well established that once the government has opened a forum, including a "metaphysical" forum constituted by government funding for private speech, it may not discriminate based on the viewpoints expressed within that forum. However, it has not been clearly established whether the government may close such a forum for a viewpoint-discriminatory purpose. This Note argues that courts …


Emphasizing Substance: Making The Case For A Shift In Political Speech Jurisprudence, Anastasia N. Niedrich Jul 2011

Emphasizing Substance: Making The Case For A Shift In Political Speech Jurisprudence, Anastasia N. Niedrich

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Political speech is vital to a functioning democracy and is highly protected. That much is hardly disputed. What courts, legal scholars, and those seeking to convey a political message do dispute is how political speech should be identified and protected, and who should decide what constitutes political speech. This Note looks at the history of political speech doctrine and critiques two intent-based approaches that have been proposed by First Amendment scholars to define political speech. This Note proposes a solution to many problems inherent in defining, identifying, and protecting political speech within intent-based frameworks, arguing that focusing on intent creates …


Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Lidsky Jan 2011

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …


Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai Jan 2011

Tango Or More - From California's Lesson 9 To The Constitutionality Of A Gay-Friendly Curriculum In Public Elementary Schools, Amy Lai

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In August 2009, a group of parents in California filed a lawsuit, Balde v. Alameda Unified School District, in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. They alleged that the Alameda Unified School District refused them the right to excuse their children from a new curriculum, Lesson 9, that would teach public elementary school children about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) families. The proposed curriculum included short sessions about GLBT people, incorporated into more general lessons about family and health, once a year from kindergarten through fifth grade. Kindergarteners would learn the harms of teasing, while fifth graders …


Shouting "Fire!" In A Theater And Vilifying Corn Dealers, Vincent A. Blasi Jan 2011

Shouting "Fire!" In A Theater And Vilifying Corn Dealers, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Five years ago, Fred Schauer published an article with the intriguing title: "Do Cases Make Bad Law?" Playing off Holmes' observation that "[g]reat cases like hard cases make bad law," Schauer explored the possibility, as he put it, that "it is not just great cases and hard cases that make bad law, but simply the deciding of cases that makes bad law.” His concern, confirmed and deepened by his characteristically balanced inquiry, was that general principles forged in the resolution of specific legal disputes can suffer by virtue of that provenance. Because such principles by definition are meant to carry …


Free Speech And Autonomy: Thinkers, Storytellers, And A Systemic Approach To Speech, Susan H. Williams Jan 2011

Free Speech And Autonomy: Thinkers, Storytellers, And A Systemic Approach To Speech, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


Democracy, Freedom Of Speech, And Feminist Theory: A Response To Post And Weinstein, Susan H. Williams Jan 2011

Democracy, Freedom Of Speech, And Feminist Theory: A Response To Post And Weinstein, Susan H. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


The End Of Indecency - The Second Circuit Invalidates The Fcc's Indecency Policy In Fox Televisions Stations, Inc. V. Fcc, John V. O'Grady Jan 2011

The End Of Indecency - The Second Circuit Invalidates The Fcc's Indecency Policy In Fox Televisions Stations, Inc. V. Fcc, John V. O'Grady

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.


The Dogs That Did Not Bark: The Silence Of The Legal Academy During World War Ii, Sarah H. Ludington Jan 2011

The Dogs That Did Not Bark: The Silence Of The Legal Academy During World War Ii, Sarah H. Ludington

Faculty Scholarship

During World War II, the legal academy was virtually uncritical of the government’s conduct of the war, despite some obvious domestic abuses of civil rights, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans. This silence has largely been ignored in the literature about the history of legal education. This Article argues that there are many strands of causation for this silence. On an obvious level, World War II was a popular war fought against a fascist threat, and left-leaning academics generally supported the war. On a less obvious level, law school enrollment plummeted during the war, and the numbers of full-time law …


Transforming Property Into Speech, Joseph Blocher Jan 2011

Transforming Property Into Speech, Joseph Blocher

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Democratic Participation And The Freedom Of Speech: A Response To Post And Weinstein Responses, Vincent A. Blasi Jan 2011

Democratic Participation And The Freedom Of Speech: A Response To Post And Weinstein Responses, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

I think it is useful to search for a theory that has as one of its justifications its superior fit with either the case law or the fundamental commitments and shared understandings of the political community, preferably with both. So even if someone were to convince me that she has in hand a normatively superior theory of free speech, whether grounded in the commitment to democracy or otherwise, I would still be interested in what Professors Post and Weinstein are trying to do.


The Overhyped Path From Tinker To Morse: How The Student Speech Cases Show The Limits Of Supreme Court Decisions--For The Law And For The Litigants, Scott A. Moss Jan 2011

The Overhyped Path From Tinker To Morse: How The Student Speech Cases Show The Limits Of Supreme Court Decisions--For The Law And For The Litigants, Scott A. Moss

Publications

Each of the Supreme Court's high school student speech cases reflected the social angst of its era. In 1965's Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, three Iowa teens broke school rules to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. In 1983, amidst parental and political upset about youth exposure to sexuality in the media, Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier allowed the censorship of an innuendo-filled student government speech and a school newspaper article on teen pregnancy and parental divorce. In 2007, Morse v. Frederick paralleled the rise of reality television …


Seana Shiffrin's Thinker-Based Freedom Of Speech: A Response, Vincent A. Blasi Jan 2011

Seana Shiffrin's Thinker-Based Freedom Of Speech: A Response, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

As an instinctive consequentialist so far as First Amendment theory is concerned, I have to admit that I have never been so tempted by a non-consequentialist account as I am by what Professor Shiffrin has produced. My principal interest is the history of ideas regarding the freedom of speech. I have long been struck by how so many of the canonical writers on the subject have built their arguments from the starting point of the central importance of the freedom of thought. This is true of Milton and Mill in a basic, explicit, straightforward way (if Milton can ever be …