Law Commons^™

Prying, Spying, And Lying: Intrusive Newsgathering And What The Law Should Do About It, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

The media's use of intrusive newsgathering techniques poses an increasing threat to individual privacy. Courts currently resolve the overwhelming majority of conflicts in favor of the media. This is not because the First Amendment bars the imposition of tort liability on the media for its newsgathering practices. It does not. Rather, tort law has failed to seize the opportunity to create meaninful privacy protection. After surveying the economic, philosophical, and practical obstacles to reform, this Article proposes to rejuvenate the tort of intrusion to tip the balance between privacy and the press back in privacy's direction. Working within the framework …

Court Of Appeals Of New York, Courtroom Television Network, Llc V. New York, Courtney Weinberger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Anthony Lewis: Pioneer In The Court’S Pressroom, Lyle Denniston

Missouri Law Review

Journalists, whether they know it or not, and whether or not they would admit it, are profoundly influenced by the eras in which they live and by the ideas which make up their daily news conversation. Tony Lewis was America’s witness to “the Warren Court,” and it forever made him a believing liberal. (He may have been the only reporter covering the Supreme Court who would have understood why that Court was “liberal” rather than “progressive,” which is the more fashionable word for what passes for liberalism today with its strong echoes of early twentieth century progressivism.)

The Rigorous Romantic: Anthony Lewis On The Supreme Court Beat, Linda Greenhouse

Missouri Law Review

Tony Lewis called himself “a romantic about the Supreme Court.” If he had not been a romantic when he took up the beat for the New York Times in 1957, he surely would have become one as, for the next seven years, he chronicled the Warren Court’s progressive constitutional revolution at the peak of its energy and transformative power. To list just some of the landmark opinions the Court issued during those seven years is to prove the point: Cooper v. Aaron, Mapp v. Ohio, Baker v. Carr, Engel v. Vitale, Gideon v. Wainwright, Brady v. Maryland, School District of …

Institutionalizing Press Relations At The Supreme Court: The Origins Of The Public Information Office, Jonathan Peters

Missouri Law Review

At the U.S. Supreme Court, the press is the primary link between the justices and the public, and the Public Information Office (“PIO”) is the primary link between the justices and the press. This Article explores the story of the PIO’s origins, providing the most complete account to date of its early history. That story is anchored by the major events of several eras – from the Great Depression policymaking of the 1930s to the social and political upheaval of the 1970s. It is also defined by the three men who built and shaped the office in the course of …

Press Freedom And Coverage In The U.S. And Kosovo: A Series Of Comparisons And Recommendations, Ben Holden

Missouri Law Review

The Republic of Kosovo was created from the southernmost section of the former Yugoslavia by American military intervention and subsequent worldwide humanitarian guidance between 1999 and 2008. The resulting nation (which Russia, China, and others do not recognize) was born with one of the most pro-speech and press-friendly constitutions in the world. This Article compares and contrasts four press freedoms in the U.S. and Kosovo: (1) censorship and liability for publication of “truthful” speech; (2) liability for media errors; (3) shield laws; and (4) transparency in courts and records. Where the law and social mores of Kosovo are silent, recommendations …

Legal Journalism Today: Change Or Die, Howard Mintz

Missouri Law Review

Several years ago, I was a guest speaker for a media and law class at San Jose State University, volunteering my expertise as a legal journalist with a couple decades under my belt of covering courts and law. As I went through my usual dialogue, describing some of the newfound challenges of being a journalist in this brave new digital world, one of the students piped in about Twitter, which at the time was an emerging phenomenon that I frankly considered a mind-numbing threat to intelligent reporting with the shelf life of the Pet Rock (an obsolete cultural reference that …

Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or Trial By Media, Casey J. Cooper

Casey J Cooper

The right to freedom of expression and free press is recognized under almost all major human rights instruments and domestic legal systems—common and civil—in the world. However, what do you do when a fundamental right conflicts with another equally fundamental right, like the right to a fair trial? In the United States, the freedom of speech, encompassing the freedom of the press, goes nearly unfettered: the case is not the same for other common law countries. In light of cultural and historic facts, institutional factors, modern realities, and case-law, this Article contends that current American jurisprudence does not take into …

The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court has engaged in an unusual pattern of excessive dicta in cases involving the press. Indeed, a close examination of such cases reveals that it is one of the most consistent, defining characteristics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s media law jurisprudence in the last half century. The Court’s opinions in cases involving the media, while almost uniformly reaching conclusions based on other grounds, regularly include language about the constitutional or democratic character, duty, value, or role of the press — language that could be, but ultimately is not, significant to the constitutional conclusion reached. Although scholars …

What The Supreme Court Thinks Of The Press And Why It Matters, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, in cases involving the institutional press, the United States Supreme Court has offered characterizations of the purpose, duty, role, and value of the press in a democracy. An examination of the tone and quality of these characterizations over time suggests a downward trend, with largely favorable and praising characterizations of the press devolving into characterizations that are more distrusting and disparaging.

This Essay explores this trend, setting forth evidence of the Court’s changing view of the media—from the effusively complimentary depictions of the media during the Glory Days of the 1960s and 1970s to the …

Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or "Trial By Media", Casey J. Cooper

Casey J Cooper

The right to freedom of expression and free press is recognized under almost all major human rights instruments and domestic legal systems—common and civil—in the world. However, what do you do when a fundamental right conflicts with another equally fundamental right, like the right to a fair trial? In the United States, the freedom of speech, encompassing the freedom of the press, goes nearly unfettered: the case is not the same for other common law countries. In light of cultural and historic facts, institutional factors, modern realities, and case-law, this Article contends that current American jurisprudence does not take into …