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Full-Text Articles in Law
Centering Noncitizens’ Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Centering Noncitizens’ Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
First Amendment law pays little attention to noncitizens’ free speech interests. Perhaps noncitizens simply enjoy the same First Amendment rights as citizens. However, ambivalent and sometimes hostile Supreme Court precedents create serious cause for concern. This Essay advocates moving noncitizens’ free speech from the far periphery to the center of First Amendment law. Professor Magarian posits that noncitizens epitomize a condition of speech inequality, in which social conditions and legal doctrines combine to create distinctive, unwarranted barriers to full participation in public discourse. First Amendment law can ameliorate speech inequality by promoting an ethos of free speech obligation, amplifying the …
Kent State And The Failure Of First Amendment Law, Gregory P. Magarian
Kent State And The Failure Of First Amendment Law, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided its first free speech case 100 years ago, two very different eras have defined First Amendment law. For a half century, before 1970, the Supreme Court focused on protecting the expressive freedom of political dissidents and social reformers. In 1970, amid protests against the Vietnam War, the Ohio National Guard senselessly gunned down four students at Kent State University. The Kent State massacre exposed the fragility in our country of political protest, free speech, and democracy itself. That atrocity should have inspired First Amendment law to affirm and enhance its protection of dissenters and …
How Cheap Speech Underserves And Overheats Democracy, Gregory P. Magarian
How Cheap Speech Underserves And Overheats Democracy, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
A quarter century ago, Eugene Volokh’s article Cheap Speech and What It Will Do foretold a new regime of technologically driven “cheap speech” that would fundamentally change how people communicated with one another and navigated the information ecosystem. Professor Volokh’s vision was mainly descriptive, and his normative assessment of cheap speech sounded some circumspect notes of warning. Fundamentally, though, he painted an optimistic picture. In particular, he made the important claim that emerging technologies would democratize and diversify our society by giving many more speakers access to the tools of mass communication and audiences access to many more ideas.
Taming Uncivil Discourse, Gregory P. Magarian, James L. Gibson, Lee Epstein
Taming Uncivil Discourse, Gregory P. Magarian, James L. Gibson, Lee Epstein
Scholarship@WashULaw
In an era of increasingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in American politics. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or re-appropriate, the slurs directed against them. Using a Supreme Court decision about whether “The Slants” – a band named after a traditional slur against Asians – can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about re-appropriation processes, …
Conflicting Reports: When Gun Rights Threaten Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Conflicting Reports: When Gun Rights Threaten Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Article catalogs and analyzes collisions between free speech and gun rights. The most important and hotly debated of those collisions is the clash between the First Amendment rights to assemble and speak in public political protests and the asserted Second Amendment right to carry firearms openly in public places. Beyond protests, public university students’ First Amendment rights to speak and learn clash with the asserted Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons on university campuses; First Amendment interests in robust political deliberation clash with Second Amendment interests in promoting and securing the right to keep and bear arms; and …
Political And Non-Political Speech And Guns, Gregory P. Magarian
Political And Non-Political Speech And Guns, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Constitutional rights depend on justifications. Some combination of theory, his- tory, and practical reasoning needs to establish why and to what extent a given right warrants legal protection. The justifications that courts and theorists articulate for a given right determine the right’s breadth and the specific contours of its protection. Justification has particular importance at the formative stage of a newly recognized constitutional right. At present, courts are building doctrine around the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms,”1 recognized as an individ- ual right just over a decade ago in District of Columbia v. Heller.2 …
When Audiences Object: Free Speech And Campus Speaker Protests Articles & Essays, Gregory P. Magarian
When Audiences Object: Free Speech And Campus Speaker Protests Articles & Essays, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
In March 2017, conservative author Charles Murray arrived to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont, invited by a student affiliate of the American Enterprise Institute. Murray planned to discuss his 2013 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Many Middlebury students and faculty, however, deplored Murray for an earlier book, 1994’s The Bell Curve, where he drew specious connections between race and intelligence. Others simply considered Murray an intellectual lightweight who didn’t warrant a speaking slot at the prestigious college. Murray’s critics objected to the Political Science Department’s co-sponsorship of his ppearance and the college president’s plan to …
Forward Into The Past: Speech Intermediaries In Television And Internet Ages Symposium: Falsehoods, Fake News, And The First Amendment: Panel 3: The Brave New World Of Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Forward Into The Past: Speech Intermediaries In Television And Internet Ages Symposium: Falsehoods, Fake News, And The First Amendment: Panel 3: The Brave New World Of Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Communication constructs society. By speaking to, with, and among one another, people and groups build relationships that allow us all to live more fully, understand the world better, and govern ourselves collectively. As societies grow, expression and engagement become more challenging. The presence of more ideas, larger and more diverse potential audiences, and more powerful and remote institutions threatens to reduce communication to a futile exercise. Whatever normative goals different people and groups may want public discourse to serve, pursuing those goals gets harder.
The View From My Window: The Roberts Court's First Amendment Symposium, Gregory P. Magarian
The View From My Window: The Roberts Court's First Amendment Symposium, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
The experience of writing a book and then reading what some very smart and knowledgeable people have to say about the subject matter is humbling and a little dizzying. In Managed Speech: The Roberts Court's First Amendment, I try to make some sense of the present Supreme Court's decisions over the past decade about the First Amendment's protections for free expression.' The book argues that those decisions, taken as a whole, excessively constrain free speech within a particular managerial framework. Rather than helping speech to flourish in all its noisy, messy glory, the Roberts Court favors First Amendment claims from …
Religious Argument, Free Speech Theory, And Democratic Dynamism, Gregory P. Magarian
Religious Argument, Free Speech Theory, And Democratic Dynamism, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Political theorists have long debated whether liberal democratic norms of public political debate should constrain political arguments grounded in religious beliefs or similar conscientious commitments. In this article, Professor Magarian contends that normative insights from free speech theory have salience for this controversy and should ultimately lead us to reject any normative constraint on religious argument. On the restrictive side of the debate stand prominent liberal theorists, led by John Rawls, who maintain that arguments grounded in religion and other comprehensive commitments threaten liberal democracy by offering illegitimate grounds for government action and destabilizing democratic politics. On the permissive side …
Substantive Media Regulation In Three Dimensions, Gregory P. Magarian
Substantive Media Regulation In Three Dimensions, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Changes in the political and regulatory climates are prompting calls to revive substantive government regulation of the broadcast media, specifically the now-defunct fairness doctrine. In this article, Professor Magarian attempts to sharpen the present debate over substantive regulation by closely examining earlier defenses and criticisms of the fairness doctrine. The article assesses how supporters and opponents of the fairness doctrine have characterized three issues essential for assessing the doctrine's wisdom and constitutionality: who is regulating; who is being regulated; and the goal of the regulatory scheme. As to the first issue, who is regulating, fairness doctrine supporters emphasize the democratic …
The Jurisprudence Of Colliding First Amendment Interests: From The Dead End Of Neutrality To The Open Road Of Participation-Enhancing Review, Gregory P. Magarian
The Jurisprudence Of Colliding First Amendment Interests: From The Dead End Of Neutrality To The Open Road Of Participation-Enhancing Review, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
First Amendment interests in both speech and religion often collide with one another. A political activist claims a free speech interest in the right to purchase advertising time on a television network, while the network claims a free speech interest in its decision not to sell the time. A religious enclave claims a free exercise interest in having a dedicated public school district, while its neighbors claim a nonestablishment interest in the government's not extending the group special treatment. In this article Professor Magarian examines the phenomenon of colliding First Amendment interests, explains and critiques the Supreme Court's failure to …
The Pragmatic Populism Of Justice Stevens's Free Speech Jurisprudence Symposium: The Jurisprudence Of Justice Stevens: Panel V: First Amendment/Voting Rights, Gregory P. Magarian
The Pragmatic Populism Of Justice Stevens's Free Speech Jurisprudence Symposium: The Jurisprudence Of Justice Stevens: Panel V: First Amendment/Voting Rights, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
In his three decades on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens has developed a distinctive approach to the First Amendment. During his tenure, the Court's majority has crystallized a theory of First Amendment speech protection as an abstract, negative protection of individual autonomy against government interference. In contrast, Justice Stevens' pragmatic judicial methodology has caused him to place greater emphasis on free speech decisions' practical consequences, particularly their effectiveness in making democratic debate inclusive as to both participants and subject matter in order to ensure robust, well-informed public discourse. Alone on the present Court, Justice Stevens manifests a deep …
Substantive Due Process As A Source Of Constitutional Protection For Nonpolitical Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Substantive Due Process As A Source Of Constitutional Protection For Nonpolitical Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
We live in a time when our right to speak out against our government faces threats unimagined since the Vietnam era. As the present war in Iraq and the campaign against international terrorism have dragged on, the federal and state governments as well as nongovernmental institutions have grown increasingly bold in their efforts to suppress political dissent. Law enforcement officers infiltrate and bully peaceful dissident groups; police crack down brutally on mass demonstrations; cities confine protesters at major political events to ironically designated “free speech zones.” These events buttress a contention, familiar from the work of several prominent First Amendment …
The First Amendment, The Public-Private Distinction, And Nongovernmental Suppression Of Wartime Political Debate, Gregory P. Magarian
The First Amendment, The Public-Private Distinction, And Nongovernmental Suppression Of Wartime Political Debate, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
This article proposes a major expansion in the scope of First Amendment law and offers a fresh way of understanding the public-private distinction. It contends that the Supreme Court should invoke the First Amendment to enjoin nongovernmental behavior that substantially impedes public political debate during times of war and national emergency. As the article explains, the present campaign against international terrorism has seen employers, property owners, and media corporations restrict political discussion more frequently and aggressively than the government has. If political debate is the most important object of First Amendment protection - which the article contends it is - …
Regulating Political Parties Under A Public Rights First Amendment, Gregory P. Magarian
Regulating Political Parties Under A Public Rights First Amendment, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
The recently-enacted McCain-Feingold campaign finance law pushes to the fore the questions of whether and to what extent the First Amendment allows government to regulate the electoral activities of political parties. One of the new law's primary components is its attempt to eliminate so-called "soft money"- unlimited donations to national political parties that the Democrats and Republicans have used to circumvent legal limits on campaign contributions? One congressional opponent of the new law called it "the death knell" for political parties' role in elections." Not surprisingly, both major parties have attacked McCain-Feingold. Most Republicans in Congress opposed the legislation, and …
Book Reviews & Notices: Mark A. Graber, Transforming Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Book Reviews & Notices: Mark A. Graber, Transforming Free Speech, Gregory P. Magarian
Scholarship@WashULaw
Gregory P. Magarian, Book Reviews & Notices: Mark A. Graber, Transforming Free Speech, 90 Mich. L. Rev. 1425 (1992)