Law Commons^™

Disinformation And The First Amendment: Fraud On The Public, Wes Henricksen

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Following the 2020 presidential election, the losing candidate, Donald Trump, along with most of the Republican Party, spread the false claim that the election had been stolen by Democrats. Joe Biden, so the claim went, had not been legitimately elected, and was therefore an illegitimate President and needed to be removed. This profitable falsehood6 became known as the “Big Lie.” It was not only baseless, but it was in fact made in spite of and in direct conflict with the overwhelming evidence debunking it. This did not stop people from believing it. Millions bought into the Big Lie, which …

The Revolution Will Not Be Moderated: Examining Florida And Texas's Attempts To Prohibit Social Media Content Moderation, Caroline Jones

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Today, around seventy percent of American citizens actively use social media for news content, entertainment, and social engagement. Since 2005, the number of Americans using social media in some capacity has increased 13 fold from five to sixty-five percent. Despite numerous studies demonstrating a correlation between social media rhetoric and real-world violence against women, racial and ethnic minority communities, and the LGBTQIA community, both Florida and Texas passed bills limiting the ways in which social media sites can moderate the content and users on their platforms in 2021. Florida’s Senate Bill 7072 requires social media platforms to allow political candidates …

Merging The Social And The Public: How Social Media Platforms Could Be A New Public Forum, Amélie P. Heldt

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Policing Hate Speech And Extremism: A Taxonomy Of Arguments In Opposition, Leonard M. Niehoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Hate speech and extremist association do real and substantial harm to individuals, groups, and our society as a whole. Our common sense, experience, and empathy for the targets of extremism tell us that our laws should do more to address this issue. Current reform efforts have therefore sought to revise our laws to do a better job at policing, prohibiting, and punishing hate speech and extremist association.

Efforts to do so, however, encounter numerous and substantial challenges. We can divide them into three general categories: definitional problems, operational problems, and conscientious problems. An informed understanding of these three categories of …

The Indecency Of The Communications Decency Act § 230: Unjust Immunity For Monstrous Social Media Platforms, Natalie Annette Pagano

Pace Law Review

The line between First Amendment protection and the innovation of social media platforms is hazy at best. Not only do these platforms increasingly encompass the lives of many individuals, but they provide incredible new opportunities to interact from near and far, through sharing photographs, videos, and memories. The Internet provides countless outlets that are available at the tip of users’ fingers: thriving forums to communicate nearly whenever and wherever desired. Users effortlessly interact on these platforms and are consistently exposed to numerous forms of speech, including messages through posts, chat room discussions, videos, polls, and shared statements. From 2010 to …

Social Media And Censorship: Rethinking State Action Once Again, Michael Patty

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

You Can’T Say That!: Public Forum Doctrine And Viewpoint Discrimination In The Social Media Era, Micah Telegen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The growing prevalence of privately-owned social media platforms is changing the way Americans and their governments communicate. This shift offers new opportunities, but also requires a reinterpretation of the First Amendment’s proscription of government limitations of speech. The public forum doctrine and its proscription of viewpoint discrimination seem particularly stretched by the digital revolution and the development of social media. In ongoing cases, litigants and courts have invoked the doctrine to limit the government’s ability to ‘block’ those who comment critically on government pages—much to the chagrin of those who note the private status of the companies hosting the pages …

How Elonis Failed To Clarify The Analysis Of "True Threats" In Social Media Cases And The Subsequent Need For Congressional Response, Jessica L. Opila

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Social media and other internet communications have altered the way people communicate with one another, including the way people threaten one another. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court decided Elonis v. United States, which imposed a heightened mental state requirement for federal prosecutions of threats issued in interstate commerce. Although the statute, 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), has no mental state requirement, the Supreme Court held that, consistent with the principles of criminal law, only those with guilty minds should be convicted and thus some showing of subjective intent is required. The opinion did not name the requisite mental …

In All Fairness: Using Political Broadcast Access Doctrine To Tailor Public Campaign Fund Matching, Andrew V. Moshirnia, Aaron T. Dozeman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Recent United States Supreme Court decisions have undermined the viability of campaign public financing systems, a vital tool for fighting political corruption. First, Citizens United v. FEC allowed privately financed candidates and independent groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigning. Publicly financed candidates now risk being vastly outspent. Second, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom PAC v. Bennett invalidated a proportional fund matching system whereby privately financed candidates’ or independent groups’ spending triggered funds to publicly funded candidates. These decisions effectuate a libertarian speech doctrine: all speakers, individual or corporate, must be absolutely unburdened. To comply with this approach, …

First Amendment Decisions - 2002 Term, Joel Gora

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

S!*T, P*@S, C*^T, F*#K, C*@!S*&!Er, M*!#$*@!*#^R, T*!S - The Fcc's Crackdown On Indecency, Lindsay Weiss

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

I Want My Mtv, But Not Your Vh1: A La Carte Cable, Bundling, And The Potential Great Cable Compromise, Holly Phillips

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Commercial Speech In Crisis: Crisis Pregnancy Center Regulations And Definitions Of Commercial Speech, Kathryn E. Gilbert

Michigan Law Review

Recent attempts to regulate Crisis Pregnancy Centers, pseudoclinics that surreptitiously aim to dissuade pregnant women from choosing abortion, have confronted the thorny problem of how to define commercial speech. The Supreme Court has offered three potential answers to this definitional quandary. This Note uses the Crisis Pregnancy Center cases to demonstrate that courts should use one of these solutions, the factor-based approach of Bolger v. Youngs Drugs Products Corp., to define commercial speech in the Crisis Pregnancy Center cases and elsewhere. In principle and in application, the Bolger factor-based approach succeeds in structuring commercial speech analysis at the margins of …

The Fourth Estate And The Third Level: Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. V. Federal Communications Commission—Cable Television And Intermediate Scrutiny, R. Stuart Phillips

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Televised Political Debates And Arkansas Educational Television Commission V. Forbes: Excluding The Public From Public Broadcasting, Joshua Dale

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Renewing The Chase: The First Amendment, Campaign Advertisements, And The Goal Of An Informed Citizenry, John Stewart Fleming

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Red Lion And Pacifica: Are They Relics?, L. A. Powe Jr

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring The First Amendment Rights Of Teens In Relationship To Sexting And Censorship, Julia Halloran Mclaughlin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article explores child pornography law in relation to teen sexting conduct. Recently, some teens who engaged in teen sexting have been convicted under child pornography laws and have been required to register as sexual predators. The criminalization of teens for developmentally typical behavior, mimicking the conduct of adults, can result in grave harm to most teens. Furthermore, the application of child pornography laws to teen sexting conduct demonstrates the constitutional overbreadth of the current definition of child pornography. Photographs have an emblematic role in society-capturing and celebrating youth. Moreover, the creation of teen sexting images accompanies a teen's developmental …

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 …

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …

Tucker Lecture, Law And Media Symposium, Erwin Chemerinsky

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Robocalls: Are Automated Calls The Sound Of, Or A Threat To, Democracy, Jason C. Miller

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

African-American voters receive a phone message implying that they are not registered to vote. Others hear "an almost threatening male voice," a "fake New York accent," factual distortions about legislation, false endorsements from controversial groups, calls promoting one candidate claiming to be from his opponent, and a constant barrage of annoying phone calls designed to make voters think a different candidate was sponsoring them. These messages were delivered through automated political telephone calls, also known as robocalls. Robocalls are cheap and efficient--one can deliver a pre-recorded message through 100,000 automated phone calls in one hour for only $2000. Consequently, robocalls …

Over And Out: Examining How Cognitive Radio Will Affect First Amendment Restrictions On Broadcast Media, Theresa Skonicki

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Long Live The Lie Bill!, Lucila I. Van Dam

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

What successful defamation plaintiffs typically desire and doctrinally deserve is to have their reputations restored. Presently, however, a plaintiff who has established that she was defamed by the defendant is entitled only to an award of damages, which does nothing to restore reputation. This Note proposes that in addition to a damages award, courts-- if they are to take seriously their obligation to compensate the plaintiff-- should order the defendant to retract the defamatory statement. Contrary to the prevailing view, this Note argues that the proposed retraction order does not jeopardize the First Amendment guarantee of free expression.

Taking Safety Seriously: Using Liberalism To Fight Pornography, John M. Kang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Liberalism, as a jurisprudential principle, need not be pornography's indifferent observer or spineless sycophant; liberalism can be used to fight pornography. In this Article, the author proposes to illuminate what appears to be the most essential aspect of liberalism in its inviolable dedication to peace and safety. By drawing upon the work of the early liberals, the author argues that liberalism's most basic ethos is conceptually incompatible with pornography, as the latter celebrates an unjustified form of violence as its own end.

On Communication, John Greenman

Michigan Law Review

Everybody knows that communication is important, but nobody knows how to define it. The best scholars refer to it. Free-speech law protects it. But no one-no scholar or judge-has successfully captured it. Few have even tried. This is the first article to define communication under the law. In it, I explain why some activities-music, abstract painting, and parading-are considered communicative under the First Amendment, while others-sex, drugs, and subliminal advertising-are not. I argue that the existing theories of communication, which hold that communicative behaviors are expressive or convey ideas, fail to explain what is going on in free-speech cases. Instead, …

The Fcc Complaint Process And Increasing Public Unease: Toward An Apolitical Broadcast Indecency Regime, Kurt Hunt

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

[...]I propose depoliticizing the broadcast indecency regime by utilizing polling to determine the average broadcast viewer's opinion, divorced from all the pressures inherent in relying on the complaint process as a proxy. In section II, I will discuss the background and development of the broadcast indecency doctrine from the days of the Federal Radio Commission in the 1920s through the present day. I will also explain why the apparent increasing public unease is misleading, and why valid First Amendment concerns are steamrolled by the fiery nature of the debate. In section III, I will explain why the FCC's reliance on …

A Shadow Government: Private Regulation, Free Speech, And Lessons From The Sinclair Blogstorm, Marvin Ammori

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Because of the economics of online information, thousands who do not know each other can band together in hours, without previous organizational coordination or any persistent central coordination, to affect others and conform society to their idea of the social good. This changes the dynamic of political action and the ability of unaffiliated, lone individuals to respond to social acts where government and the market have not. Through ad hoc volunteerism, the Sinclair participants produced regulatory action against a private party with whom they were not transacting--because they believed government failed to do so. Although ad hoc volunteerism has received …

Comments On The Fcc's Recent Mass Media Ownership Decision, William Fishman

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Speech Across Borders: Technology Vs. Values, Matthew Fagin

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The disfavored status within international law of unilateral state-based regulations that target extraterritorial actors arises from the inherent challenges such actions represent to state sovereignty. In the context of the Internet, the complexity of choice-of-law analysis is heightened: regulations imposed by one state have the potential to effectively block communications to citizens of all states and undermine the conflicting regulatory aims of neighboring states. Early legal commentators built upon this cascading chilling effect of state-based regulation to proclaim both the futility and illegitimacy of state-based action in the online environment. Subsequent scholars have demonstrated the commensurability of state-based online regulation …