Law Commons^™

Campus Free Speech In The Mirror Of Rising Anti-Semitism, Harry G. Hutchison

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

What The Lawyers Who Sue The Press Think Of The Press, And Media Law, Jonathan Peters

Popular Media

“HAVE A SCORE TO SETTLE WITH THE PRESS? Charles Harder, the media lawyer who ground Gawker.com to dust, is your man.”

That was the subhead of a GQ profile of Harder published in 2016, after he won a $140 million jury verdict for Hulk Hogan against Gawker (later settled for $31 million). The profile went on to say that Harder had established himself “as perhaps the greatest threat in the United States to journalists, the First Amendment, and the very notion of a free press.”

Whether or not that’s true, Harder has said it would be “awesome” if the Gawker …

Review Law: New York Defamation Applied To Online Consumer Reviews, Ian Lewis-Slammon

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In early July 2017, Michelle Levine booked her first and only appointment with gynecologist Dr. Joon Song for an annual exam. Ms. Levine had a dissatisfying experience with the office. She claims that Dr. Song’s office did not follow up with her for almost a month, and that when she called to ask about the results of a blood test, Dr. Song’s staff falsely informed her that she tested positive for herpes. To top it off, Ms. Levine alleges that the office overcharged her. Following this experience, Ms. Levine did what many others do when dissatisfied with a product …

Partisipasi Perempuan Dalam Proses Pengambilan Keputusan Di Dewan Adat Terkait Dengan Penyelesaian Kasus-Kasus Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan: Kisah Dari Atambua, Sumba Timur, Rote Dan Labuan Bajo, Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Based on Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, especially in Articles 2c, 5a, 7b and c, 15 (1) and (2) women and men are equal. If there are any discriminations, the states which have ratified the Convention shall eliminate the discriminations from rules or tradition or practices. Women in some indigenous communities have some limitation in decision making process, even in the process to get solution in violence aghaainst women cases. For examples in Rote, Labuan Bajo, East Sumba and Atambua (East Nusa Tenggara) women have limited access to the decision-making process in indigenous forums even in cases of …

Pencemaran Nama Baik Dan Penghinaan Melalui Media Teknologi Informasi Komunikasi Di Indonesia Pasca Amandemen Uu Ite, Anton Hendrik Samudra

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The amendment of the ITE Law is conducted to provide better legal certainty. This is an effort to respond to society development and aims to provide better legal protection and justice. The implementation of freedom of expression in the media of Information Communication Technology (ICT) affecting the number of defamation. With the amendment of ITE law, it is necessary to examine the nature of defamation offense and libel through ICT media.

The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law, Yonathan A. Arbel, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition—commonsensical, pervasive, and influential—is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience.

Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than statements made without accountability. Strict defamation law would tend to increase the perceived reliability of statements, which in some cases can …

The Defamation Injunction Meets The Prior Restraint Doctrine, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court added the injunction to executive licensing as a prior restraint. Although the Near court circumscribed the injunction as a prior restraint, it approved criminal sanctions and damages judgments. The prior restraint label resembles a death sentence. This article maintains that such massive retaliation is overkill.

A judge’s injunction that forbids the defendant’s tort of defamation tests Near and prior restraint doctrine because defamation isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Arguing that the anti-defamation injunction has outgrown outright bans under the prior restraint rule and the equitable Maxim that “Equity will not enjoin defamation” …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Discovering Trump 06-22-2018, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Barnett Vs. Corson. Libel—Truth Of Statement As A Defence—Malice—Act Of Apr. 11, 1901, Construed

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Donald Trump And The Full-Employment-For-Lawyers Presidency, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Moguls And The Media 1-2-2017, David A. Logan, Roger Williams University

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Millennials, Equity, And The Rule Of Law: 2014 National Lawyers Convention, How First Amendment Procedures Protect First Amendment Substance, Erik S. Jaffe, Aaron H. Caplan, Robert A. Destro, Todd P. Graves, Alan B. Morrison, Eugene Volokh, David R. Stras

Catholic University Law Review

A panel, at the National Lawyers Convention, discussed procedure as it relates to First Amendment rights. The panel set forth how First Amendment procedures have historically protected First Amendment substance and discussed modern applications of the issue. For example, the prior restraint doctrine, overbreadth doctrine, the allocation of the burden of proof and relaxation of ripeness rules have important implications for challenging restrictions on speech and defending against libel and defamation.

The interaction of free speech and due process is often seen in litigation involving civil harassment orders, or civil protection orders. In many jurisidictions the definition of harassment permits …

Milkovich V. Lorain Journal Twenty-Five Years Later: The Slow, Quiet, And Troubled Demise Of Liar Libel, Leonard Niehoff, Ashley Messenger

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., the Supreme Court held that there is no separate constitutional protection for statements of opinion. It also held that an accusation that an individual lied is a statement of fact actionable in defamation. Lower courts have, correctly in our view, essentially ignored both holdings. In Part I we discuss Milkovich and the infirmities in its reasoning. In Part II we discuss the complex nature of lies and accusations of lies and argue that Milkovich failed to account for that complexity. In Part III we discuss the strategies the lower courts have used to …

The Control Of Seditious Libel As A Basis For The Development Of The Law Of Obscenity, Ronald W. Eades

Akron Law Review

In the United States there are government controls of at least two types of press, seditious libel and obscenity. Even though the first amendment protects speech and press, libels against the government and obscenity have not been given free reign, and have been consistently controlled. Although the conflicts over seditious libel aided the development of current standards of freedom of the press, the controls of obscenity have not yet completed that development and are inconsistent with those first amendment standards.

The Right To Republish Libel: Neutral Reportage And The Reasonable Reader, David Mccraw

Akron Law Review

This Article argues for a reconsideration and redefinition of the neutral reportage privilege. First, even if we accept Gertz's disapproval of newsworthiness as a criterion for First Amendment protection, a closer look at the neutral reportage privilege reveals that, contrary to what many courts and commentators have said, newsworthiness is not a necessary element of the privilege. Gertz is thus inapplicable. Second, the more serious problems with the neutral reportage privilege arise from its advocates' failure to define what constitutes "neutrality"-- in other words, to define what conduct by the reporter should legitimately give rise to immunity from libel actions.

Considering The Libel Trial Of Émile Zola In Light Of Contemporary Defamation Doctrine, Peter A. Zablotsky

Peter Zablotsky

Touro Law School's three-day conference on the Dreyfus affair provided an opportunity to re-examine the libel trial Émile Zola. A modern view on tort law is provided to analyze this case as if it unfolded today.

Speaking Freely On Public Issues: Criminal Suspects As Involuntary Limited-Purpose Public Figures, Daniel T. Pesciotta

Daniel T Pesciotta

This paper discusses an important First Amendment issue that has received virtually no attention from the United States Supreme Court: the question of involuntary public figures in defamation cases. Determining an individual’s public figure status is often the dispositive question in defamation litigation as private figures need typically only prove the defendant spoke negligently, whereas public figures must satisfy the much higher actual malice standard first articulated in New York Times v. Sullivan. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., the Court suggested that it is indeed possible for an individual to become a public figure involuntarily. Despite this …

Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. V. Greenmoss Builders, Inc.: Does The Actual Malice Standard Of Gertz V. Robert Welch, Inc. Apply To Speech On Matters Of Purely Private Concern?, Jeff Boykin

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ambiguity In The Realm Of Defamation: Rhetorical Hyperbole Or Provable Falsity? - Gorilla Coffee, Inc. V. New York Times Co., Tiffany Frigenti

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Considering The Libel Trial Of Émile Zola In Light Of Contemporary Defamation Doctrine, Peter A. Zablotsky

Touro Law Review

Touro Law School's three-day conference on the Dreyfus affair provided an opportunity to re-examine the libel trial Émile Zola. A modern view on tort law is provided to analyze this case as if it unfolded today.

Book Review: The Free Press Crisis Of 1800: Thomas Cooper's Trial For Seditious Libel, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This article was an invited book review of a book of the same title by Peter Charles Hoffer. Hoffer, Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Georgia, has published this accessible case history as part of the University Press of Kansas’s Landmark Law Cases & American Society series, which he co-edits.

The book discusses one of the cases arising as a result of the Alien & Sedition Act under the presidency of John Adams, mostly targeting Republicans who editorialized against the Adams administration.

Lies, Honor, And The Government’S Good Name: Seditious Libel And The Stolen Valor Act, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

Although the Supreme Court declared the crime of seditious libel inconsistent with the First Amendment long ago, the Stolen Valor Act, which punishes anyone who falsely represents themselves to have been awarded certain military medals, revives something very like that crime. the connection between the two crimes is not immediately obvious, but the government's underlying reasoning is nearly identical in both. Officials justified seditious libel prosecutions by claiming, without proof, that criticism of the government undermined its authority and reduced the public's respect for it, ultimately threatening national security. Contemporary government officials also argue, without proof, that the Act is …

In The Matter Of Ottinger V. Non-Party The Journal News, Daniel Haier

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Libel Law Analysis Of Media Abuses In Reporting On The Duke Lacrosse Fabricated Rape Charges, David A. Elder

David A. Elder

No abstract provided.

Truth, Accuracy And "Neutral Reportage": Beheading The Media Jabberwock's Attempts To Circumvent New York Times V. Sullivan -- A Plea For Classical Virtue, David A. Elder

David A. Elder

No abstract provided.

Relative Access To Corrective Speech: A New Test For Requiring Actual Malice, Aaron K. Perzanowski

Aaron K. Perzanowski

This Article reexamines the First Amendment protections provided by the public figure doctrine. It suggests that the doctrine is rooted in a set of out-dated assumptions regarding the media landscape and, as a result, has failed to adapt in a manner that accounts for our changing communications environment. The public figure doctrine, which imposes the more rigorous actual malice standard of fault on defamation plaintiffs who enjoy greater access to mass media, was constructed in an era defined by one-to-many communications media. Newspapers, broadcasters, and traditional publishers exhausted the Court's understanding of the means of communicating with mass audiences. As …

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

ExpressO

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

Freedom Of Speech & Press: Prozeralik V. Capital Cities Communications, Inc.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Speech & Press: Gross V. New York Times, Co.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Speech & Press: Polish American Immigration Relief Committee, Inc. V. Relax

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.