Constitutional Law Commons^™

When Immigrants Speak: The Precarious Status Of Non-Citizen Speech Under The First Amendment, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The legal protection of free speech for immigrants in the United States is surprisingly limited, and it may be under more threat than is commonly understood. Although many unauthorized immigrants have become politically active in campaigning for immigration reform, their ability to speak out publicly may depend more on political discretion than on the Constitutional protections that we normally take for granted. Potential threats to immigrant free speech may be seen in three areas of law. First, a broad claim has been made by the Department of Justice that immigrants who have not been legally admitted to the country have …

Off-Label Drug Marketing, The First Amendment, And Federalism, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Orentlicher explores free speech and federalism issues arising from FDA regulation of off-label uses and off-label marketing of drugs. In light of the FDA's desire to respect state government authority, together with other considerations discussed in this article, he argues for the rejection of the analysis of the Caronia court and to give the FDA significant leeway in its regulation of off-label marketing.

Siri-Ously? Free Speech Rights And Artificial Intelligence, Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton

Publications

Computers with communicative artificial intelligence (AI) are pushing First Amendment theory and doctrine in profound and novel ways. They are becoming increasingly self-directed and corporal in ways that may one day make it difficult to call the communication ours versus theirs. This, in turn, invites questions about whether the First Amendment ever will (or ever should) cover AI speech or speakers even absent a locatable and accountable human creator. In this Article, we explain why current free speech theory and doctrine pose surprisingly few barriers to this counterintuitive result; their elasticity suggests that speaker humanness no longer may be …

Think Of The Children: Using Iied To Reformulate Disturbing Speech Restrictions, Richard Lorren Jolly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Colorado State Court of Appeals recently upheld an injunction restricting public displays of aborted fetuses. The court held that the restriction passed strict scrutiny because the state had a compelling interest in protecting children from the psychological harm of “disturbing images” and the injunction was narrowly tailored. This marked the first time an injunction had been upheld on this rationale. This Note critiques that holding and others. It contends that while some federal and state courts have recognized the interest in protecting the psychological wellbeing of children from disturbing speech as compelling, the interest is not supported by precedent. …

The Amplified Need For Supreme Court Guidance On Student Speech Rights In The Digital Age, William Calve

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Virtue, Freedom, And The First Amendment, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The modern First Amendment embodies the idea of freedom as a fundamental good of contemporary American society. The First Amendment protects and promotes everybody’s freedom of thought, belief, speech, and religious exercise as basic goods—as given ends of American political and moral life. It does not protect these freedoms for the sake of promoting any particular vision of the virtuous society. It is neutral on that score, setting limits only in those rare cases when the exercise of a First Amendment freedom exacts an intolerable social cost.

Something like this collection of views constitutes the conventional account of the First …

Tinker Tortured: The Scope Of Student Off-Campus Viral Speech Rights In The Federal Circuits, Kevin Nathaniel Troy Fowler

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Producing Democratic Vibrancy, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Did The Supreme Court Hold In Heffernan V. City Of Paterson?, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

As a favor to his mother, Jeffrey Heffernan picked up a political yard sign. His supervisors demoted him, in the mistaken belief that he had engaged in protected speech. In Heffernan v. City of Patterson, 136 S.Ct. 1412 (2016), the Supreme Court held that a public employee can sue a local government under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when a supervisor acts for constitutionally impermissible motives, even though he has not in fact exercised First Amendment rights. But the grounds for that holding are unclear. The Court may have ruled that the city, through its police chief, violated Heffernan’s First Amendment …

The Problem With Free Press Absolutism, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

In her important new book, The First Amendment Bubble, Professor Amy Gajda exposes the many dangers of this all-encompassing attitude about constitutional rights for the press. Sure, there may have been a time when the news media could demand- and the courts and public would grant near immunity for their work, making free press absolutism relatively costless. Yet Gajda provides example after example demonstrating that the courts no longer give the media a free pass. And as the public and the courts' opinions about the press change, Gajda warns, the news media's thinking about their legal protections must change as …

The Media Exemption Puzzle Of Campaign Finance Laws, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

In the 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court solidified the media exemption dilemma in campaign finance law. When attempting to address concerns about corporate campaign expenditures (i.e., corporate political speech), legislatures are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Regulate media corporations, and they violate press freedoms. Exempt media corporations from the regulations, however, and they are accused of speaker discrimination.

Thus the question of how to treat the press in campaign finance law can no longer be ignored. Can legislatures, without running afoul of the First Amendment, ever regulate …

The Road To Adopting And Implementing Systemic Disclosure Changes In The Dallas County District Attorney’S Office, Susan Hawk, Patricia J. Cummings

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Discovery and Brady are currently two of the most discussed and debated topics in our criminal justice system. Americans have become more and more aware of the number of individuals convicted and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. In 2007, in a very bold and innovative move, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office created the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) to reexamine questionable convictions to determine if a particular defendant was in fact guilty.

Making Corporate Law More Communitarian: A Proposed Response To The Roberts Court's Personification Of Corporations, Robert M. Ackerman, Lance Cole

Brooklyn Law Review

Both Citizens United and Hobby Lobby are notable for the Roberts Court’s personification of the corporation. In Citizens United, the United States Supreme Court expanded corporate speech rights in a political context; in Hobby Lobby, it accorded religious rights to corporations in an unprecedented manner. This article explains how the Court’s expansion of corporate personification has ignored both traditional corporate law doctrine regarding shareholder primacy and the fundamental distinction in corporate law between the corporate entity and the shareholders who control it.

The article takes a communitarian approach to corporate law analysis, recognizing that corporations play useful roles …

Panhandling And The First Amendment: How Spider-Man Is Reducing The Quality Of Life In New York City, Steven J. Ballew

Brooklyn Law Review

Recently, New York and other cities have taken steps to regulate panhandling activity in their communities. These regulations are informed by Broken Windows policing, which emphasizes addressing quality-of-life issues as a strategy for reducing crime. Yet government-imposed limitations on panhandling raise concerns about whether such measures violate panhandlers’ First Amendment rights. This note explores whether it is possible to separate the act of panhandling—defined as approaching a stranger in public and requesting immediate and gratuitous cash payment for oneself—from expression that is protected by the First Amendment. It concludes that, based on a concurrence from Justice Kennedy in International Society …

Parody And The Fair Use Defense: The Best Way To Practice Safe Sex With All Your Favorite Characters, Jessica N. Schneider

Brooklyn Law Review

The copyright fair use test balances the copyright holder’s right to exclude others from using its work against the secondary user’s First Amendment right, yet this test is often too unpredictable and favors misappropriation, even the most commercial kind. The test is weakest when used to determine the legality of sexual parodies. The sexual nature of the parody should receive statutory consideration in the balancing test because vulgar and lewd speech is often deemed “low value” speech, and therefore the secondary user’s First Amendment right is weaker compared to the copyright owner’s right to exclude. Courts already consider the sexual …

Persistent Threats To Commercial Speech, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

The current Supreme Court is very protective of speech, including commercial speech. Threats to commercial speech persist nonetheless. This article briefly examines two: the use of commercial speech restrictions as a form of rent-seeking, and compelled commercial speech. Regulation of commercial speech is sometimes used to protect established corporate interests from competitors who are less able to bear the costs of regulation, with consequences that extend beyond the economic marketplace. In the case of commercial speech, courts have also been unduly deferential to claims of a consumer “right to know” as a basis for mandated labeling and disclosure. Greater and …

In The Shadows Of Sunlight: The Effects Of Transparency On State Political Campaigns, Abby K. Wood, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

In recent years, the courts have invalidated a variety of campaign finance laws while simultaneously upholding disclosure requirements. Courts view disclosure as a less-restrictive means to root out corruption while critics claim that disclosure chills speech and deters political participation. Using individual-level contribution data from state elections between 2000 and 2008, we find that the speech-chilling effects of disclosure are negligible. On average, less than one donor per candidate is likely to stop contributing when the public visibility of campaign contributions increases. Moreover, we do not observe heterogeneous effects for small donors or ideological outliers despite an assumption in First …

Truth And Lies In The Workplace: Employer Speech And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Employers' lies, misrepresentations, and nondisclosures about workers' legal rights and other working conditions can skew and sometimes even coerce workers' important life decisions as well as frustrate key workplace protections. Federal, state, and local governments have long sought to address these substantial harms by prohibiting employers from misrepresenting workers' rights or other working conditions as well as by requiring employers to disclose truthful information about these matters.

These governmental efforts, however, are now increasingly vulnerable to constitutional attack in light of the recent antiregulatory turn in First Amendment law, in which corporate and other commercial entities seek -- with growing …

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the “one percent” in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

Half-Baked: The Demand By For-Profit Businesses For Religious Exemptions From Selling To Same-Sex Couples, James M. Donovan

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Should bakers be required to make cakes for same-sex weddings? This Article unravels the eclectic arguments that are offered in support of a religious exemption from serving gay customers in the wake of Obergefell.

Preliminary issues first consider invocations of a libertarian right to exclude. Rather than being part of our concept of liberty, this right to exclude from commercial premises is a new rule devised to prevent African Americans from participating in free society. Instead of expanding this racist rule to likewise bar gays from the marketplace, it should be reset to the antebellum standard of free access …

Two Aspects Of Liberty, John H. Garvey

Scholarly Articles

Liberty in the constitutional sense is always a right against state interference (a “freedom from”). The First Amendment begins by saying that “Congress shall make no law”; it forbids Congress to license or fine or jail people for speaking, or publishing, or assembling. Liberty is also, always, a right to do something (a “freedom to”): to speak, to assemble, to practice religion, to get married, etc. So “freedom from” and “freedom to” are always parts of the same idea, just as “flying from” and “flying to” are aspects of the same airplane trip. Freedom is always the right to do …

The Right To Be Forgotten: Comparing U.S. And European Approaches, Samuel W. Royston

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article compares the European and United States stances regarding the right to be forgotten. Within that context, this Article explores the implications of technological advances on constitutional rights, specifically the intersection of the right to free speech and the right to privacy, commonly referred to as the "right to be forgotten" paradox. In the United States, the trend is to favor free speech, while Europe places an emphasis on human rights. Each approach is analyzed based on supporting case law. The consequences of each approach on society, both long- and short-term, are also discussed. This Article argues that a …

Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom, And The Influence Of Obergefell V. Hodges On Distinguishing The Dividing Line, Kathleen Rainey Mcstravick

St. Mary's Law Journal

Obergefell v. Hodges, a United States Supreme Court case, added more fuel to the fire, leaving many to wonder how to voice religious opposition to same-sex marriages, and what are the second order effects for religious opposition in light of the new rule. The Court held the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Obergefell, brings the conflict between freedom of religion and LGBT rights to a new level by questioning how far freedom of religion can be used to refuse anti-discrimination statutes regarding sexual …

The Early Years Of First Amendment Lochnerism, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

From Citizens United to Hobby Lobby, civil libertarian challenges to the regulation of economic activity are increasingly prevalent. Critics of this trend invoke the specter of Lochner v. New York. They suggest that the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and other legislative "conscience clauses" are being used to resurrect the economically libertarian substantive due process jurisprudence of the early twentieth century. Yet the worry that aggressive judicial enforcement of the First Amendment might erode democratic regulation of the economy and enhance the economic power of private actors has a long history. As this Article demonstrates, anxieties …

Dismantling Of Dissent: Militarization And The Right To Peaceably Assemble, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

This Note argues that the ritualized use of extreme police force on peacefully assembled groups is a violation of the Assembly Clause as it was originally intended to function. Part I gives a general account of the Assembly Clause, its creation, and its original intention to safeguard minority views. Part II recounts part of the history behind the militarization of police forces. Part III suggests a balancing test the courts should use when evaluating violations of the freedom to peaceably assemble in order to conform to the original meaning of the First Amendment.

The Government’S Lies And The Constitution, Helen L. Norton

Indiana Law Journal

The government’s lies can be devastating. This is the case, for example, of its lies told to resist legal and political accountability for its misconduct; to inflict economic and reputational harm; or to enable the exercise of its powers to imprison, to deploy lethal force, and to commit precious national resources. On the other hand, the government’s lies can sometimes be helpful: consider lies told to thwart a military adversary or to identify wrongdoing through undercover police work. The substantial harms threatened by some government lies invite a search for ways to punish and prevent them. At the same time, …

Religion And Social Coherentism, Nelson Tebbe

Notre Dame Law Review

Today, prominent academics are questioning the very possibility of a theory of free exercise or non-establishment. They argue that judgments in the area can only be conclusory or irrational. In contrast to such skeptics, this Essay argues that decisionmaking on questions of religious freedom can be morally justified. Two arguments constitute the Essay. Part I begins by acknowledging that skepticism has power. The skeptics rightly identify some inevitable indeterminacy, but they mistakenly argue that it necessarily signals decisionmaking that is irrational or unjustified. Their critique is especially striking because the skeptics’ prudential way of working on concrete problems actually shares …

Telescoping And Collectivizing Religious Free Exercise Rights, Henry L. Chambers Jr

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Noriega V. Activision/Blizzard: The First Amendment Right To Use A Historical Figure's Likeness In Video Games, Joshua Sinclair

Duke Law & Technology Review

Panama’s former dictator, Manuel Noriega, recently sued Activision Blizzard in the California Superior Court for using his likeness and image in the popular video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.” In his complaint, Noriega alleged that the use of his likeness violated his right of publicity. Former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, came to Activision’s defense, and filed a motion to dismiss, which was granted. In granting Activision’s motion, the court held that Activision’s use of Noriega’s likeness was transformative and did not violate his right of publicity. This Issue Brief argues that the California Superior Court should not …

Law, Religion, And Politics: Understanding The Separation Of Church And State, Richard Garnett

Faculty Workshops

Professor Richard Garnett, of University of Notre Dame Law School, presented on the topic Law, Religion, and Politics: Understanding the Separation of Church and State. This workshop was presented as part of the Hesburgh Lecture Series through the Alumni & Friends of University of Notre Dame and was co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Alumni Club of Miami. This workshop examined how to understand the Constitution's "separation of church and state" and what it requires of religious believers and institutions.