First Amendment Commons^™

Regulating Professional Services Advertising: Current Constitutional Parameters And Issues Under The First Amendment Commercial Speech Doctrine, R. Michael Hoefges

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The War On Speech In The War On Terror: An Examination Of The Espionage Act Applied To Modern First Amendment Doctrine, Emily Posner

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

2 Anti-Gay 1st Amendment Losses, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Government Advertising Space: Lessons For The 'Choose Life' Specialty License Plate Controversy, Dara Purvis

Faculty Scholarship

As license plates emblazoned with the message “Choose Life” have proliferated in twenty-four states, so too have lawsuits challenging such specialty license plates. The holdings of such cases have run the gamut, resulting in a three-way circuit split among the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Circuits. Analysis of the controversy up to this point has not considered an illuminating analogy: advertising space owned and operated by the government. Examining the parallels between advertising space and specialty license plates informs doctrinal analysis of the dispute, demonstrating that state legislatures may not use the current practice of individually establishing specialty license plates through …

Two-Dimensional Doctrine And Three-Dimensional Law: A Response To Professor Weinstein, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Weinstein examines how the IRB laws would fare under Supreme Court doctrine, and whereas it is my view that these laws should be considered unconstitutional, he reaches largely the opposite conclusion. His article therefore offers a valuable opportunity for further exploration of the constitutional questions, and although there is not sufficient space here to discuss all of his analysis, it seems important at least to draw attention to the major points on which we take different perspectives.

Uncivil Religion: Judeo-Christianity And The Ten Commandments, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Roger Hendrix

Faculty Scholarship

In the recent Decalogue Cases, Justice Scalia argued that when it comes to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits th[e] disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists. Justice Scalia's argument represents the latest attempt to insulate American civil religion from Establishment Clause attack. A civil religion is a set of nondenominational values, symbols, rituals, and assumptions which create both reverence of national history and formation of a communal national bond.

The most recent incarnation of American civil …

Students And Workers And Prisoners - Oh, My! A Cautionary Note About Excessive Institutional Tailoring Of First Amendment Doctrine, Scott A. Moss

Publications

First Amendment free speech doctrine has been called "institutionally oblivious" for ignoring how different institutions present different legal questions. This Article analyzes a little-discussed phenomenon in the growing literature about institutional context in constitutional law. With certain institutions, the situation is not institutional obliviousness but the opposite: extreme institutional tailoring of speech doctrine. The burden of proof ordinarily is on the government to justify speech restrictions, but in three institutions--public schools, workplaces, and prisons--courts allow heavy speech restrictions and defer to government officials. Even if these institutions need to restrict speech unusually often, why do we need different doctrine--institutionally tailored …

Documents, Leaks, And The Boundaries Of Expression: Government Whistleblowing In An Over Classified Age, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Clouds, Cameras, And Computers: The First Amendment And Networked Public Places, Timothy Zick

Faculty Publications

It seems to be a common assumption that physical places like parks, sidewalks, and public squares, and "cyber-places" like the Web, constitute separate locations of communication. In reality, however, the intersection and collision of these two spaces is imminent. In some respects it has already occurred. Entire cities and counties are erecting wireless "clouds" that will bring the Internet to vast public spaces. Technologies of surveillance continue to proliferate. What one does and says in public places is increasingly subject to surveillance by means of a combination of hand-held devices and official surveillance tools like closed circuit television cameras (CCTV). …

A Common Tool For Individual Solutions: Why Countries Should Establish An International Organization To Regulate Internet Content, Paul Przybylski

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note advances the case for an international organization to control Internet content. Part I describes the current state of affairs with respect to Internet regulation. First, this part describes briefly how the Internet works, to the extent that such a description is necessary to advance the argument presented in this note. Second, concentrating on Europe, the United States, and China, Part I describes the diverging preferences of countries regarding Internet regulation, the approaches they have taken, and the problems they have encountered due to the international nature of the Internet. Third, this part addresses the major attempt at international …

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

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In over four decades since the New York Times v. Sullivan decision, the United States Supreme Court has accorded the American media a level of freedom of expression that is unparalleled in the democratic world. Yet, the Supreme Court has also repeatedly affirmed its unwillingness to give the media a constitutional blank check, and has authorized redress where public persons can prove that the defendant published a "calculated falsehood." As any lawyer knows, the calculated falsehood standard is so difficult to satisfy that often none but the impulsive, the intrepid or the naive will contemplate suing for libel. However, Sullivan …

2 Anti-Gay 1st Amendment Losses, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Bachelor Parties Beware: The Third Circuit Grapples With Alcohol, Strip Clubs And The Constitutionality Of Morality Legislation, Gregory S. Voshell

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Art As Speech, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Student Press In The 'Marketplace Of Ideas' After Hosty: The Argument For Encouraging Professional Journalistic Practices, Jacob H. Rooksby

Law Faculty Publications

On February 21, 2006, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, former student editors and staff writers of Illinois’ Governors State University (“GSU”) student newspaper, the Innovator. By denying their petition, the Court effectively ended the trio’s five-year legal battle in which they sought 42 U.S.C. § 1983 relief from Patricia Carter, Dean of Students at GSU. The students had argued that Dean Carter’s actions, which effectively required that they submit prospective issues of the Innovator to her office for administrative approval before going to press, violated their First Amendment …

Getting Permission, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Institutional Review Boards ("IRBs") are the instruments of a system of licensing – a system under which scholars, students, and other researchers must get permission to do research on human subjects. Although the system was established as a means of regulating research, it regulates research by licensing speech and the press. It is, in fact, so sweeping a system of licensing speech and the press that it is reminiscent of the seventeenth century, when Galileo Galilei had to submit to licensing and John Milton protested against it. Accordingly, it is necessary to examine the constitutionality of IRB licensing and, more …

How Does "Equal Liberty" Fare In Relation To Other Approaches To The Religion Clauses?, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

As one of four contributors to an issue celebrating Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager's Religious Freedom and the Constitution, I have chosen to write an Essay that differs from an ordinary review. I compare the authors' approach with two other recent formulations of what should be central for the jurisprudence of the Religion Clauses. Since I have recently published my own treatment of the Free Exercise Clause, and a second volume on the Establishment Clause is in the pipeline toward publication, I do not here present my own positive views (though I provide references for interested readers). Those views …

The Public's Right To Fair Use: Amending Section 107 To Avoid The "Fared Use" Fallacy, Wendy J. Gordon, Daniel Bahls

Faculty Scholarship

Under provocative titles like "Fared Use" and "The End of Friction," commentators argue about whether or not the copyright doctrine of fair use should exist in a world of instantaneous transactions. As collecting societies such as the Copyright Clearance Center have become more powerful, and technologies like cellular phones and the internet have made it possible to purchase digital copies by dialing a number or clicking a mouse, the suggestion is sometimes made that fair use could or should disappear. The Second and Sixth Circuits have flirted with foreclosing fair use if a licensing market is present or possible. The …

Religion And Group Rights: Are Churches (Just) Like The Boy Scouts?, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

What role do religious communities, groups, and associations play - and, what role should they play - in our thinking and conversations about religious freedom and church-state relations? These and related questions - that is, questions about the rights and responsibilities of religious institutions - are timely, difficult, and important. And yet, they are often neglected.

It is not new to observe that American judicial decisions and public conversations about religious freedom tend to focus on matters of individuals' rights, beliefs, consciences, and practices. The special place, role, and freedoms of groups, associations, and institutions are often overlooked. However, if …

The Freedom Of The Church, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This Article focuses on what the American theologian and Jesuit John Courtney Murray called a Great Idea, whose entrance into history marked the beginning of a new civilizational era. That idea was libertas ecclesiae, or the freedom of the Church. It served, according to Harold Berman, as the catalyst for the first major turning point in European history and as the foundation for nearly a millennium of political theory. And, this Article suggests, it remains a crucial component of any plausible and attractive account of religious freedom under and through constitutionally limited government. It is tempting to assume or expect …

The Kerr Principle, State Action, And Legal Rights, Donald J. Herzog

Articles

A Baltimore library refused to admit Louise Kerr to a training program because she was black. Not that it had anything against blacks, but its patrons did. When Kerr launched a civil suit against the library alleging a violation of equal protection of the laws, the courts credited the library's claim that it had no racist purpose, but Kerr still prevailed-even though the case occurred before Title VII and Brown v. Board of Education. Here a neutral and generally applicable rule ("serve the patrons"), when coupled with particular facts about private parties (the white patrons dislike blacks), yielded an …

The Blaine Amendment Of 1876: Harbinger Of Secularism?, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

The Blaine Amendment of 1876 was a Congressional effort to add a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution. The leading feature and central aspiration of the proposal was to prohibit the states from giving financial aid to schools run by sects. Passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives, the Blaine Amendment narrowly failed to secure the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate.

This paper examines the Blaine Amendment as a political phenomenon; that is, as a Republican attempt to exploit anti-Catholic prejudice in a presidential election year. It also looks at the Blaine Amendment constitutionally; that is, for the light it …

Our Structural Constitution: Religious Freedom And Church Autonomy (A Response To Mark Chopko, "Constitutional Reflections On The Parish: An Entity In The Fabric Of The Church."), Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

From the Article

The freedom and autonomy of the Church, for which Mark Chopko has been such an able advocate, are not easily separated from both the history and the health of political freedom under constitutionally limited government. In our political tradition, the challenge has always been to find the limiting principle that would check the encroachments of civil power and preserve these immunities.

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

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 Test That Ate Everything: Intermediate Scrutiny In First Amendment Jurisprudence, Ashutosh Bhagwat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.