First Amendment Commons^™

Religion And Race: The Ministerial Exception Reexamined, Ian Bartrum

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Religious Freedom, Church–State Separation, And The Ministerial Exception, Thomas C. Berg, Kimberlee Wood Colby, Carl H. Esbeck, Richard W. Garnett

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Brief Of The Intellectual Property Amicus Brief Clinic Of The University Of New Hampshire School Of Law As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Susan M. Richey, John M. Greabe, Keith M. Harrison, J. Jeffrey Hawley

Law Faculty Scholarship

Amicus brief filed by the Intellectual Property Amicus Brief Clinic of the University of New Hampshire School of Law with the United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit regarding United States v. Xavier Alvarez, Docket No. 11-210

Keep The Poking To Yourself, Mrs. Robinson: The Missouri Facebook Statute And Its Implications For Teacher Free Speech Under The First Amendment, Alex Lehrer

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Public Corruption Concerns And Counter-Majoritarian Democracy Definition In Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission, Daaron Kimmel

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In determining the shape of the free speech rights and anti-corruption concerns that courts must balance in campaign finance cases, judges are influenced by their own underlying understandings of what an ideal democracy should look like. For judges to decide whether the government is appropriately regulating the political process, the rules that allow all citizens to interact with and shape their democracy, judges must first decide what that democracy ought to look like. This affords judges a great deal of discretion in campaign finance cases. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a particularly bold judicial attempt to reshape the …

All A Twitter: Social Networking, College Athletes, And The First Amendment, Davis Walsh

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

False Valor: Amending The Stolen Valor Act To Conform With The First Amendment's Fraudulent Speech Exception, Jeffery C. Barnum

Washington Law Review

The Stolen Valor Act (SVA or “the Act”) was enacted to protect against “fraudulent claims” of receipt of military honors or decorations. It does so by criminalizing false verbal or written claims regarding such awards. However, the Act failed to include all of the elements of an anti-fraud measure required by the First Amendment. Most critically, the SVA fails to require actual reliance on the part of the defrauded. Although fraud is generally not protected by the First Amendment, courts cannot construe the SVA as an anti-fraud measure if the statute does not require actual reliance. Therefore, the SVA as …

When Does F*** Not Mean F***?: Fcc V. Fox Television Stations And A Call For Protecting Emotive Speech, W. Wat Hopkins

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Supreme Court of the United States does not always deal cogently with nontraditional language. The most recent example is FCC v. Fox Television Stations, in which the Justices became sidetracked into attempting to define the f-word and then to determine whether, when used as a fleeting expletive rather than repeatedly, the word is indecent for broadcast purposes. The Court would do well to avoid definitions and heed Justice John Marshall Harlan's advice in Cohen v. California to provide protection for the emotive, as well as the cognitive, element of speech

The "Strong Medicine" Of The Overbreadth Doctrine: When Statutory Exceptions Are No More Than A Placebo, Christopher A. Pierce

Federal Communications Law Journal

In United States v. Stevens, the United States Supreme Court invalidated a federal statute criminalizing the interstate sale and distribution of depictions of animal cruelty on First Amendment grounds. While Stevens demonstrates the Court's reluctance to create a new category of speech outside of First Amendment protection, Stevens also stands for the proposition that borrowing the exceptions clause from the Court's obscenity standard will not adequately protect a statute from invalidation as overbroad. This Note discusses the use of the obscenity standard's exceptions clause in nonobscenity statutes and the Court's treatment of the exceptions clause in Stevens. This Note concludes …

Campus Citizenship And Associational Freedom: An Aristolelian Take On The Nondiscrimination Puzzle, Chapin Cimino

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Student expressive association on campus is a thorny thicket. Student affinity groups often choose to organize around a shared principle or characteristic of the groups’ members, which, by definition, makes those students different in some way from their peers. In order to preserve the group’s sense of uniqueness, these groups often then wish to control their own membership and voting policies. They feel, in essence, entitled to discriminate—a right arguably embodied by the First Amendment freedom of expressive association. When campus groups actually exercise this right, however, they run into university antidiscrimination policies, which can cost them official campus recognition. …

A Cure For Laryngitis: A First Amendment Challenge To The Nlra's Ban On Secondary Picketing, Joseph L. Guza

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Humanitarian Law Project And The Supreme Court's Construction Of Terrorism, Wadie E. Said

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Networks & Political Uprisings, Nima Astyani

Student Works

No abstract provided.

The New Resident Evil? State Regulation Of Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, James Dunkelberger

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Technologies Of Control And The Future Of The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Collateral Censorship And The Limits Of Intermediary Immunity, Felix T. Wu

Articles

The law often limits the liability of an intermediary for the speech it carries. And rightly so, because imposing liability on intermediaries can induce them to filter out questionable content and this “collateral censorship” risks suppressing much lawful, even highly beneficial, speech. The “collateral censorship” rationale has its limits, though, and correspondingly, so should the applicability of intermediary immunity. The worry with collateral censorship is not just that intermediaries censor, but that they censor more than an original speaker would in the face of potential liability. Increased censorship, in turn, is the product of applying liability targeted at original speakers …

Censoring The Internet, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Freedom Of Speech And Religion - October 2009 Term, Burt Neuborne, Michael C. Dorf

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Occupation — Place, Balance, And Proximity, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Place, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Stolen Valor Act Discussion, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Public Protest 1.0, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Taxes, Free Expression, And Adult Entertainment, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

The interaction of morality and money produces interesting results. One manifestation is legislation in some states and proposals in others to impose higher taxes on “gentlemen’s show lounges” (OK, I mean strip clubs) and other venues of adult entertainment.

In 2010 and 2011 two state supreme courts passed on the legality of different forms of those taxes, upholding them against challenges that they infringed on free speech/free expression rights protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This installment of the column considers those two decisions: the February 2010 Utah decision in Bushco v. Utah State Tax Commi …

Trans-Border Exclusion And Execution, Timothy Zick

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Religious Documents And The Establishment Clause, Brian Sites

Faculty Scholarship

A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a contract lawyer's office. Fortunately, this is not the opening of a lawyer joke, but it might well be the prelude to a complicated constitutional question about the interaction of the First Amendment and contract law. Pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, religious schools, churches, religious businesses, and a wealth of faith-based groups all enter into contractual agreements. Not surprisingly, these agreements often contain religious language, and sometimes they even hinge on provisions invoking expressly religious concepts. Religious documents come in a variety of forms, including marriage contracts, disposition of property documents, agreements …

Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article argues that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) should apply to private suits involving government action, proposing a framework where RFRA creates a claim against private defendants acting under federal law and serves as a defense when religious freedom is substantially burdened. It advocates for a state actor analysis to determine liability, ensuring religious freedom is protected while balancing public interests.

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker, even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …

A Cure For A "Public Concern": Washington's New Anti-Slapp Law, Tom Wyrwich

Washington Law Review

In March 2010, the Washington State Legislature passed its Act Limiting Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. The new Act fills a critical void in Washington’s protection of free expression and petition rights. The Washington Act protects the free expression of Washington citizens by shielding them from meritless lawsuits designed only to incur costs and chill future expression. This Comment offers interpretive guidance for Washington courts by examining the new law, its legislative history, its constitutional underpinnings, and its relationship to the influential California anti-SLAPP statute on which it is modeled. Although the Washington Act shares many identical provisions with the …

The Auto-Authentication Of The Page: Purely Written Speech And The Doctrine Of Obscenity, Ryen Rasmus

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Stop With The Exceptions: A Narrow Interpretation Of Tinker For All Student Speech Claims, Matthew Sheffield

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article examines the evolution of First Amendment rights for students in public schools, focusing on the landmark *Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District* decision and its subsequent interpretations. While Tinker established that students retain their constitutional rights in schools, later Supreme Court rulings, such as Fraser, Hazelwood, and Morse, have narrowed its application, balancing student free speech against school administrative concerns. The article argues that these post-Tinker decisions are consistent with the original intent of Tinker and advocate for a narrow application of its principles to maintain equilibrium between student rights and school authority.