First Amendment Commons^™

The Tools Of Political Dissent: A First Amendment Guide To Gun Registries, Thomas E. Kadri

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

On December 23, 2012, a newspaper in upstate New York published a provocative map. On it appeared the names and addresses of thousands of gun owners in nearby counties, all precisely pinpointed for the world to browse. The source of this information: publicly available data drawn from the state’s gun registry. Legislators were quick to respond. Within a month, a new law offered gun owners the chance to permanently remove their identities from the registry with a simple call to their county clerk. The map raised interesting questions about broadcasting personal information, but a more fundamental question remains: Are these …

Globally Speaking - Honoring The Victims' Stories: Matsuda's Human Rights Praxis, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Globally speaking, international law and the vast majority of domestic legal systems strive to protect the right to freedom of expression. The United States’ First Amendment provides an early historical protection of speech—a safeguard now embraced around the world. The extent of this protection, however, varies among states.

The United States stands alone in excluding countervailing considerations of equality, dignitary, or privacy interests that would favor restrictions on speech. The gravamen of the argument supporting such American exceptionalism is that free expression is necessary in a democracy. Totalitarianism, the libertarian narrative goes, thrives on government control of information to the …

The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court has engaged in an unusual pattern of excessive dicta in cases involving the press. Indeed, a close examination of such cases reveals that it is one of the most consistent, defining characteristics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s media law jurisprudence in the last half century. The Court’s opinions in cases involving the media, while almost uniformly reaching conclusions based on other grounds, regularly include language about the constitutional or democratic character, duty, value, or role of the press — language that could be, but ultimately is not, significant to the constitutional conclusion reached. Although scholars …

The Pitfalls Of The Pittman-Robertson Act: Threats To An American Wildlife Act That Ensnare Hunters And Hikers Alike, Greg Huffaker

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Depicting The Graphic Truth: The Heated Controversy Over Cigarette Warning Labels And The Boundaries Of First Amendment Protection, Brian Fedele

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Failing To Warn In The Context Of Rare Side Effects, Morris Dweck

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Institutional Autonomy And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel

Michigan Law Review

This Review makes two claims. The first is that Paul Horwitz’s excellent book, First Amendment Institutions, depicts the institutionalist movement in robust and provocative form. The second is that it would be a mistake to assume from its immersion in First Amendment jurisprudence (not to mention its title) that the book’s implications are limited to the First Amendment. Professor Horwitz presents First Amendment institutionalism as a wide-ranging theory of constitutional structure whose focus is as much on constraining the authority of political government as it is on facilitating expression. These are the terms on which the book’s argument — and, …

Is Religious Freedom Irrational?, Michael Stokes Paulsen

Michigan Law Review

Brian Leiter is almost exactly half right. There is no convincing secular-liberal argument for religious liberty, in the sense of unique accommodation of religious beliefs and practices specifically because they are religious. Indeed, from a thoroughgoing secularist perspective — from a stance of committed disbelief in the possible reality of God or religious truth, and perhaps also from the perspective of unswerving agnosticism — “toleration” of religion is almost intolerably foolish. Affirmatively protecting the free exercise of religion, in the strong sense of freedom of persons and groups to act on religious convictions in ways opposed to secular legal norms, …

Evaluating Candidacy Restrictions: The Implications Of New York's Modified Approach, Brian Hodgkinson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Curtailing The First Amendment Protection To Discovery, Silvia Durri

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement And The Constitution: Protestors Preoccupied With The First Amendment, Christine Verbitsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Don't Feed The Deer: Misapplications Of Statutory Vagueness And The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, Brian Hodgkinson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contents, First Amendment Law Review

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Political Power, A Religious Agenda, And The Failings Of The Endorsement Test: Hasidic Educational Separatism And The East Ramapo School Board, Kathleen Lockwood

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cooksey V. Futrell: The Fourth Circuit Illustrates How Informal Communications By State Authorities And Regulators Can Be Used To Establish Article Iii Standing And Ripeness In First Amendment Proceedings, Neal A. Inman

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is: How Political Organizations Profiteer Off The First Amendment And What Congress Should Do About It, Philip A. Thompson

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Off-Label Promotion After United States V. Caronia, Brian M. Blood

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reversing The Tide: Restoring First Amendment Ideals In America's Schools Through Legislative Protections For Journalism Students And Advisors, Christine Snyder

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Off-Campus Cyberbullying: First Amendment Problems, Parameters, And Proposal, David R. Hostetler

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unanswered Prayers: Lund V. Rowan County And The Permissiveness Of Sectarian Prayer In Municipalities, Kristopher L. Caudle

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Update To Striking A Balance: Freedom Of The Press Versus Children's Privacy Interests In Juvenile Dependency Proceedings, William Wesley Patton, Kelly Crecco

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toward A Multiple Consciousness Of Language: A Tribute To Professor Mari Matsuda, Shannon Gilreath

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

I am thrilled to be part of this commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Professor Matsuda's influential article Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story. I first read Matsuda's essay as a law student when, I must confess, the mind-numbing one-dimensionality of the law-as one must learn it in the prevailing method-drove me a little crazy. Law school is an environment where the Socratic method reduces people's stories-the stuff of which law is made-to something lawyers like to call "the facts," and where real-life people, in whom I saw so much of myself-people like Michael Hardwick, for example-get …

Unions And Campaign Finance Litigation, Charlotte Garden

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Citizenship At Work: How The Supreme Court Politically Marginalized Public Employees, Ruben J. Garcia

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Lawless Rule Of The Norm In The Government Religious Speech Cases, Kyle Langvardt

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

What You Sign Up For: Public University Restrictions On “Professional” Student Speech After Tatro V. University Of Minnesota, William Bush

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Associations And The Constitution: Four Questions About Four Freedoms, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When should a constitutional democracy allow private associations to discriminate? That question has become prominent once again, not only in the United States but abroad as well. John Inazu provides a provocative answer in his impressive Article, The Four Freedoms and the Future of Religious Liberty. According to his proposal, “strong pluralism,” associations should have a constitutional right to limit membership on any ground, including race. Strong pluralism articulates only three limits: It does not apply to the government, to commercial entities, or to monopolistic groups. In this Response, I raise four questions about Four Freedoms. First, I ask why …

What The Supreme Court Thinks Of The Press And Why It Matters, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, in cases involving the institutional press, the United States Supreme Court has offered characterizations of the purpose, duty, role, and value of the press in a democracy. An examination of the tone and quality of these characterizations over time suggests a downward trend, with largely favorable and praising characterizations of the press devolving into characterizations that are more distrusting and disparaging.

This Essay explores this trend, setting forth evidence of the Court’s changing view of the media—from the effusively complimentary depictions of the media during the Glory Days of the 1960s and 1970s to the …

False Speech: Quagmire?, Christopher P. Guzelian

San Diego Law Review

Recently decided cases in several Federal Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court show that First Amendment false speech case law is contradictory and unpredictable. This Article gives examples and concludes that legal liability for false speech will continue to be arbitrary and even susceptible to intentionally unjust decisionmaking if judges and juries individually and collectively disregard or downplay the necessity of an honest search for truth under the guise of tolerance and evenhandedness. If Americans wish to avoid an anything-goes “quagmire” about truth, they must—despite inevitable resistance in a civilization increasingly rife with skeptics—undergo transformations of their …

Seeking Guidance? New Legal Challenges To 'Legislative Prayer', Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

It has long been the tradition of American citizens to pray for divine blessing and guidance in their civic business. This tradition, which predates the founding of the American Republic, finds expression at all levels of government, federal, state, and local. It was embraced by the First Continental Congress, the same Congress that both employed a paid chaplain and later drafted the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; it was maintained during the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment; and it persists in various guises to this day.