First Amendment Commons^™

A Right To Know How You'll Die: A First Amendment Challenge To State Secrecy Statutes Regarding Lethal Injection Drugs, Kelly A. Mennemeier

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

In the years since 2008, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a commonly used lethal injection protocol in Baze v. Rees, states have shifted away from the approved protocol and turned towards new drugs, drug protocols, and drug sources to carry out state-sponsored executions by lethal injection. Even as states have shifted to new, untested protocols and less-regulated sources than they used in pre-Baze years, state legislatures have enacted and amended secrecy statutes that hide information about the drug protocols and sources of lethal injection drugs from the press, the public, and condemned prisoners. Meanwhile, a …

Campus Speech And Harassment, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

You Speak An "Infinite Deal Of Nothing": Prioritizing Free Speech Over Other Fundamental Rights, Jacqueline Ahearn

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

This Comment will assert that the Court has likely caused a future increase in violence against women and other people who utilize, work for, or support abortion clinics, weakened the fundamental right to abortion, and prioritized free speech over equally important rights and interests. Part II will provide background on abortion and demonstrate the change in attitudes toward and increasing restrictions of abortion. Part III will discuss the history of buffer zones and McCullen and will look at how McCullen departs from free speech precedent. It will argue that the Court has incorrectly prioritized free speech as a result …

Why Anti-Surcharge Laws Do Not Violate A Merchant's Freedom Of Speech, Annie P. Anderson

American University Law Review

First Amendment litigation is surrounding state anti-surcharge laws, which prevent merchants from imposing surcharges on transactions where customers use credit cards. These laws effectively prevent stores from passing credit card "swipe fees" onto their customers. Merchants argue that because the laws still allow them to provide discounts to customers who use other forms of payment, the laws violate their First Amendment rights by impermissibly restricting the way the stores can communicate. The state governments, in contrast, have defended the laws by asserting that they regulate conduct, not business speech, and therefore do not violate the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court …

Revenge Porn And Narrowing The Cda: Litigating A Web-Based Tort In Washington, Jessy R. Nations

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Effective September 2015, the Washington State Legislature passed two statutes which created both civil and criminal liability against individuals who distribute "intimate images" of others without their consent. These statutes were created to combat the modern phenomenon colloquially known as "revenge porn." Revenge porn is the non-consensual distribution of nude or sexually explicit photographs or videos, created with the intent to humiliate or harass the person these images depict. In addition to causing emotional damage to the victim, revenge porn can also produce broader consequences such as loss of employment and stalking. Traditionally, litigating these kinds of offenses has been …

A License To Infringe: The Tenth Circuit's Reliance On The Reasonable Observer Test To Determine Symbolic Speech Protection Of License Plates, Hayley Stillwell

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Bds Movement: That Which We Call A Foreign Boycott, By Any Other Name, Is Still Illegal, Marc A. Greendorfer

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Highway To The Danger Drone: Reconciling First Amendment Rights Of Drone Owners And Privacy Rights Of Individuals In Creating A Comprehensive Statutory Scheme In Rhode Island, David M. Remillard

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

With The Best Of Intentions: First Amendment Pitfalls For Government Regulation Of Signage And Noise, Kara Consalo

Journal Publications

A basic tenant of American jurisprudence is the protection of speech under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as sections 4 and 9 of Article I of the Florida Constitution. While the extent of free speech is not limitless, this Article demonstrates that government attempts to regulate speech through regulation of signage and noise has been significantly curtailed by both federal and state courts in recent years. Further, a constitutional challenge to a government regulation will often be reviewed de novo as a pure question of law and is therefore subject to a …

Siri-Ously 2.0: What Artificial Intelligence Reveals About The First Amendment, Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton, Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

The First Amendment may protect speech by strong Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this Article, we support this provocative claim by expanding on earlier work, addressing significant concerns and challenges, and suggesting potential paths forward.

This is not a claim about the state of technology. Whether strong AI — as-yet-hypothetical machines that can actually think — will ever come to exist remains far from clear. It is instead a claim that discussing AI speech sheds light on key features of prevailing First Amendment doctrine and theory, including the surprising lack of humanness at its core.

Courts and commentators wrestling with free …

Government Speech And The War On Terror, Helen Norton

Publications

The government is unique among speakers because of its coercive power, its substantial resources, its privileged access to national security and intelligence information, and its wide variety of expressive roles as commander-in-chief, policymaker, educator, employer, property owner, and more. Precisely because of this power, variety, and ubiquity, the government's speech can both provide great value and inflict great harm to the public. In wartime, more specifically, the government can affirmatively choose to use its voice to inform, inspire, heal, and unite -- or instead to deceive, divide, bully, and silence.

In this essay, I examine the U.S. government's role as …

Corporate Transparency And The First Amendment: Compelled Disclosures In The Wake Of National Association Of Manufacturers V. Sec, Emma Land

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

A License To Infringe: The Tenth Circuit’S Reliance On The Reasonable Observer Test To Determine Symbolic Speech Protection Of License Plates, Hayley Ray Scott

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can The Undue-Burden Standard Add Clarity And Rigor To Intermediate Scrutiny In First Amendment Jurisprudence? A Proposal Cutting Across Constitutional Domains For Time, Place & Manner Regulations, Clay Calvert, Minch Minchin

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Costly Exercise Of Religion: Issues On Diocesan Bankruptcy Estate Formation And First Amendment Implications, Simon W. Bright

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indecency Four Years After Fox Television Stations: From Big Papi To A Porn Star, An Egregious Mess At The Fcc Continues, Clay Calvert, Minch Minchin, Keran Billaud, Kevin Bruckenstein, Tershone Phillips

University of Richmond Law Review

Using the WDBJ case as an analytical springboard, this article examines the tumultuous state of the FCC's indecency enforcement regime more than three years after the Supreme Court's June 2012 opinion in Fox Television Stations. Part I of this article briefly explores the missed First Amendment opportunities in Fox Television Stations, as well as some possible reasons why the Supreme Court chose to avoid the free-speech questions in that case." Part II addresses the FCC's decision in September 2012 to target only egregious instances of broadcast indecency and, in the process, to jettison hundreds of thousands of complaints that had …

Making News: Balancing Newsworthiness And Privacy In The Age Of Algorithms, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In deciding privacy lawsuits against media defendants, courts have for decades deferred to the media. They have given it wide berth to determine what is newsworthy and so, what is protected under the First Amendment. And in doing so, they have often spoken reverently of the editorial process and journalistic decision-making.

Yet, in just the last several years, news production and consumption has changed dramatically. As we get more of our news from digital and social media sites, the role of information gatekeeper is shifting from journalists to computer engineers, programmers, and app designers. The algorithms that the latter write …

Wisconsin Law In The Age Of Individualism, Joseph A. Ranney

Marquette Law Review

None

Chilling Rights, Toni M. Massaro

University of Colorado Law Review

A persistent trope in free speech doctrine is that overbroad laws chill protected expression and compromise the breathing room needed for a vibrant marketplace of ideas. The conventional restrictions on facial challenges of measures that sweep beyond legitimate regulatory zones are relaxed. Whether and to what extent this liberal approach to judicial review actually governs in free speech law and not elsewhere, and whether this is constitutionally or normatively defensible, have been the subject of considerable and exceptionally insightful scholarship. Yet the United States Supreme Court has given the best of this work slight notice.

This Article proposes a new …

Memo To Cannabis Regulators: The Expressions Hair Design Decision Does Not Limit Your Broad Authority To Restrict All Forms Of Discounting, Leslie Gielow Jacobs

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Fighting Falsity: Fake News, Facebook, And The First Amendment, Joel Timmer

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Fake news stories about the major presidential candidates became widespread on Facebook and elsewhere online in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, raising questions of whether fake news influenced the outcome of the election. The ease and speed with which false news stories can spread online poses a threat to the efficient functioning of our democracy, a threat the government has a compelling interest in addressing. Political speech, however, even when false, is highly protected by the First Amendment, making it unlikely a valid law against fake news could be crafted. Candidates might pursue defamation actions against …

First Amendment Commercial Speech—Swipe Fees Mute Texas Merchants, Shelby T. Perry

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Balance Between Secrecy And Transparency: The Prosecution Of Nationai Security Leaks Under The Espionage Act, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This Issue Brief reviews the relationship between secrecy, transparency and accountability in the United States, including the role of anonymous leaks. It also examines the threat that increased Espionage Act prosecutions pose to government accountability and discusses why changes to the Espionage Act are necessary to preserve an appropriate balance between government secrecy and transparency.

Legislating The First Amendment: A Trio Of Recommendations For Lawmakers Targeting Free Expression, Clay Calvert

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

This Article offers three recommendations for lawmakers attempting to restrict expression that is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. The proposals include: (1) embracing a "prism of protection" through which all potential laws affecting expression are filtered prior to drafting; (2) mandating inclusion of sunset clauses in all statutes that may detrimentally impact free expression; and (3) adopting a comprehensive legislative oversight and review process for determining if an expired statute should be renewed, revised or abandoned. Although far from creating what Dean Roscoe Pound more than 100 years ago called a "science of legislation, " the proposals here nonetheless …

The “Sovereigns Of Cyberspace” And State Action: The First Amendment’S Application (Or Lack Thereof) To Third-Party Platforms, Jonathan Peters

Scholarly Works

Many scholars have commented that the state action doctrine forecloses use of the First Amendment to constrain the policies and practices of online service providers. But few have comprehensively studied this issue, and the seminal article exploring “[c]yberspace and the [s]tate [a]ction [d]ebate” is fifteen years old, published before the U.S. Supreme Court reformulated the federal approach to state action. It is important to give the state action doctrine regular scholarly attention, not least because it is increasingly clear that “the private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression.” It is critical to understand whether the First …

Freedom Of Speech And The Criminal Law, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Because the Free Speech Clause limits government power to enact penal statutes, it has a close relationship to American criminal law. This Article explores that relationship at a time when a fast-growing “decriminalization movement” has taken hold across the nation. At the heart of the Article is the idea that free speech law has developed in ways that have positioned the Supreme Court to use that law to impose significant new limits on the criminalization of speech. More particularly, this article claims that the Court has developed three distinct decision-making strategies for decriminalizing speech based on constitutional principles. The first …

The Fragility Of The Free American Press, Ronnell Anderson Jones, Sonja R. West

Scholarly Works

President Donald Trump has faced criticism for attacking the press and for abandoning longstanding traditions of accommodating and respecting it. This Essay argues that the national discussion spurred by Trump’s treatment of the press has fallen short of capturing the true seriousness of the situation. Trump’s assault on the custom of press accommodation follows a generation-long collapse of other major press protections. In order to fully understand the critical juncture at which American press freedom now stands, we must expand the discussion beyond talk of a rogue president’s aberrant attacks on the press and consider the increasingly fragile edifice on …

Render Unto Caesar: How Misunderstanding A Century Of Free Exercise Jurisprudence Forged And Then Fractured The Rfra Coalition, John S. Blattner

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith …

The Institutional Case For Partisan Gerrymandering Claims, G. Michael Parsons

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

For voters hoping the Supreme Court’s 2017 Term brings relief from partisan gerrymandering, the end of the 2016 Term was inauspicious. In Cooper v. Harris, the majority assumed the legitimacy of “partisan advantage” arguments while the dissent—including Justice Kennedy—warned about the “serious institutional and federalism implications” of judicial intervention in the redistricting process. If past is prologue, this concern for institutional and structural interests does not bode well.

Domestic Violence Law, Abusers’ Intent, And Social Media: How Transaction-Bound Statutes Are The True Threats To Prosecuting Perpetrators Of Gender-Based Violence, Megan L. Bumb

Brooklyn Law Review

The rapid expansion of social media has brought with it a new platform for perpetrators of domestic violence to assert power and control over their victims. The statutes presently used to prosecute abusers fail to protect victims from social media threats and to punish abusers for making those threats. Using the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Elonis v. United States, this note proposes a straightforward solution to a multifaceted problem—how to better protect victims of domestic violence from social media threats while maintaining abusers’ First Amendment rights. The answer is not mere clarification of the true threat doctrine; it is …