First Amendment Commons^™

A Response To Professor Benkler, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

Professor Hamilton explores the constitutional complexity uncovered by Professor Benkler in his piece, Constitutional Bounds of Database Protection: The Role of Judicial Review in the Creation and Definition of Private Rights in Information. Specifically, Professor Hamilton highlights that our democratic structure is characterized by representation rather than self-rule. In doing so, she refocuses the role of information in the political process and highlights that different types of information require different levels of access. Professor Hamilton's analysis further illustrates how an imprecise use of terminology may lead to incorrect conclusions regarding information jurisprudence. Through her more refined lens, Professor Hamilton reconsiders …

The First Amendment, Children, The Internet, And America's Public Libraries, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Quo Vadis, Posadas?, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This examination looks at Virginia's ban on speech advertising motorcycles and revisits the question raised in the Posadas decision - may a state ban speech about a legal product the state could ban if it so desired. This article uses comparisons to the government employee speech cases to further illuminate the issue.

Book Review Of Silencing The Opposition: Government Strategies Of Suppression Of Freedom Of Expression, By Craig R. Smith, Jethro K. Lieberman

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Once And Future Property-Based Vision Of The First Amendment, John O. Mcginnis

Articles

The growth of the information superhighway depends not only on technological developments, but also on our society's commitment to the free flow of information. Paradoxically, however, as the digital revolution in telecommunications is bringing the information superhighway into sharp focus, the justifications for contemporary First Amendment jurisprudence are becoming blurred.

Censorship Of Cyberspace A Personal Choice, I. Trotter Hardy

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Defending Pornography: Free Speech & The Fight For Women’S Rights, Nadine Strossen

Books

The newest attacks on the First Amendment and on free expression have come from a vocal and influential segment of the feminist movement that has launched a successful - and puritanical - crusade against "pornography" as the root of discrimination and violence against women. But, as Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, forcefully argues, this view of sexuality as inherently dangerous does profound damage to human rights in general, and to women's rights in particular. In Defending Pornography, Strossen shows that, since the late 1970s, a new and startling alliance has been fused between "procensorship" feminists, most …

Censorship By Media Elites Will Ultimately Threaten The Republic, Michael E. Bailey

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Sensitive Society, James F. Fitzpatrick

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

In The Battle Over Tv Violence, The Communications Act Should Be Cheered, Not Changed!, Carl R. Ramey

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The H-Bomb And The First Amendment, Erwin Knoll

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Limitations On Corporate Speech: Protection For Shareholders Or Abridgement Of Expression?, Alan J. Meese

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law Of Obscenity And The Assault On Genius, Anne E. Gilson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius by Edward de Grazia

Free Speech For Me—But Not For Thee: How The American Left And Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other, Bradley L. Smith

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other by Nat Hentoff

Girls Should Bring Lawsuits Everywhere . . . Nothing Will Be Corrupted: Pornography As Speech And Product, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Speech For Libraries And Librarians, Rodney A. Smolla

Faculty Publications

Noting the recent bicentennial of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Professor Smolla considers the role of librarians in opposing censorship. He proposes a new principle of "professionalism" to establish the librarian's role, and discusses the principle in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Board of Education v. Pico.

The American Urge To Censor: Freedom Of Expression Versus The Desire To Sanitize Society - From Anthony Comstock To 2 Live Crew, Margaret A. Blanchard

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cracking Down On The Trade In Child Pornography And Pornography For Children: More Prosecutions, Stiffer Sentences And Now, After Osborne V. Ohio, No Place To Hide, Harvey L. Zuckman

St. Thomas Law Review

The life of the child pornographer, while never easy, became increasingly difficult in the 1980s when the federal and state governments cast their full attention on these exploiters of children and their pedophiliac customers. This article will review the law in this area, the legislative and judicial process by which the federal and state government have attempted to stamp out the trade in child pornography particularly in the past decade and the first decision of the Supreme Court in this new decade making it more difficult than ever to store, handle and move such material, even surrepticiously.

The Bill Of Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Censorship, And The Cop On The Beat, Roger Handberg

St. Thomas Law Review

This short essay reemphasizes a simple truth about the exercise of the various freedoms embodied within the Bill of Rights. That is: constitutional rights are not self enforcing and their effective articulation is dependent upon the restraint of officers of the state, principally the individual police officer on the beat. Courts are crude and often ineffectual protectors of those rights because their judgments and pronouncements occur long after the events have transpired. This distance is true even when an injunction has been rendered explicitly protecting the exercise of such rights. Even in those exceptionally rare cases when an injunction is …

The Media And The Censors Blue Pencil, D Paul, Barbara Singer, P. Steinle, J Wragg

St. Thomas Law Review

The following are excerpts taken from a panel discussion held at St. Thomas University School of Law on March 7, 1991.

The Apologetics Of Suppression: The Regulation Of Pornography As Act And Idea, Steven G. Gey

Michigan Law Review

The first three parts of this article discuss in detail the relationship between the Supreme Court's obscenity rulings and the academic theories that have been offered to bolster the conclusions reached by the Court in this area. Part IV of the article considers a contrary theory of free expression that requires constitutional protection for the dissemination and possession of pornography. In this section I argue that the present efforts to ban pornography are directly linked to a tolerance model of free expression. The tolerance model, which is usually contrasted with an analytical approach characterized by Holmesian skepticism, necessarily relies upon …

Propaganda, Xenophobia, And The First Amendment, Rodney A. Smolla, Stephen A. Smith

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Brief Amici Curiae Of Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce, Et Al., In American Booksellers Association V. Hudnut, Nan D. Hunter, Sylvia A. Law

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The document that follows represents both a legal brief and a political statement. It was written for two purposes: to mobilize, in a highly visible way, a broad spectrum of feminist opposition to the enactment of laws expanding state suppression of sexually explicit material; and to place before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit a cogent legal argument for the constitutional invalidity of an Indianapolis municipal ordinance that would have permitted private civil suits to ban such material, purportedly to protect women. Drafting this brief was one of the most demanding and exhilarating assignments either author has yet …

Propaganda, Xenophobia, And The First Amendment, Rodney A. Smolla, Stephen A. Smith

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Freedom Of Speech And Of The Press—Officials May Censor School-Sponsored Student Speech If Censorship Has Valid Educational Purpose, Charles William Burton

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Speak, The Right To Hear, And The Right Not To Hear: The Technological Resolution To The Cable/Pornography Debate, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

The advent of cable television presented a new opportunity to consider the competing interests on each side of the free speech/pornography debate. This Article attempts to construct an analysis that will be consistent with Supreme Court teaching on how government, under the first amendment, may constitutionally regulate legal obscenity, particularly in the name of protecting those who wish to avoid exposure to such material.

The Article shows how, unlike earlier battles over technology and pornography, cable television presented the novel opportunity to have a technological rather than a censorial solution to this difficult problem.

Congressional Power And Free Speech: Levy’S Legacy Revisited, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction To National Security And The First Amendment, William B. Spong Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nylon Curtain: America's National Border And The Free Flow Of Ideas, Burt Neuborne, Steven R. Shapiro

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Student Publications, The First Amendment, And State Speech, T. D. Buckley Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

The lower federal courts and state courts have been applying the first amendment in student press cases arising at public colleges and high schools since 1967. But ordinary first amendment analysis is inadequate in most student press disputes. As a result the courts in some cases have been unable to articulate satisfactorily the bases for good decisions. And in other cases the real issues generated in student press litigations have been ignored. This Article evaluates the cases so far decided, and proposes a new approach to student press disputes which would rationalize what the courts have intuitively done correctly in …