First Amendment Commons^™

Tort Liability For Physical Injuries Allegedly Resulting From Media Speech: A Comprehensive First Amendment Approach , Andrew B. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

The End Of New York Times V Sullivan: Reflections On Masson V New Yorker Magazine, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Virtually every year since New York Times v Sullivan, the Supreme Court has decided at least one or two First Amendment cases involving the press. This now seemingly permanent, annual pageant of media cases undoubtedly has significance for the development of both constitutional law and the character of American journalism, though oddly that significance has been little explored in the scholarly literature. This past year the Court had two cases, both of which received an unusual amount of discussion within the press. It is, of course, understandable, even if not wholly defensible, for the press to give disproportionate coverage …

Foreword, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

The mass media are too important to American democracy, too capable of causing injury, and too easy a target for the perennial wish to find a scapegoat for the country's ills ever to be very far from the center of public attention and debate. That is certainly true today. And, though every generation probably thinks that it stands at a crossroads on the question what to do with the media, I would nevertheless venture to say that the issues of our time are more serious, and more complex, than ever before. One can safely predict, in any event, that we …

Draft Of From Privacy To Publicity - 1991, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

In defense of a "right 'to be let alone'", Warren and Brandeis published their landmark article, The Right to Privacy, approximately one hundred years ago. Over seventy years later, the American Law Institute endorsed a tort right in defense of privacy, and also included in its section on privacy rights a cause of action to redress "appropriation" of one's "name or likeness". Since then courts have used various bases to grant celebrities rights to protect their commercial identities from commercial exploitation by others. Although most states now recognize a right of publicity either by judicial decision or statute, the cause …

Prescription Drug Approval And Terminal Diseases: Desperate Times Require Desperate Measures, John P. Dillman

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is no surprise that the press, in exercising its traditional first amendment freedom, often discloses truthful information about individuals that those individuals would prefer to keep private. An inevitable tension exists between the public's right to know and the individual's right to be let alone.' What is surprising, however, especially given the historic recognition of both a free press and individual privacy as rights fundamental to the preservation of American society, is that the privacy interests of the individual almost always lose. The prevalent rationale for this lopsided result is that the first amendment protects the values promoted by …

Title Vii As Censorship: Hostile Environment Harassment And The First Amendment, Kingsley R. Browne

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Abortion Rights, Eileen Kaufman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983, Honorable George C. Pratt, Martin A. Schwartz, Leon Friedman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Speech And The Press

Touro 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.

National Endowment Of The Art's Controversial Obscenity Regulation And Its Constitutional Ramifications, Jodi Cantor

St. Thomas Law Review

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and analyze the constitutional ramifications of the controversy involving the National Endowment of the Arts. Specifically, the controversy is based on obscenity restrictions on government funding. The paper begins by explaining the purpose and goals behind the National Endowment of the Arts. Next, the controversy itself and the subsequent enactment of the Interior Appropriations bill and its restrictions are discussed. There are several constitutional issues presented. First, it is strongly urged that the Miller v. California 1 test is misplaced in this area. However, assuming that Miller is applicable, an intent-based analysis …

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 …

Prior Restraint In Light Of United States V. Noriega--Has The Law Been Changed, William M. Hoeveler

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

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.

To Stimulate, Provoke, Or Incite Hate Speech And The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

St. Thomas Law Review

The rule should be a simple one: expression of all ideas is protected, except for those in narrowly defined categories such as state secrets, obscenity, fighting words, and defamation. The last exception should include a civil action for group libel. While the rule may be simple, however, it is not simplistic - nor any more difficult to apply than the analysis required in the fact-finding process of a trial by judge or jury. This paper will briefly examine the various approaches to free speech both in America and elsewhere, suggest how they may be read in harmony with the rule …

Eras Of The First Amendment, David S. Yassky

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I will begin the story with the Founders' understanding of the structural role of the First Amendment. In this understanding, the First Amendment served as a bulwark of state independence. Along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment had as its primary purpose maintenance of the federal system--or, more precisely, protection of the states against federal government overreaching. The Founders' plan left the individual states entirely free to regulate speech, while strictly prohibiting the federal government from displacing the states' various speech regimes.

When the Civil War dramatically reshaped the federal-state relationship, the structural purpose …

Halluctinations Of Neutrality In The Oregon Peyote Case, Harry F. Tepker Jr.

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Dissent, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

There is, and has always been, an abiding tension in first amendment theory. At times, freedom of speech is conceived as having a very practical purpose – as implementing a system designed for yielding truth, or good public policy. Thus, Zechariah Chafee wrote that the first amendment protects the "social interest in the attainment of truth, so that the country may not only adopt the wisest course of action but carry it out in the wisest way," and Alexander Meiklejohn spoke frequently of the first amendment as a practical plan for a self-governing society, engendering "wise decisions." This vision of …

Free Speech: It's Great For Hate, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Product Health Claims And The First Amendment: Scientific Expression And The Twilight Zone Of Commercial Speech, Martin H. Redish

Vanderbilt Law Review

Imagine, for a moment, that Congress has enacted the "False and Misleading Medical and Scientific Reporting Act of 1990." The law is premised on a fear that scientific quackery may cause significant societal harm by confusing the public and inducing its members to seek out costly, worthless, and possibly harmful medical cures or supposed scientific advances. The Act establishes a special commission of scientific and medical experts to rule on the accuracy of any proposed scientific or medical theory that conceivably could cause public harm or confusion. Such scientific or medical assertions must be substantiated to the commission's satisfaction, or …

Regulating Violent Pornography, Deana Pollard

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years the regulation of pornography has received much attention. Traditionally, conservatives have scorned pornography of all types on the basis that pornography is immoral. More recently, some feminists have attacked pornography from a civil rights perspective,claiming that pornography is the sexually explicit subordination of women that leads to discrimination against women in all aspects of life. Nonetheless, the first amendment currently protects all forms of pornography from regulation unless the material is deemed "obscene.

"Researchers, however, have shown that certain types of pornography, such as violent, sexually explicit materials, specifically harm women. The proven relationship between violent pornography …

The Supreme Court And The First Amendment: The 1989-90 Term, Elliot M. Mincberg

NYLS Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

The Video Revolution And The First Amendment: Democratization Of Media Production And Public Access To The Future "Electronic Public Forum", Steven Siegel

NYLS Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

The Lemon Test: Should It Be Retained, Reformulated Or Rejected?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

This essay addresses the Supreme Court's three-part establishment clause test originally set down in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Part I concerns the manner in which the Lemon test has substantially evolved. Part II explores what the evolved test has to offer by way of solving the seemingly conflicting duties not to inhibit free speech and political rights, while at the same time refraining from passing laws "respecting an establishment of religion." Finally, Part III addresses some of the proposals to supplant Lemon altogether.

First Amendment And Land Use, In Recent Developments In Land Use, Planning, And Zoning, Alan C. Weinstein

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Once again in the past year, the U.S. Supreme Court has entered an opinion involving the first amendment that has significant ramifications for local zoning and planning. This marks the third time since 1986 that the Court has handed down a decision in this field. The most important development in this area of the law since last year's committee report is the Supreme Court's decision in FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, which addressed the validity of a comprehensive adult entertainment zoning and licensing ordinance enacted by Dallas in 1986. FW/PBS was followed with great interest because it marked the …

Organizational Standing In Environmental Litigation, Jeanne A. Compitello

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Original Intent, History And Levy’S Establishment Clause. Book Review Of The Establishment Clause: Religion And The First Amendment, By Leonard W. Levy, Ruti Teitel

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

This Gun For Hire: Dancing In The Dark Of The First Amendment, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

Classified advertisements in newspapers and magazines represent a uniquely democratic access to the media for the individual. Without having to pay the thousands of dollars for full-page advertisements, buyers and sellers can purchase space for their offers for only a few dollars, yet have them seen by city-wide or nation-wide audiences. Democracy, though, breeds its own excesses, and the legal question is always how to control that excess without harming the freedom.

As befits a medium open to all, classified advertisements run the gamut of human activity, from the sale of a used automobile to employment to lonely singles looking …

The Tolerant Society: A Response To Critics, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

In writing The Tolerant Society I was, and yet remain, interested in the treatment of speech behavior in this country, a treatment notably more liberal than in other Western democracies. Liberality, however, is not its only surprising or distinguishing hallmark; so too is how the world is characterized under the free speech concept.

For some time, even after I began teaching in the first amendment area, the scope and nature of protection afforded speech seemed to me obviously right. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me quite extraordinary. Existing free speech theory provided less …