First Amendment Commons^™

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 …

The First Amendment At Home And Abroad, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

The powerful appeal of the First Amendment flows from the rhetoric it has inspired. Holmes's "[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe ... that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market"; Brandeis's " ... the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; ... order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; ... it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; fear breeds repression; ... repression breeds hate; ... hate menaces stable …

Affirmative Action In The Marketplace Of Ideas, Rodney A. Smolla

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Abortion Rights, Eileen Kaufman

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 First Amendment, Burt Neuborne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Harlan And The Bill Of Rights: A Model For How A Classic Conservative Court Would Enforce The Bill Of Rights, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

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 …

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.

The New Politics Of Pornography, René L. Todd

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New Politics of Pornography by Donald A. Downs

Rico Threatens Civil Liberties, Antonio J. Califa

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of conspiracy, according to Justice Robert Jackson, exemplifies the "'tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.' "" This same phenomenon is present today in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970 (RICO). RICO has moved beyond logic and intent into areas far removed from racketeering. Originally intended to combat organized crime, RICO is used increasingly in ideological disputes. For example, it has been used against abortion clinic protesters and anti-pornography groups.

This Article argues that using RICO in ideological disputes is inappropriate and harmful because it results in the chilling …

The Regulation Of Speech Incident To The Sale Or Promotion Of Goods And Services: A Multifactor Approach, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Insults And Epithets: Are They Protected Speech?, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

It is a privilege to offer a lecture in this series named for Edward J. Bloustein. Not many lecture series honor sitting university presidents who deliver the first lecture in the series; but President Bloustein is the very rare president whose long tenure in office has been accompanied by continuing academic productivity. That achievement is remarkable.

When I tentatively chose this topic a year ago, I knew it involved the application of philosophical insights to serious practical questions, the kind of work that President Bloustein has done so well. I also knew that the search for those aspects of human …

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 …

O'Er The Land Of The Free: Flag Burning As Speech, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

I am honored to lecture at this school, which has a number of friends, and a much larger circle of scholars whose work I admire. I am honored to lecture in the memory of Melville Nimmer, one of the country's leading thinkers on freedom of speech as well as its foremost expert on copyright. I met Professor Nimmer only once, at a lunch with Vince Blasi. My recollection of the lunch is distinct. Gently and in the most friendly way, but with irrefutable logic, they showed me that a position I had held for more than a decade about immigration …

Some Comments On Professor Neuborne's Paper, Henry Paul Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to comment upon Professor Neuborne's paper; it is a provoking effort to make sense out of important aspects of the first amendment. At the outset, I should say that there is much in the paper with which I agree. But for the purposes of this essay I will focus on points of disagreement.

Professor Neuborne's specific focus is an analysis of the Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC) regulation of speech. The final twenty-one pages of his paper are directly concerned with analysis and criticism of the existing case law on the subject. …

Harry Kalven, The Proust Of The First Amendment, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Reading A Worthy Tradition makes one nostalgic. For the generation of scholars who cut their first amendment teeth on Harry Kalven's articles, this book offers the experience of a recaptured past. The question is, however, does it offer anything more?

The Future And The First Amendment, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

It is my honor and pleasure to deliver this year's Sullivan Lecture. I have an especially warm feeling toward this Law School. Two years ago, at the invitation of your Professor Distelhorst, I participated in the Capital Law School program for teaching American law to Japanese lawyers. For five stimulating weeks I enjoyed the intellectual and social company· of Japanese attorneys, while teaching them the outlines of American constitutional law. Twice a week, in the evening, for three continuous hours, and after a full work day, these dedicated lawyers would willingly become students again and suffer patiently through my highly …

The First Amendment And The Ideal Of Civic Courage: The Brandeis Opinion In Whitney V. California, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

"[T]he working class and the employing class have nothing in common ....” So began the Preamble to the Constitution of the I.W.W., the Industrial Workers of the World. "Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the World organize as a class, take possession of the earth, and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system." Nicknamed the Wobblies, this group advocated a form of militant unionism built around the ideal of One Big Union embracing all industries. The I.W.W. enjoyed its strongest appeal among the miners, loggers, agricultural laborers, and construction workers of …

Holmes And Brandeis: Libertarian And Republican Justifications For Free Speech, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

Writing The Name of the Rose, observed Umberto Eco, made him aware of the "echoes of intertextuality." He discovered what "Homer, Rabelais and Cervantes have always known: . . .books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told."' The same applies to political and legal theories: they weave the past into the present. Thus, in articulating justifications for freedom of speech, one may look to modern works such as Milton or John Stuart Mill, or one may reach farther back to Aristotle, Plato or Pericles. The choice of intellectual sources as …

Racism In Great Britain: Drawing The Line On Free Speech, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

On any given Sunday in Hyde Park, London's huge urban sanctuary of tailored ponds and manicured gardens, one is likely to hear outrageous and provocative public utterances about race and religion. A few of those venting their spleen here are practicing rhetoricians, a few are clearly acting-but others are absolutely sincere in their hatemongering and passionate in their vilification. All of them are focal points for assembled spectators of varying classes, many of whom are professional hecklers. The police, milling about to put down possible disturbances of the peace, are seldom called upon to quell roused rabble. Thus is this …

Teaching Tolerance, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Teaching Function Of The First Amendment, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

In this important book, Professor Bollinger seeks to understand and remedy the inadequacy he perceives in the way our legal culture deals with extremist speech. He argues that the high level of protection the first amendment has been construed to require serves a social function that has not been fully recognized or carefully evaluated. His thesis is that the contemporary social function of the idea of freedom of speech is to help the society develop a general capacity for tolerance, a capacity that determines how we respond to many forms of conduct as well as speech. Once this function is …

Freedom Of Speech As Therapy, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Life Without "Must Carry": A Preliminary Analysis, Michael Botein

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Conversation With Lee Bollinger - 1985, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

First, Lee Bollinger (and others) seem to feel that the misappropriation "urge" makes sense when seen against a background where most things one creates DO get property treatment. Lee therefore says it's my burden as a writer to explain why this area is different--both to succeed in making a case clear, AND to create barriers between this area and others. Essentially, he argues, people will be afraid that less-than-complete property here will erode property elsewhere.

Religious Convictions And Lawmaking, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, presented as the 1985-86 Thomas M. Cooley Lectures at the University of Michigan School of Law on March 10-12, 1986, Professor Greenawalt addresses the role that religious conviction properly plays in the liberal citizen's political decisionmaking in a liberal democratic society. Rejecting the notion that all political questions can be decided on rational secular grounds, Professor Greenawalt argues that the liberal democratic citizen may rely on his religious convictions when secular morality is unable to resolve issues critical to a political decision. The examples of animal rights and environmental protection, abortion, and welfare assistance illustrate situations where …

Group Libel Versus Free Speech: When Big Brother Should Butt In, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

The year 1984 may not have fulfilled Orwellian prophecies of governmental totalitarianism, but citizens of the world remain no less concerned about the quality of their civil liberties. If people could live peacefully and productively together under a strict caste system, or blissfully in enslavement, there would be little impetus to identify 'natural rights' nor insistence upon what we know as 'freedom.' But human experience has amply demonstrated the universal yearning for personal liberty, as well as the need to legislate against its deprivation.

Thus Big Brother has been the enemy from long before the Magna Carta and long since …