First Amendment Commons^™

Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech And How Copying Serves It, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defenders of transformative uses have invoked the First Amendment to bolster claims that such uses should not be subject to the copyright owner’s permission. But this focus on transformation is critically incomplete, leaving unchallenged much of copyright’s scope, despite the large number of nontransformative copying activities that are also instances of free speech. The current debate leaves the way open for expansions of copyright that, while not targeted at dissenting viewpoints, nonetheless may have a profoundly negative effect on freedom of speech. In other words, transformation has limited our thinking about the free speech interests implicated by copying. This essay …

Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing?: Jurgen Bϋssow’S Battle Against Hate-Speech On The Internet, Eric T. Eberwine

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Two Wrongs Make A Right: Hybrid Claims Of Discrimination, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

This Note reinterprets and recontextualizes the pronouncement in Employment Division v. Smith (Smith II) that exemptions from generally applicable laws will not be granted unless claims of free exercise are accompanied by the assertion of another constitutional right. It argues that when Arab American Muslims, and others who are of minority race and religion, bring claims for exemption from generally applicable laws on the basis of free exercise and equal protection principles, they ought to be able to invoke Smith II's hybridity exception, thus meriting heightened judicial scrutiny and increased solicitude from courts.

Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Tests, Government Oversight, And The First Amendment: What The Government Can (And Can't) Do To Protect The Public's Health, Gail H. Javitt, Erica Stanley, Kathy Hudson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Striking A Balance: Finding A Place For Religious Conscience Clauses In Contraceptive Equity Legislation, Staci D. Lowell

Cleveland State Law Review

This note will attempt to address the interrelationship of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments in the context of contraceptive equity legislation. To that end, the note will examine states' definitions of a "religious employer" and make recommendations regarding statutory language that is broad enough to cover those organizations with conscientious objections to contraception but narrow enough to allow women to have ready access to contraceptive services. Following this introduction, Part II of the note will provide background information about both contraceptive equity and religious freedom. Part III will discuss current and proposed contraceptive equity legislation …

"Go And Sin No More": The Constitutionality Of Governmentally Funded Faith-Based Prison Units, Lynn S. Branham

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article discusses faith-based prison programs that immerse prisoners living in residential units within a prison in a religious atmosphere. Part One analyzes the constitutionality of these programs under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It notes that state action in the prison context receives more deference from courts than outside the prison context, and that prisoners' constitutional rights are more constricted than free persons" Part I proceeds to analyze the constitutionality of faith immersion programs in prisons, in light of the Supreme Court's precedents dealing with prisoners' rights and the Establishment Clause. States can defend immersion programs on …

In Opposition To The Proposed Media Marketing Accountability Act Of 2001, Angela M. Papalaskaris

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Free Speech Coalition & Adult Entertainment: An Inside View Of The Adult Entertainment Industry, Its Leading Advocate & The First Amendment, Clay Calvert, Robert Richards

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"When A Nation Is At War": A Context-Dependent Theory Of Free Speech For The Regulation Of Weapon Recipes, Liezl Irene Pangilinan

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Saving Title Vii: Using Intent To Distinguish Harassment From Expression, Robert Austin Ruescher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Like two reluctant boxers in a ring, the First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been sparring halfheartedly for years, circling and jabbing each other in courts and law reviews. The bout pits the constitutional right to be free from government censorship against the statutory "right to work in an environment free from discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult." As stated by the Supreme Court in another context, it pits "the First Amendment rights of the speaker" against "the protection the statute provides for the unwilling listener."

Both the First Amendment and Title VII …

Musical Copyright Law: Past, Present And Future Of Online Music Distribution, Robert J. Delchin

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Decisions - 2002 Term, Joel Gora

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shock And Awe: Does The First Amendment Protect A Media Right Of Access To Military Operations?, Karen C. Sinai

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Free To Fortune 500! The Debate Over Corporate Speech And The First Amendment, Rodney A. Smolla

Law Faculty Publications

While the Supreme Court shirked the merits of the corporate free speech debate in Nike v. Kasky with the cryptic dispatch that the petition for a writ of certiorari was "improvidently granted," the decision of those who organized this Symposium to proceed with scholarly commentary on the case was not improvidently made. One will find no shirkers here. ...

Cross Burning: Virginia V. Black, Rodney A. Smolla

Law Faculty Publications

My first encounter with Virginia's cross-burning law was in a meeting of the Virginia ACLU Legal Panel. I sat in a group of about a dozen other volunteer lawyers listening as potential cases were presented to the panel for review. We were told the story of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had been arrested for burning a cross during a Ku Klux Klan rally conducted on a backwoods farm in southwestern Virginia, with the permission of a landowner. A copy of the Virginia cross-burning statute was distributed for us to read:

It shall be unlawful for any person or …

If The Shoe Fits: Kasky V. Nike And Whether Corporate Statements About Business Operations Should Be Deemed Commercial Speech, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This Note argues that the Kasky court was correct to recognize that today's commercial speech encompasses communications beyond traditional advertisements about products or services. Corporations are aware that a sizeable number of consumers rely on their statements about their business operations when making investment and purchasing decisions. In order to ensure the accuracy of these statements, and thereby protect the integrity of the market, this speech is properly considered commercial speech.

Public Confidence Laws Gone Awry: A Modern Circuit Split Reveals That Some Federal Courts Manipulate Standing Rules To Promulgate Severe First Amendment Restrictions On The Spouses And Children Of Public Employees, Nicholas R. Farrell

Vanderbilt Law Review

Federal courts in the United States have consistently upheld the constitutional doctrine that "[t]he essential rights of the First Amendment in some instances are subject to the elemental need for order without which the guarantees of civil rights to others would be a mockery." Given the central role of government workers in maintaining that order, the First Amendment rights of public employees have been particularly susceptible to restriction. For example, in 1940, Congress enacted the Hatch Act, which declared unlawful certain political activities of federal employees. Specifically, section nine of the Act prohibited officers and employees in the executive branch …

The Antipaternalism Principle In The First Amendment, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Commentators generally agree the First Amendment is hostile to paternalism. Yet, most analysts invoke the idea of free speech antipaternalism without examining its roots, explaining what it means, or discussing what it entails. There has been no attempt to identify and to explain the antipaternalism principle across a variety of free speech domains. This Article examines the nature and reach of this particular brand of First Amendment exceptionalism.

In Part I the author reviews First Amendment jurisprudence where the Supreme Court evinces, either explicitly or implicitly, some aversion to paternalism. This review covers several free speech frontiers, including commercial speech, …

The Prodigal Argument: Mccollum V. Board Of Education, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

From the Introduction

Judges, lawyers, and scholars all cite the 1947 case, Everson v. Board of Education, as the cornerstone of Establishment Clause doctrine. They are right to do so. The Everson Court took two path-breaking steps: incorporation and strict separation. The justices there held, for the first time, that the Fourteenth Amendment made the Establishment Clause applicable to state action. Then they offered a novel account of what non-establishment meant. In sweeping language (which you can find at 330 U.S. 15 - 16) they held that it meant more than equality among religions. By requiring that all government …

Protecting The Lady From Toledo: Post-Usa Patriot Act Electronic Surveillance At The Library, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Library patrons are worried about the government looking over their shoulder while they read and surf the Internet. Because of the broad provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, the lack of judicial and legislative oversight, the potential for content overcollection, and the ease with which applications for pen register, section 215 orders, or national security letters can be obtained, these fears cannot be dismissed.

Not For Attribution: Government's Interest In Protecting The Integrity Of Its Own Expression, Helen Norton

Publications

Public entities increasingly maintain that the First Amendment permits them to ensure that private speakers' views are not mistakenly attributed to the government. Consider, for example, Virginia's efforts to ban the Sons of Confederate Veterans' display of the Confederate flag logo on state-sponsored specialty license plates. Seeking to remain neutral in the ongoing debate over whether the Confederate flag is a symbol of "hate" or "heritage," Virginia argued that the state would be wrongly perceived as endorsing the flag if the logo appeared on a state-issued plate adorned by the identifier "VIRGINIA." The Fourth Circuit was unpersuaded, holding that the …

Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling The Right Answer?, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

What I want to talk about are some legal issues relating to labeling and, in particular, constitutional issues relating to mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods or food products that may contain genetically modified components. This is a separate issue from whether or not the FDA, or some other agency, has sufficient statutory authority at present to mandate labeling, and that is something worth discussing. Even if they do have such authority, or even if Congress tomorrow were to give the FDA such authority or were to require the FDA to impose labels on genetically modified foods, or if a …

The Landmark Free-Speech Case That Wasn't: The Nike V. Kasky Story, David Skover, Ronald Collins

Faculty Articles

Written as the Foreword to a Symposium entitled Nike v. Kasky and the Modern Commercial Speech Doctrine, this piece tells the background stories that brought the Nike v. Kasky players to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond. Subsequently, it explores the principles and perspectives at tension in the Nike controversy, and charts the lessons of the Nike story - legal, political, and cultural.

“The Corporate Conscience” And Other First Amendment Follies In Pacific Gas & Electric

San Diego Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Freedom To Speak And The Freedom To Listen: The Admissibility Of The Criminal Defendant's Taste In Entertainment, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

In Part I of this Article, I will establish that the First Amendment protects both consumers and producers of expression, although the scope of consumer protection has not been greatly elaborated. Part II discusses attempts to hold the entertainment industry liable for crimes by third persons, as well as legislative efforts to restrict or ban certain kinds of entertainment or art deemed to cause violence. For the most part, these efforts against producers have failed.

Part III then shows how a criminal defendant's viewing, listening, or reading habits may be used as evidence against that defendant, and that the constitutional …

Fire, Metaphor, And Constitutional Myth-Making, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

From the standpoint of traditional legal thought, metaphor is at best a dash of poetry adorning lawyerly analysis, and at worst an unjustifiable distraction from what is actually at stake in a legal contest. By contrast, in the eyes of those who view law as a close relative of ordinary language, metaphor is a basic building block of human understanding. This article accepts that metaphor helps us to comprehend a court's decision. At the same time, it argues that metaphor plays a special role in the realm of constitutional discourse. Metaphor in constitutional law not only reinforces doctrinal categories, but …

More Is Less, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Is the First Amendment's right of free exercise of religion conditional upon government interests? Many eighteenth-century Americans said it was utterly unconditional. For example, James Madison and numerous contemporaries declared in 1785 that "the right of every man to exercise ['Religion'] ... is in its nature an unalienable right" and "therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society." In contrast, during the past forty years, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly conditioned the right of free exercise on compelling government interests. The Court not merely qualifies the practice of the …

The First Amendment, The Public-Private Distinction, And Nongovernmental Suppression Of Wartime Political Debate, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

This article proposes a major expansion in the scope of First Amendment law and offers a fresh way of understanding the public-private distinction. It contends that the Supreme Court should invoke the First Amendment to enjoin nongovernmental behavior that substantially impedes public political debate during times of war and national emergency. As the article explains, the present campaign against international terrorism has seen employers, property owners, and media corporations restrict political discussion more frequently and aggressively than the government has. If political debate is the most important object of First Amendment protection - which the article contends it is - …

Judicial Campaign Codes After Republican Party Of Minnesota V. White, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The vast majority of judicial offices in the United States are subject to election. The votes of the people select or retain at least some judges in thirty-nine states, and all judges are elected in twenty-one states. By one count, 87% of the state and local judges in the United States have to face the voters at some point if they want to win or remain in office. Judicial elections, however, differ from elections for legislative or executive offices in a number of significant ways. In nineteen states, most judges are initially appointed but must later go before the voters …

Reflections On Newdow, Gerard V. Bradley, Paul J. Griffiths

Journal Articles

Although saving the Pledge from a declaration of unconstitutionality is an end worth our prayers, I think that O’Connor’s effort to portray it as “ceremonial deism” fails. “Under God” endorses religion, and the Court should address the issue on that basis. If the phrase comports with the Constitution – as I think it does – it is because the Constitution does not prohibit governmental affirmations that “God” – a greater-than-human source of meaning and value – exists.