First Amendment Commons^™

A Progressive Mind: Louis D. Brandeis And The Origins Of Free Speech, Elizabeth Todd Byron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Wholesale Exclusion Of Religion From Public Benefits Programs: Why The First Amendment Religion Clauses Must Take A Backseat To Equal Protection, Michael J. Borger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Facts Are Stubborn Things": Protecting Due Process From Virulent Publicity, Benjamin Brafman, Darren Stakey

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

"My Lips Are Sealed, Unless..." Examining The Reporter's Privilege In New York And Why It Should Be Applied Federally, Luann Dallojacono

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Humans Of New York, Shut Your Blinds, Amanda Defeo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding A Fair Balance For The Right Of Publicity And First Amendment Protections, Christine Digregorio

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ithink My Electronic Data Is Secure, But Is It: A Constitutional Analysis Of In Re The Search Of An Apple Iphone, Shira Bloom

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

#Protected Hashtags, Trademarks, And The First Amendment, Delaram Yousefi

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Performative Privacy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Broadly speaking, privacy doctrine suggests that the right to privacy is non-existent once one enters the public realm. Although some scholars contend that privacy ought to exist in public, “public privacy” has been defended largely with reference to other, ancillary values privacy may serve. For instance, public privacy may be necessary to make the freedom of association meaningful in practice.

This Article identifies a new dimension of public privacy, supplementing extant justifications for the right, by arguing that many efforts to maintain privacy while in “public” are properly conceptualized as forms of performative, expressive resistance against an ever-pervasive surveillance society. …