First Amendment Commons^™

Balancing Free Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article develops a theory for balancing free speech against other express and implied constitutional, statutory, and doctrinal values. It posits that free speech considerations should be connected to the underlying purpose of constitutional governance. When deciding difficult cases involving competing rights, judges should examine (1) whether unencumbered expression is likely to cause constitutional, statutory, or common law harms; (2) whether the restricted expression has been historically or traditionally protected; (3) whether a government policy designed to benefit the general welfare weighs in favor of the regulation; (4) the fit between the disputed speech regulation and the public end; and …

Informed Consent As Compelled Professional Speech: Fictions, Facts, And Open Questions, Nadia N. Sawicki

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Shareholder Political Primacy, Jay B. Kesten

Scholarly Publications

Corporate political activity raises an important and difficult question of corporate law: who decides when the corporation should speak and what it should say? In several cases, the Supreme Court has provided a clear answer: shareholders, acting through the procedures of corporate democracy. While this holding has attracted substantial academic and public criticism, there has been no sustained evaluation (beyond identifying the potential agency costs of corporate political activity) of the possibility that the Supreme Court's appeal to the fraught concept of "corporate democracy," though woefully under-theorized, might be the best allocation of power in the limited context of corporate …

Gay Rights Versus Religious Freedom, And The Influence Of Obergefell V. Hodges On Distinguishing The Dividing Line, Kathleen Rainey Mcstravick

St. Mary's Law Journal

Obergefell v. Hodges, a United States Supreme Court case, added more fuel to the fire, leaving many to wonder how to voice religious opposition to same-sex marriages, and what are the second order effects for religious opposition in light of the new rule. The Court held the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Obergefell, brings the conflict between freedom of religion and LGBT rights to a new level by questioning how far freedom of religion can be used to refuse anti-discrimination statutes regarding sexual …

Jail (E)Mail: Free Speech Implications Of Granting Inmates Access To Electronic Messaging Services, Brennen J. Johnson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The First Amendment protects not only our right to share ideas, but also to some extent, our right to choose the specific method by which we share them. Generally speaking, these protections apply to inmates’ rights to communicate with those outside of prison. However, the protection of those rights must be balanced with the penological interests of prisons and jails. Electronic messaging has now become a standard form of communication within most American homes and businesses. Accordingly, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has implemented the TRULINCS program, a program which allows inmates to communicate with those outside of prison through …

Producing Democratic Vibrancy, K. Sabeel Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Freeze Play: Bennett's Strategy For Entrenching Inequality, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Present Of Newsworthiness, Amy Gajda

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment Walks Into A Bar: Trademark Registration And Free Speech, Rebecca Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Section 2 of the Lanham Act, the federal law governing trademarks, lists a number of bars that preclude registration of a trademark on the federal register. These reasons include: the claimed matter is functional, meaning it affects the cost or quality of the underlying product or service; the claimed matter is merely descriptive, meaning that consumers don’t understand that it indicates source and instead think that it just describes some characteristic of the product; the claimed matter is deceptively misdescriptive, which is like descriptiveness except not true; the claimed matter is deceptive, meaning that the untruth would be material to …

Think Of The Children: Using Iied To Reformulate Disturbing Speech Restrictions, Richard Lorren Jolly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Colorado State Court of Appeals recently upheld an injunction restricting public displays of aborted fetuses. The court held that the restriction passed strict scrutiny because the state had a compelling interest in protecting children from the psychological harm of “disturbing images” and the injunction was narrowly tailored. This marked the first time an injunction had been upheld on this rationale. This Note critiques that holding and others. It contends that while some federal and state courts have recognized the interest in protecting the psychological wellbeing of children from disturbing speech as compelling, the interest is not supported by precedent. …

Colloquy Between State Senators Jamilah Nasheed (Mo) And Dwight Bullard (Fl)

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

SYMPOSIUM: THE POWER OF A VOICE: REWRITING POLICY AND IMPLEMENTING CHANGES THROUGH PROTEST MOVEMENTS

COLLOQUY BETWEEN STATE SENATORS JAMILAH NASHEED (MISSOURI) AND DWIGHT M. BULLARD (FLORIDA)

One Nation, Under God?, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, by Mary Eberstadt.
Harper, 192 pages, $25.99

This upending is the subject of Mary Eberstadt's It's Dangerous to Believe. Her previous books Adam and Eve after the Pill (2012) and How the West Really Lost God (2013) - on the sexual revolution and secularism, respectively - showed Eberstadt to be one of America's most discerning cultural critics. It's Dangerous to Believe solidifies that ranking by showing that "the future of religious freedom...appears more clouded than at any time since the American founding." The book is chiefly a chronicle of …

Freedom Of Speech And Equality: Do We Have To Choose?, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Expanding The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Schools (K-12) And The Regulation Of Cyberbullying, Philip Lee

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In a tragic case that received international attention, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself after being bullied—both physically and online—by some of her classmates. Phoebe had moved to Massachusetts from a small town in Ireland, enrolling as a freshman at South Hadley High School. After a brief relationship with a popular boy in the senior class, the taunting by her classmates began. Some students called her an “Irish slut” and a “whore,” knocked things out of her hands, and sent her threatening texts. Some of the students used Facebook and Twitter to speak badly about her. Phoebe suffered this treatment …

Virtue, Freedom, And The First Amendment, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

The modern First Amendment embodies the idea of freedom as a fundamental good of contemporary American society. The First Amendment protects and promotes everybody’s freedom of thought, belief, speech, and religious exercise as basic goods—as given ends of American political and moral life. It does not protect these freedoms for the sake of promoting any particular vision of the virtuous society. It is neutral on that score, setting limits only in those rare cases when the exercise of a First Amendment freedom exacts an intolerable social cost.

Something like this collection of views constitutes the conventional account of the First …

Free Exercise By Moonlight, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

How is the current condition of religious free exercise, and religious accommodation in specific, best understood? What is the relationship of the two most important free exercise cases of the past half-century, Employment Division v. Smith and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC? This essay explores four possible answers to these questions.

1. Smith and Hosanna-Tabor are the twin suns of religious accommodation under the Constitution. They are distinctively powerful approaches.

2. Hosanna-Tabor’s approach to constitutional free exercise is now more powerful than Smith’s. Smith has been eclipsed.

3. Hosanna-Tabor has shown itself to be feeble. It has …

The Art Of Nailing Jell-O To The Wall: Reassessing The Political Power Of The Internet, Bryan Druzin, Jessica Li

Journal of Law and Policy

Political observers commonly argue that, given the unique characteristics of the Internet, democratization is an inevitability of its widespread use. The critical role that social media played in the wave of demonstrations, protests, and revolutions that swept across the Arab world in 2011 cemented this perception in the minds of many. Yet China defies this simplistic paradigm—China has been stunningly successful at constraining the political power of its Internet. We argue that the political importance of Internet technology has been overstated, particularly with respect to China. As support for this thesis, we cite recent political events in Hong Kong known …

Tinker Tortured: The Scope Of Student Off-Campus Viral Speech Rights In The Federal Circuits, Kevin Nathaniel Troy Fowler

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Revisionist View Of Journalist's Privilege: Justice Powell, Branzburg And The "Proper Balance", William E. Lee

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Can Dna Be Speech?, Jorge R. Roig

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

DNA is generally regarded as the basic building block of life itself. In the most fundamental sense, DNA is nothing more than a chemical compound, albeit a very complex and peculiar one. DNA is an information-carrying molecule. The specific sequence of base pairs contained in a DNA molecule carries with it genetic information and encodes for the creation of particular proteins. When taken as a whole, the DNA contained in a single human cell is a complete blueprint and instruction manual for the creation of that human being.

This Article discusses a myriad of current and developing ways in which …