First Amendment Commons^™

Bruce Ledewitz, American Religious Democracy: Coming To Terms With The End Of Secular Politics, Thomas A. Schweitzer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Procedure Decisions From The October 2006 Term, Susan N. Herman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Decisions From The October 2006 Term, Erwin Chemerinsky, Marci A. Hamilton

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Of New York Appellate Division, Third Department - Kings Mall, Llc V. Wenk, Steven Fox

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Court Of Appeals Of New York - Catholic Charities Of The Diocese Of Albany V. Serio, Sarah Marx

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Liberal Communitarian Approach To Security Limitations On The Freedom Of The Press, Amitai Etzioni

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Officious Intermeddling Or Protected First Amendment Activity? The Constitutionality Of Prohibitory Champerty Law After Citizens United, Bradley C. Tobias

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Conversion Therapy And Free Speech: A Doctrinal And Theoretical First Amendment Analysis, Clay Calvert, Kara Carnley, Brittany Link, Linda Riedmann

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article analyzes, from both a doctrinal and theoretical perspective, the First Amendment speech interests at stake before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Welch v. Brown and Pickup v. Brown. Those cases pivot on a controversial California law banning mental health providers from performing sexual orientation change efforts (also known as conversion therapy) on minors. Two district court judges reached radically different conclusions about the First Amendment questions. The Article explores how a trio of recent Supreme Court decisions involving seemingly disparate factual scenarios—Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, United States v. Alvarez and Gonzales v. …

Lies And Their Protection: A Comparison Of The Right To Lie About Receiving A Military Honor In The United States And Canada, Marilyn N. Harvey

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Mechanics Of First Amendment Audience Analysis, David S. Han

William & Mary Law Review

When the government seeks to regulate speech based on its content, it generally assumes that listeners will process the speech in a manner that produces social harm. Because the chain of causation for such speech-based harm runs through the filter of an audience, courts must constantly make judgments regarding the audience’s reception of such speech. How will the speech be interpreted by the audience? To what extent will the speech cause the audience either to suffer direct emotional harm or to react physically to the speech in a harmful manner? Although this sort of inquiry—which I refer to as “audience …

A Disclosure-Focused Approach To Compelled Commercial Speech, Andrew C. Budzinski

Michigan Law Review

In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration passed a rule revising compelled disclaimers on tobacco products pursuant to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The rule required that tobacco warnings include something new: all tobacco products now had to bear one of nine graphic images to accompany the text. Tobacco companies filed suit contesting the constitutionality of the rule, arguing that the government violated their right to free commercial speech by compelling disclosure of the graphic content. Yet First Amendment jurisprudence lacks a doctrinally consistent standard for reviewing such compelled disclosures. Courts’ analyses typically depend on whether the …

Tobacco Advertising And The First Amendment: Striking The Right Balance, Arlen W. Langvardt

William & Mary Business Law Review

With the enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, Congress launched a major expansion of its regulatory efforts regarding tobacco advertising and promotion. The Act restricts advertising in various ways, featuring a requirement for updated textual versions of health warnings long required for cigarette packages, as well as a requirement that cigarette advertisements must be accompanied by prominently displayed color graphic images to be designed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The Act’s advertising restrictions and the color graphics requirement have been challenged on First Amendment grounds, as has an FDA regulation setting …

Whistleblowing And Free Speech: Garcetti's Early Progeny And Shrinking Constitutional Rights Of Public Employees, J. Michael Mcguinness

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Globally Speaking—Honoring The Victims' Stories: Matsuda's Human Rights Praxis, Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Globally speaking, international law and the vast majority of domestic legal systems strive to protect the right to freedom of expression. The United States' First Amendment provides an early historical protection of speech-a safeguard now embraced around the world. The extent of this protection, however, varies among states. The United States stands alone in excluding countervailing considerations of equality, dignitary, or privacy interests that would favor restrictions on speech. The gravamen of the argument supporting such American exceptionalism is that free expression is necessary in a democracy. Totalitarianism, the libertarian narrative goes, thrives on government control of information to the …

The Tools Of Political Dissent: A First Amendment Guide To Gun Registries, Thomas E. Kadri

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

On December 23, 2012, a newspaper in upstate New York published a provocative map. On it appeared the names and addresses of thousands of gun owners in nearby counties, all precisely pinpointed for the world to browse. The source of this information: publicly available data drawn from the state’s gun registry. Legislators were quick to respond. Within a month, a new law offered gun owners the chance to permanently remove their identities from the registry with a simple call to their county clerk. The map raised interesting questions about broadcasting personal information, but a more fundamental question remains: Are these …

Globally Speaking - Honoring The Victims' Stories: Matsuda's Human Rights Praxis, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Globally speaking, international law and the vast majority of domestic legal systems strive to protect the right to freedom of expression. The United States’ First Amendment provides an early historical protection of speech—a safeguard now embraced around the world. The extent of this protection, however, varies among states.

The United States stands alone in excluding countervailing considerations of equality, dignitary, or privacy interests that would favor restrictions on speech. The gravamen of the argument supporting such American exceptionalism is that free expression is necessary in a democracy. Totalitarianism, the libertarian narrative goes, thrives on government control of information to the …

The Dangers Of Press Clause Dicta, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court has engaged in an unusual pattern of excessive dicta in cases involving the press. Indeed, a close examination of such cases reveals that it is one of the most consistent, defining characteristics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s media law jurisprudence in the last half century. The Court’s opinions in cases involving the media, while almost uniformly reaching conclusions based on other grounds, regularly include language about the constitutional or democratic character, duty, value, or role of the press — language that could be, but ultimately is not, significant to the constitutional conclusion reached. Although scholars …

Institutional Autonomy And Constitutional Structure, Randy J. Kozel

Michigan Law Review

This Review makes two claims. The first is that Paul Horwitz’s excellent book, First Amendment Institutions, depicts the institutionalist movement in robust and provocative form. The second is that it would be a mistake to assume from its immersion in First Amendment jurisprudence (not to mention its title) that the book’s implications are limited to the First Amendment. Professor Horwitz presents First Amendment institutionalism as a wide-ranging theory of constitutional structure whose focus is as much on constraining the authority of political government as it is on facilitating expression. These are the terms on which the book’s argument — and, …

Is Religious Freedom Irrational?, Michael Stokes Paulsen

Michigan Law Review

Brian Leiter is almost exactly half right. There is no convincing secular-liberal argument for religious liberty, in the sense of unique accommodation of religious beliefs and practices specifically because they are religious. Indeed, from a thoroughgoing secularist perspective — from a stance of committed disbelief in the possible reality of God or religious truth, and perhaps also from the perspective of unswerving agnosticism — “toleration” of religion is almost intolerably foolish. Affirmatively protecting the free exercise of religion, in the strong sense of freedom of persons and groups to act on religious convictions in ways opposed to secular legal norms, …