Noah and Matt give their brief reactions to United States v. Alvarez, Miller v. Alabama, Arizona v. United States, and NFIB v. Sebelius. Noah and Matt take a look at Mitt Romney’s recently leaked closed-door comments. The discussion turns to the recent protests and violence in the Middle East over the YouTube video negatively depicting Islam.
The less rigorous test proposed by the concurring justices produced a desirable result in this case, but it seems to portend an approach that gives less than full scrutiny to asserted government interest in content-discrimination….If the Court relies on the Alvarez concurrence’s approach in future cases, it could well give short shrift to what should be its starting presumption: that content-based restrictions on “lies,” like any other form of speech, are justifiable only in extraordinary circumstances.
In light of the great deference traditionally shown by the Court – and evinced by several Justices in this case – towards the government in military matters, it may well be that the Court overlooks the troubling free-speech consequences of the Act’s overbreadth. In an area of its jurisprudence where it has shown willingness in recent years to give the First Amendment significant teeth, however, the Court would do well to subject the Stolen Valor Act to the full scrutiny it deserves under established doctrine despite the Act’s largely uncontroversial motives.
Daniel Mandil, Associate General Counsel for Viacom, and Fred von Lohmann, Senior Copyright Counsel for Google, provide two perspectives on how to best balance internet freedom and protection of intellectual property. Mr. Mandil, now at Viacom, was formerly an attorney for the Motion Picture Association of America, and Mr. von Lohmann worked previously at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Their different perspectives provide a sensible discussion on how to move forward and ensure that both intellectual property and intellectual freedom are protected in the digital age.
CR-CL’s Executive Editors for Online Content Noah Kaplan and Matt Giffin are joined by Ariel Oshinky and Stephen Squibb, members of the Occupy Boston Communications Committee. Ariel and Stephen discuss the motivating ideology of the Occupy Movement, the relationship between Occupy Boston, the city, the police, and the courts, and the future of Occupy as a movement. Will Occupy suffer the fate of the Tea Party and be coopted by mainstream politics? What has Occupy already accomplished? What can it accomplish in the upcoming election; in a year; in five years?
CR-CL’s Executive Editors for Online Content Noah Kaplan and Matt Giffin discuss the oral argument in United States v. Alvarez and whether the First Amendment protects lying. They follow-up on last week’s discussion of the contraceptive mandate by looking at Rush Limbaugh’s insulting comments to law student Sandra Fluke who spoke out about the importance of the mandate to students.
For the last seventy-five years, Augusta, Georgia has predominantly been known for its connection to the Masters, one of the nation’s most tradition-laden events in all of sports. But less than a mile from Magnolia Lane, Augusta State University (ASU) has become embroiled in a legal controversy with a former [...]
In its decision earlier this year in Snyder v. Phelps, the Supreme Court controversially held that the First Amendment protected the speech of protesters at a Maryland military funeral against tort claims. In vindicating the free speech rights of the members of the fringe Westboro Baptist Church, the Court noted [...]
Last week, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that a California school district did not violate a teacher’s free speech rights by ordering him to remove posters bearing the national motto, among other phrases. In late 2006, Bradley Johnson, a San Diego County math [...]
The Supreme Court has declined to take the case of a Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad after refusing to cheer for the basketball player whom she alleges raped her. The Fifth Circuit ruling not only upheld the school’s right to punish her for refusing to cheer, but dismissed her suit as frivolous, requiring her family to cover the school’s legal fees.
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