Constitutional Law. Freedom of Speech. Owners' Fifth Amendment Property Rights Prevent a State Constitution from Providing Broader Free Speech Rights Than Provided by the First Amendment. Lenrich Associates v. Heyda, 504 P. 2d 112 (Ore. 1972)

1973 ◽  
Vol 86 (8) ◽  
pp. 1592
Author(s):  
Sean Stevens ◽  
Lee Jussim ◽  
Nathan Honeycutt

This paper explores the suppression of ideas within academic scholarship by academics, either by self-suppression or because of the efforts of other academics. Legal, moral, and social issues distinguishing freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, and academic freedom are reviewed. How these freedoms and protections can come into tension is then explored by a sociological analysis of denunciation mobs who exercise their legal free speech rights to call for punishing scholars who express ideas they disapprove of and condemn. When successful, these efforts, which constitute legally protected speech, will suppress certain ideas. Real-world examples over the past five years of academics who have been sanctioned or terminated for scholarship targeted by a denunciation mob are then explored.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Karolina Palka

This article is about the limits of the right to free speech. The first section provides a brief introduction to this topic, primarily in the context of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The second section describes the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which was fundamental to the topic of this paper because the United States Supreme Court created the so-called "fighting words" doctrine based on it. In the next two sections, two court cases are presented that perfectly demonstrate the limits of the right to free speech in the United States: Snyder v. Phelps and Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America. The fifth part shows the right to freedom of speech in the context of Polish civil, criminal, and constitutional law, as well as acts of international law binding on Poland. The last part is a short summary.


This chapter focuses on the Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser (1986) case – the United States Supreme Court's second review of students' speech rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It discusses the test created in the case for determining when schools can regulate students' speech. This test, referred to as the Bethel test or the Fraser test authorizes schools to censor students' speech if the speech is vulgar, lewd, plainly offensive or obscene. The chapter also discusses the Supreme Court's decision on the scope of students' free speech rights. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to analyze the Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser case in order to determine if it empowers schools to censor off-campus student speech.


2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 388-421
Author(s):  
Nathan Cortez

For over a century, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency) and its precursors have regulated what companies say about their products. The FDA itself notes that the regulatory scheme imposed by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “depends on the use of words” and that its requirements can “explicitly limit speech.” For seventy years, the FDA had little reason to worry about First Amendment constraints. But since 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed its longstanding position that the First Amendment does not protect commercial speech, the Agency has had to confront–perhaps more than any other federal agency–the free speech rights of regulated firms.But how far do those rights extend, and what room do they leave for regulators like the FDA? The answer largely depends on another question: Is the speech commercial or noncommercial? The distinction is paramount. If speech by a regulated firm is commercial, then the FDA can ensure that it is not false or misleading; the Agency can require or compel certain speech; it can impose prior restraints; and it can even limit truthful speech, all within certain parameters.


2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-138 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractFreedom of speech as an individual right is often thought to interfere with the collective rights of vulnerable groups to protection against threats of violence and demeaning group insults. This study analyzes interviews with 78 Canadian civic leaders that probed their views on this possible rights conflict. For most respondents, freedom of speech is not a core value, but one that must be reconciled with equality, nondiscrimination, and multiculturalism. Most of these Canadians will tolerate some restrictions on freedom of speech, believing such restrictions will promote community harmony and respect for all groups in society. These Canadians hold to a communitarian view of rights, and trust their government to curb free speech rights to protect vulnerable groups. However, ’new’ free speech issues, involving conflicts among members of different vulnerable groups, may point to the need to reinforce individual freedom of speech.


2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Schmidt

Even today, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Terminiello v. City of Chicago (1949) strikes students of constitutional law as a vexing factual situation. The problems the case posed for the High Court are all the more daunting considering its historical context, directly following the nation's confrontation with Nazism and standing on the cusp of the Cold War against Communism. In the broader view, most observers would locate the decision within the ascendance of liberal protection for free speech rights occurring over the second half of the twentieth century. But progressive accounts should not be allowed to mask the contemporary momentousness for the justices hearing the case. Indeed, in this constitutional conflict over the speech of a rabble-rousing priest was lodged a sober question about the polity's health at that time and the preferred response to the nation's need.


2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-47
Author(s):  
Scott D. Gerber

Freedom of speech long has been regarded as one of the “preferred freedoms” in the United States: one of the freedoms the U.S. Supreme Court deems “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” However, what freedom of speech does—and should—mean is a highly charged question in American constitutional law. I will explore this question by examining how several prominent constitutional theorists have proposed particular approaches to free speech law in order to further their political objectives. I will examine the free speech theories of the nation's leading feminist legal theorist (regarding pornography), critical race theorists (regarding hate speech), libertarian (regarding commercial speech), and legal republican (regarding deliberative democracy). I also will discuss the principal criticisms of each of these theories, whether the courts have been influenced by any of them, and, in conclusion, whether it is possible to advance a nonpolitical (i.e., a purely law-based or value-free) theory of free speech.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-223
Author(s):  
Mary Margaret Roark

The First Amendment protects one of our most precious rights as citizens of the United States—the freedom of speech. Such protection has withstood the test of time, even safeguarding speech that much of the population would find distasteful. There is one form of speech which cannot be protected: the true threat. However, the definition of what constitutes a "true threat" has expanded since its inception. In the new era of communication—where most users post first and edit later—the First Amendment protection we once possessed has been eroded as more and more speech is considered proscribable as a "true threat." In order to adequately protect both the public at large and our individual right to free speech, courts should analyze a speaker’s subjective intent before labeling speech a "true threat." Though many courts have adopted an objective, reasonable listener test, the U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity, in deciding Elonis v. United States, to take a monumental step in protecting the First Amendment right to free speech. By holding that the speaker’s subjective intent to threaten is necessary for a true threat conviction, the Court will restore the broad protection afforded by the First Amendment and repair years of erosion caused by an objective approach.


Author(s):  
Corey Brettschneider

This introductory chapter provides an overview of value democracy. According to value democracy, all viewpoints should be protected by rights of free speech from coercive bans or punishment. However, the state also has an obligation in value democracy that extends beyond protecting freedom of speech. It should engage in democratic persuasion, actively defending the democratic values of freedom and equality for all citizens when it “speaks.” The notion of state speech is common in First Amendment jurisprudence. It often refers to the various non-coercive functions of the state, ranging from pure expression, such as speeches, to issues of funding. By using democratic persuasion to articulate the reasons for rights, value democracy aims to answer the critics who contend that liberalism cannot defend its most basic values or counter the threat to equality that might come from hate groups in civil society.


Author(s):  
Randall P. Bezanson

This chapter examines the expansion of free speech to the largely mute act of voting in elections and to the protection of a person's affiliations and associations with others from public disclosure at the hands of the government. It does so through the recent Doe v. Reed case and a gay rights referendum in Washington State. It addresses the following questions: How should the freedom of speech be interpreted to protect such undeniably important acts as voting and joining with others—say, in a church or a charitable cause? Is it possible to read “freedom of speech” as protecting them without at the same time losing all pretense of restraint on the Supreme Court's power to interpret the Constitution? In addressing these larger questions, the chapter shows the parts of the First Amendment that were first pulled apart—speaker, speech, purpose—stitched back together in the form of constitutional doctrine. Is the resulting web of free speech doctrine and theory coherent or symmetrical, or is it just a tangled mess?


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