First Amendment: Books and Journals

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redre

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Books

First Amendment Law in a Nutshell by Jerome Barron This product provides a short and readable source for individuals interested in constitutional law, First Amendment law, and communications law. It is divided into four parts: the history, methodology, and philosophical foundations of the First Amendment; topics such as First Amendment issues that arise in cable television and in regulating children's access to the Internet; issues in First Amendment law such as the public forum doctrine, the compelled speech doctrine, and the free expression rights of government employees; and the text, history, and theory of the religion clauses, chronicling the ongoing battle in the Supreme Court between accommodationists and separationists. The Fifth Edition brings the book up to date with modern First Amendment jurisprudence, including a focus on racist and offensive speech, electoral spending, and other topics covered by recent Supreme Court cases and discussions.

Local Government, Land Use, and the First Amendment by Brian J. Connolly This book is an re-mastered, retooled version of the ABA publication "Protecting Free Speech and Expression: The First Amendment and Land Use Law" which was published by the ABA. The book contains some theoretical discussion of First Amendment law as it pertains to land use issues (e.g. sign and billboard regulation, regulation of artwork and aesthetics, regulation of religious land uses, regulation of adult businesses, etc.), but also provides information which will be relevant to practitioners, and will include some regulatory strategies and case studies. In order to strategically illustrate their points, the authors included cases as source material.

The First Amendment and LGBT Equality by Carlos A. Ball Conservative opponents of LGBT equality in the United States often couch their opposition in claims of free speech, free association, and religious liberty. It is no surprise, then, that many LGBT supporters equate First Amendment arguments with resistance to their cause. The First Amendment and LGBT Equality tells another story, about the First Amendment's crucial yet largely forgotten role in the first few decades of the gay rights movement. Between the 1950s and 1980s, when many courts were still openly hostile to sexual minorities, they nonetheless recognized the freedom of gay and lesbian people to express themselves and associate with one another. Successful First Amendment cases protected LGBT publications and organizations, protests and parades, and individuals' right to come out. The amendment was wielded by the other side only after it had laid the groundwork for major LGBT equality victories. Carlos A. Ball illuminates the full trajectory of this legal and cultural history. He argues that, in accommodating those who dissent from LGBT equality on grounds of conscience, it is neither necessary nor appropriate to depart from the established ways in which American antidiscrimination law has, for decades, accommodated equality dissenters. But he also argues that as progressives fight the First Amendment claims of religious conservatives and other LGBT opponents today, they should take care not to erode the very safeguards of liberty that allowed LGBT rights to exist in the first place.

Understanding the First Amendment by Russell L. Weaver The overarching objective of Understanding the First Amendment is to facilitate student learning efficiency and academic success. Toward this end, it focuses upon core subject matter that is likely to be tested in a law school examination or on the bar examination. The book also provides tools that enable students to organize the course and their understanding in a way that enhances retention. The beginning of each chapter highlights key points of coverage. The end of each chapter indicates essential points to remember. The book strikes a balance between comprehensiveness and selectivity, thus providing students with assurance that they know enough, know it well, but are not overwhelmed by details that are unduly esoteric or irrelevant to their performance needs.

Free Speech Beyond Words by Mark V. Tushnet; Alan K. Chen; Joseph Blocher A look at First Amendment coverage of music, non-representational art, and nonsense   The Supreme Court has unanimously held that Jackson Pollock's paintings, Arnold Sch#65533;enberg's music, and Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" are "unquestionably shielded" by the First Amendment. Nonrepresentational art, instrumental music, and nonsense: all receive constitutional coverage under an amendment protecting "the freedom of speech," even though none involves what we typically think of as speech--the use of words to convey meaning.    As a legal matter, the Court's conclusion is clearly correct, but its premises are murky, and they raise difficult questions about the possibilities and limitations of law and expression. Nonrepresentational art, instrumental music, and nonsense do not employ language in any traditional sense, and sometimes do not even involve the transmission of articulable ideas. How, then, can they be treated as "speech" for constitutional purposes? What does the difficulty of that question suggest for First Amendment law and theory? And can law resolve such inquiries without relying on aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy?   Comprehensive and compelling, this book represents a sustained effort to account, constitutionally, for these modes of "speech." While it is firmly centered in debates about First Amendment issues, it addresses them in a novel way, using subject matter that is uniquely well suited to the task, and whose constitutional salience has been under-explored. Drawing on existing legal doctrine, aesthetics, and analytical philosophy, three celebrated law scholars show us how and why speech beyond words should be fundamental to our understanding of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment Bubble by Amy Gajda In determining the news that's fit to print, U.S. courts have traditionally declined to second-guess professional journalists. But in an age when news, entertainment, and new media outlets are constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable content, the consensus over press freedoms is eroding. The First Amendment Bubble examines how unbridled media are endangering the constitutional privileges journalists gained in the past century. For decades, judges have generally affirmed that individual privacy takes a back seat to the public's right to know. But the growth of the Internet and the resulting market pressures on traditional journalism have made it ever harder to distinguish public from private, news from titillation, journalists from provocateurs. Is a television program that outs criminals or a website that posts salacious videos entitled to First Amendment protections based on newsworthiness? U.S. courts are increasingly inclined to answer no, demonstrating new resolve in protecting individuals from invasive media scrutiny and enforcing their own sense of the proper boundaries of news. This judicial backlash now extends beyond ethically dubious purveyors of infotainment, to mainstream journalists, who are seeing their ability to investigate crime and corruption curtailed. Yet many-heedless of judicial demands for accountability-continue to push for ever broader constitutional privileges. In so doing, Amy Gajda warns, they may be creating a First Amendment bubble that will rupture in the courts, with disastrous consequences for conventional news.

Privacy in the New Media Age by Jon L. Mills "An essential book for anyone concerned with the increasingly ubiquitous clashes between a technologically borderless world, free press, safety and personal privacy."--Charlotte Laws, board member, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative   "Elucidates a path that both enhances dignity and protects essential press liberties. This is a much needed work in our new media age, where forced disclosure and technology have converted transparency from a disinfectant into a bludgeon."--Chris Hoofnagle, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology   "An original look at old and new media versions of the clash between privacy and freedom of the press."--Anita Allen, author of Unpopular Privacy: What Must We Hide?   "The almost-anything-goes Internet, which enables anyone to be a publisher, alters both the definition of a journalist and the meaning of privacy. This book arms both traditional journalists and citizen-journalists with a clear description of the murky boundary between the rights to publish and to privacy in our brave new media era."--Norman Lewis, University of Florida   "The cases presented here range from politics to popular culture and violent crime and demonstrate the global complexity of related privacy issues, which are made even messier by the advent of new technologies."--Melody A. Bowdon, coeditor of Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships   "Explores possible modernization of the intrusion tort, calls for greater weight to be placed on human dignity interests, suggests redefining personal space to fit our times, and offers multiple approaches for recalibrating the delicate balance between press freedom and privacy rights."--Clay Calvert, coauthor of Mass Media Law   Balancing personal dignity and first amendment concerns has become increasingly challenging. In today's new media age, technology moves faster than the law, enabling modern media outlets to commit intrusions into private endeavors for the sake of a story. With few legal limits governing the dissemination of information online, individuals--whether news affiliates or anonymous writers--can become publishers, freely divulging the details of citizens' private lives. While the history of free speech and press has noble origins rooted in democratic theory, unlimited and unrestricted internet speech has left thousands of victims in its wake.  Can society protect those who are harassed, stalked, and misrepresented online while maintaining our constitutional freedoms? Jon Mills, one of the nation's top privacy experts and advocates, maps out this complex problem. Tracing the history of the press in tandem with its regulation, Mills argues that technology has always evolved more quickly than the laws restricting its use. Old laws chase new media, raising original questions of how privacy and modern news outlets can coexist. Mills tackles those issues by looking at solutions already implemented by the European Union and comparing them to the obsolete privacy laws still extant in the United States. In his search for solutions, Mills closely examines an array of noteworthy cases, including suits made by Jennifer Anniston, Kate Middleton, Naomi Campbell, Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona, and the family of deceased SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau. In a global marketplace of instantly shared ideas, freedom of expression offers consumers a wealth of knowledge, but a lack of gatekeeping threatens intellectual space and individuals' personal lives. Mills traces that sharp edge between the right of privacy and the right of the public to know--between the limitless source of private information and society's craving for it all.