First Amendment Stories
Authors:
Garnett, Richard W. / Koppelman, Andrew
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2011
22 chapters
have results for "first amendment"
Chapter 11: Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC: A Different Perspective on the First Amendment Cathedral 46 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Sometimes the Court or litigants have cast disputes between those who claim First Amendment rights of access and property owners who resist such claims as disputes about whether an owner’s First Amendment rights—not his property rights—would be violated by being compelled to grant access. could be viewed this way if it were regarded as a case which pitted broadcast-licensee owners’ First Amendment rights against the First Amendment rights of those seeking to respond to personal attacks, and which simply held that the access-seeker’s First Amendment rights (as surrogate for the “right of the might also be viewed as such a case, namely as a case which pitted the printing press owner’s First Amendment right to resist a First Amendment claim of access for a reply to a personal attack but in which the printing press owner’s right was “paramount.” Viewed from this perspective, the First Amendment contrast between
- —is to regard each one as a case that is about the First Amendment rights of broadcasters as citizens and to assume that the relevant comparison is between their First Amendment rights and those of other citizens. But perhaps it is incorrect to think about as a case about the First Amendment’s limitations on the rights of government as sovereign regulator of speech content and the concomitant First Amendment rights of broadcasters as compared to the First Amendment rights of everyone else. Perhaps, instead, our focus should be on the possibility that is about the First Amendment rights of broadcast ...First Amendment by thinking about it in terms of property rights and the control over speech resources and speech content that property rights give to owners. The story is complicated by the fact that the government, as property owner, is arguably differently constrained than are private individuals. I will briefly address these complications in due course, but first I must establish...
- What seems to be a difference in the First Amendment rights of broadcasters and of owners of other media is, in fact then, nothing but an artifact of the dichotomy the Court has established between the right to speak and the right to command the resources with which to exercise the right. The First Amendment protects the right to speak. It does not protect the right to command resources with which to exercise the right to speak. The fact that there is no First Amendment right to trespass—no First Amendment right to commandeer the property of others in order to exercise one’s own speech rights—means that owners may exercise their property rights to exclude speakers from their property or they may condition access to their property for speech purposes on the access-seeker’s compliance with whatever restrictions on content the property owner imposes. When we have regard to these facts, the apparent contradiction between ...there is no First Amendment right of access to the property...
- versus First Amendment rights, and when the relevant property right in Also it enables us to see that what differentiates broadcast speech from other speech is not that broadcasters have different First Amendment rights than other speakers but rather that broadcasters do not own the key resource which enables them to be broadcasters: broadcasters do not own their spectrum rights, whereas newspaper owners do own their printing presses. It explains the meaning and the relevance of the Court’s observation in that “No one has a First Amendment right to a license, and as far as the First Amendment is concerned those who are licensed stand no better than those to whom licenses are refused.” That is to say, because no one has a First Amendment right to use any frequency to begin with, no licensee can claim a First Amendment right to use a frequency to broadcast indecent speech or personal attacks—or any other speech, for that matter. Broadcasters are treated differently from other...
- can be understood as something in addition to the First Amendment anomaly that at first glance it seems to be. Since this is a book of First Amendment stories, it seems fitting to offer one that attempts a doctrinally coherent account of the case in First Amendment terms. That is what I will offer here, urging as I do that readers understand I offer it as one possible—and not by any means the only—way that
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Introduction: The Many Paths to Neutrality 12 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Of course, the First Amendment to our Constitution protects freedoms and expresses commitments that are of more than academic, educational, or professional interest. They are at the heart of the American constitutional experiment and experience; they add, as James Madison hoped they would, “lustre to our Country.” It should come as no surprise, then, that for many Americans, the First Amendment serves almost as the Constitution “in a nutshell.” For many, it is—borrowing Justice Jackson’s words—the “fixed star in our constitutional constellation.” In many ways, the “First Amendment story”
- First Amendment Stories
- An array of surveys and seminars on the First Amendment and related matters (for example, free-speech theory, law and religion, church-state relations,
- Religion, Division, and the First Amendment
- Milton’s Areopagitica and the Modern First Amendment
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Chapter 14: The Story of Tinker v. Des Moines to Morse v. Frederick: Similar Stories of Different Student Speech with Different Results 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Paul Horwitz, Grutter’s First Amendment, 46 B.C. L. Rev. 461, 589 (2005); Paul Horwitz,
- Amidst these First Amendment precedents, The Court then ruled for the students based on three points—all precedent-setting declarations of First Amendment law, but all under heavy fire in later cases.
- Along these lines, Paul Horwitz defends the speech choices of “First Amendment institutions” like schools, libraries, and the press,
- Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404–405 (1989) (noting that while First Amendment “literally” protects only speech and press, it “does not end at the spoken or written word,” extending to “an expressive element in conduct relating to flags”).
- Toward an Institutional First Amendment
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Chapter 8: The Story of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan 29 results (showing 5 best matches)
- ., Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991) (holding that the First Amendment is no obstacle to a plaintiff alleging a newspaper breached its promise of confidentiality); Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978) (no First Amendment limitations on Fourth Amendment searches).
- is likely the most important First Amendment case the Supreme Court has ever decided. In this case, the Court first announced that the “central meaning” of the First Amendment is the protection of political debate and declared the nation’s commitment to public discourse as “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” There can be no doubt that these principles have had a huge impact on First Amendment jurisprudence. Its impact on journalism and public debate more generally, however, is less certain. In the digital age, the assumptions
- the Court has never recognized a First Amendment right to access information from the government despite arguments that access is necessary to provide meaningfully informed public debate. In addition, the Court has also refused to did nothing to change the Court’s refusal to give independent meaning to the “press” clause of the First Amendment. Instead, the Court has made clear that the First Amendment rights belong to the press and public alike.
- ., Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001) (striking down wiretapping claims against publisher who legally obtained an illegally intercepted conversation); Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (1989) (holding First Amendment protected newspaper’s publication of rape victim’s name inadvertently disclosed by the police); Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975) (striking down privacy claim based on publication of rape victim’s name obtained from courtroom clerk); Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co., 443 U.S. 97 (1979) (holding First Amendment protected newspaper’s right to publish name of juvenile offender); Landmark Comm’ns v. Virginia, 435 U.S. 829 (1978) (First Amendment prevents criminal sanction against newspaper based on publication of truthful but confidential proceedings of judicial commission); Zacchini v. Scripps–Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977) (First Amendment no bar to unlawful appropriation claim).
- to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” public debate in the marketplace of ideas as well as its distrust of government interference in that debate are concepts that have had an enduring influence through the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. ’s broad influence is evident throughout the Court’s First Amendment canon, including cases regarding hate speech, was the first of several cases in which the Court carefully examined categories of expression that had historically been considered outside of the First Amendment.
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Chapter 1: The Story of the Sedition Act of 1798: “The Reign of Witches” 22 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In its lively and often bitter debate over this legislation, Congress first began to explore the meaning of the First Amendment. How, the Republicans asked, could this act be constitutional, given that less than a decade earlier the nation had adopted the First Amendment, which promised that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”?
- Republicans attacked Otis’s interpretation of the First Amendment as “preposterous.” Gallatin charged that it was an “insulting evasion” of the Constitution to tell the people that “we claim no power to abridge the liberty of the press,” but “if you publish anything against us, we will punish you for it.” Nicholas emphasized that the First Amendment states clearly that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” not that “Congress may pass laws punishing speech that is licentious or pernicious,” terms he deemed “so indefinite” that they would enable the meaning of the First Amendment to be “arbitrarily controlled.”
- The Federalists emphatically rejected Republican claims that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment. The most forceful argument was offered by Congressman Harrison Gray Otis, who maintained that “every independent Government” has the authority to “preserve and defend itself against injuries and outrages which endanger its existence.” The First Amendment did not deny the United States the power to defend itself against false and malicious attacks.
- Disagreement over the “right” interpretation of the First Amendment in 1798 continues to this day. Some scholars argue that the framers had been “nurtured” on the “narrow conservatism” of Blackstone and that the “ways of thought of a lifetime are not easily broken.” On this view, the proposition that the framers of the First Amendment intended to abolish the crime of seditious libel seems doubtful, at best.
- Otis held that the language of the First Amendment—“Congress shall … make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”—had “a certain and technical meaning.” He set forth two propositions to support his conclusion that the Sedition Act did not violate this “meaning.” First, the framers of the First Amendment had borrowed its language from England, where the freedom of speech meant “nothing more than the liberty of writing, publishing, and speaking one’s thoughts, under the condition of being answerable to the injured party, whether it be the Government or an individual, for false, malicious, and seditious expressions,” and where the freedom of the press meant nothing more than “an exemption from all previous restraints.”
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Chapter 9: The Story of Pickering v. Bd. of Education: Unconstitutional Conditions and Public Employment 29 results (showing 5 best matches)
- , 547 U.S. at 417 (“The Court has made clear that public employees do not surrender all their First Amendment rights by reason of their employment. Rather, the First Amendment protects a public employee’s right, in certain circumstances, to speak as a citizen addressing matters of public concern.”).
- is now increasingly used to rob individuals of First Amendment and other constitutional rights. Indeed, when one also considers the government’s vigorous use of the “government speech doctrine,” under which government is not limited by the First Amendment in its own speech, in addition to the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, one wonders where the future of American civil liberties lies.
- Justice Brennan found that Section 399 violated the First Amendment rights of broadcasters because the law’s In other words, Justice Brennan applied a strict level of scrutiny to this law because it burdened the First Amendment rights of broadcasters. Although the government may have had a vital interest in regulating public broadcasters, Justice Brennan was unconvinced that the means by which the government attempted to accomplish its aims were narrowly tailored.
- Justice Kennedy found that the federal law in question unreasonably interfered with the First Amendment rights of lawyers participating under the Legal Service Corporation (LSC) program. Specifically, Justice Kennedy found that the government subsidy had crossed some magic line from a mere subsidy to an unconstitutional condition that coerced individuals in the exercise of their First Amendment rights.
- More recently, the Court decided the First Amendment case of A number of law schools believed that the Solomon Amendment required them to choose between abandoning their policies against sexual orientation discrimination and losing a substantial amount of federal funding. This, they argued, infringed on their First Amendment rights of speech and association.
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Chapter 5: The Story of Burstyn v. Wilson 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The primary burden of Clark’s opinion is to shore up the major premise of the ruling, that is, that movies are protected First Amendment “speech” or “press.” The primary obstacle to doing so in But not quite; that case arose before the First Amendment was “incorporated,” and so protected First Amendment “speech” or “press.” The Court held that movies are indeed protected First Amendment expression, an idea whose time evidently had come. At least, Clark did nothing to justify it.
- . Writing for the Court, Justice Tom Clark said that “application of the ‘sacrilege’ test … might raise substantial questions” under what he described as the “First Amendment’s guaranty of separate church and state with freedom of worship for all.” declared for the first time in the Court’s jurisprudence that “expression by means of motion pictures is included within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First Amendment.”
- Clark conditionally “accept[ed] this hypothesis,” then he declared that “it does not follow that motion pictures should be disqualified from First Amendment protection.” premise: the “substantially unbridled censorship such as we have here” was simply incompatible with the First Amendment.
- cases, while a motion picture may be a medium of thought, it is not the same thing as speech and writing, to which the First Amendment guarantees apply, and therefore is not similarly protected. But the Court went on to say that motion pictures are capable of evil, having the power which is greater because of their attractiveness, the manner of their exhibition, before mixed audiences of men and women, boys and girls and children, sitting together in the theater.” Transcript at 52–53.
- Court surely believed that New York’s “sacrilege” standard did not comport with the First Amendment. The question remains: what evidence or argument did the Court muster to vindicate that belief? Clark wrote that in “seeking to apply the broad and all-inclusive definition of ‘sacrilegious’ given by the New York courts, the censor is set adrift upon a boundless sea amid a myriad of conflicting currents of religious views. … New York cannot vest such unlimited power over motion pictures in a censor.”
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Chapter 3: The Story of Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten: Judge Learned Hand, First Amendment Prophet 19 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Id. at 538. If the postmaster was acting within his statutory authority, Supreme Court precedent would have apparently foreclosed any First Amendment or other constitutional claim. See, e.g., , 143 U.S. 110, 134 (1892) (holding that in refusing to mail a newspaper, the government does not abridge freedom of communication within the meaning of the First Amendment but merely “declines itself to become an agent in the circulation of printed matter that it regards injurious to the people”). In light of this precedent, Hand’s decision to rest his decision on statutory interpretation rather than the First Amendment might have been strategically motivated by the outcome he wanted to reach. For an argument that the Espionage Act was not in fact intended to suppress expression such as the material at issue in
- At the time the Espionage Act went into effect, judicial interpretation of the First Amendment offered little protection to free expression, Not only radical ideas but also mainstream expression such as films, peaceful labor protests, and on occasion even public sermons and crime reporting were also denied First Amendment protection as a result of the judiciary’s general lack of regard for free speech interests.
- Freedom for Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
- Learned Hand and the Origins of Modern First Amendment Doctrine: Some Fragments of History
- Learned Hand and the Self–Government Theory of the First Amendment
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Chapter 4: The Story of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette: The Pledge of Allegiance and the Freedom of Thought 30 results (showing 5 best matches)
- We do not suggest that the First Amendment should be interpreted so as to enhance the character virtues that we have identified simply because those virtues are intrinsically worth promoting. Nor do we claim that the First Amendment presupposes a character ideal that judicial interpretation should strive to promote as part of an effort to approximate or approach an ideal society. Instead, our argument is that the successful operation of an ongoing, stable freedom of speech culture in our actual, non-ideal society presupposes that, by and large, citizens exhibit and practice concern for the truth, sincerity, and minimal forms of intellectual independence. Given the commitment represented by the First Amendment, it is inconsistent for the state to implement laws that undermine these character traits. Likewise, it is inconsistent for the state to show significant forms of disrespect for the requisite character traits or otherwise to cast profound doubt upon the state’s commitment to...
- Children & The First Amendment
- In an opinion by then-recently-appointed Justice Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court reversed the courts below and vacated the injunction. In holding that the Witnesses could be compelled to salute the flag on pain of expulsion from school, the majority declined to decide whether the duty to pledge allegiance to a secular symbol amounts to a religious burden of First Amendment import. Instead, Justice Frankfurter seized the occasion to write into law two basic principles with resonance far beyond the immediate controversy.
- Finally, addressing students as an audience, instead of corralling them into speaking, recognizes a virtue that contributes in a comprehensive way to the various purposes served by the freedom of speech. Many different values of the First Amendment depend upon or are enhanced by sincerity on the part of individual citizens. Justice Jackson invoked the importance of sincerity when he scathingly described the compulsory flag salute as designed either to produce “unwilling converts” or assent simulated “by words without belief and by a gesture barren of meaning.” If some part of the value and justification of the First Amendment rests upon an interest in approaching and appreciating the truth, this effort is vastly facilitated by speakers giving voice to what they
- , we are faced with a state measure which forces an individual, as part of his daily life—indeed constantly while his automobile is in public view—to be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view he finds unacceptable. In doing so, the State “invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.”
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Chapter 17: The Story of the Ten Commandments Cases: Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
- at 684 (“At oral argument, the defendants conceded that they [added materials to the Ten Commandments exhibit] in an attempt to bring the display within the parameters of the First Amendment and to insulate themselves from suit.”);
- The displays generated immediate controversy, and despite two revisions, a Supreme Court majority in 2005 held them to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
- The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, which believed that the exhibits abridged the First Amendment,
- Under state law, the Capitol Square was to serve as a forum for public activity, including debate and discussion of public issues. The Court held that the Board’s failure to accede to the Klan violated its First Amendment rights. The cross was private religious speech and was “fully protected under the Free Speech Clause as secular private expression”
- This was significant because his analysis captured the Court’s other two major approaches that supported the majority’s conclusion: neutrality and endorsement. First, when government acts with religious purpose it violates the “touchstone” principle that the First Amendment requires religious neutrality—including neutrality between different religions and neutrality between religion and nonreligion. Second, for government to do otherwise, Justice Souter explained, “sends the … message to … nonadherents ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members.’ ”
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Chapter 6: “Things That Are Not Caesar’s”: The Story of Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral 8 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Now, another First Amendment case was also on the docket that day, though only for some housekeeping matters, and so it is easier to understand why it—unlike the “mysterious” maple syrup in the Wooster, Ohio diner where he had nervously eaten breakfast the day before few would disagree with the judgment that, First Amendment-wise,
- It is striking—and, given the interests of those who today write and comment about the Court and its work, perhaps even amusing—that Rehnquist said nothingin his account about the case that was actually argued on his first day on job. That argument, it turns out, resulted in a now-famous First Amendment ruling, No small part of the Court’s First Amendment work during the last half-century—including, of course, Rehnquist’s own contributions during his more than three decades on the Court—has involved the delicate and divisive question of religion’s place in public schools and, in a way, the meaning and implications of Justice Douglas’s assertion in
- by contrast, would be seen by most students and scholars as something as an idiosyncrasy, an anomaly, or a frolic-and-detour in the Court’s First Amendment work. But this characterization gets both the “story” about and the “story” about the First Amendment wrong. It was, after all,
- should—so important, so worth a story. Looking back, it is striking, and instructive, that even as the Cold War against Soviet aggression, expansion, and influence was ramping up, and notwithstanding what had to have been the Justices’ clear-eyed appreciation for the realities of the relationship between the Soviet state and the Church authorities in Moscow, the Court nevertheless held the First Amendment line against an effort by politically accountable actors to strike back in defense of what they perceived as American interests, values, and security.
- the Court had rejected a First Amendment challenge to the federal Smith Act, which outlawed teaching and advocating the overthrow of the United States government, emphasizing among other things the “power of the Congress to protect the Government of the United States from armed rebellion” and Communist conspiracy.
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Chapter 12: The Nine Lives of Buckley v. Valeo 17 results (showing 5 best matches)
- has been the leading case governing the constitutionality of campaign finance laws in the United States since the Supreme Court decided it in 1976. But it is an unlikely candidate for influence and longevity. The decision upheld federal limits on campaign contributions but it struck down federal limits on campaign spending as violating the First Amendment. It was a compromise opinion written by a committee of Justices; three of the eight Justices deciding the case dissented from parts of its core holdings on contributions and expenditures. Over the years, there have been Court majorities ready to overturn parts of ’s central tenets. The Court’s later campaign finance cases have vacillated wildly in their treatment of the First Amendment issues—yet each of these cases has claimed fidelity to
- Though things went well for the defenders of the law in the D.C. Circuit, the Supreme Court does not defer to lower courts on legal questions such as the meaning of the First Amendment, and so all of the legal questions were up for grabs on appeal. The plaintiffs quickly appealed the case to the Supreme Court, hoping for a better result.
- Although recognizing that any law regulating campaign financing was subject to the “exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment,” Court recognized only the interests in prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption as justifying infringement on First Amendment rights.
- , the Court rejected this equality rationale for campaign finance regulation, at least in the context of expenditure limits: “[T]he concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.” The Court’s view of whether political equality could trump First Amendment interests was the polar opposite of that expressed by a firm majority of the
- corporate contributions are furthest from the core of political expression, since corporations’ First Amendment speech and association interests are derived largely from those of their members, and of the public in receiving information. A ban on direct corporate contributions leaves individual members of corporations free to make their own contributions, and deprives the public of little or no material information.
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Contributors to First Amendment Stories 5 results
- First Amendment Stories
- Ideas of the First Amendment
- First Amendment Institutions
- is Associate Professor of Law at Colorado Law School. He joined the faculty at Colorado after six years as a lawyer in New York City and three years as a professor at Marquette Law School, where he was the 2007 recipient of the James D. Ghiardi Faculty Award awarded annually by the student body. He earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School and his B.A. and M.A. at Stanford University. After graduation, he served as a law clerk to Judge Constance Baker Motley of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He teaches and writes in the areas of employment law and discrimination, First Amendment and other constitutional rights, federal civil procedure, and economic analysis of law. He litigates appeals, serves on the Board of Directors of the state chapter of the American Constitution Society and is active in the A.B.A. Section on Labor & Employment, the National
- is Associate Professor at Boston College Law School. After graduating from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School, Professor Papandrea clerked for Justice David H. Souter, for Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for Judge John G. Koeltl of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Following her clerkships, Professor Papandrea spent several years as a litigator at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in First Amendment litigation. At Boston College, she teaches and writes about constitutional law, civil procedure, media law, and national security and civil liberties. Professor Papandrea has served as Chair of the American Association of Law Schools Mass Communication Law Section and National Security Law Section.
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- The principal bone of contention in the case (other than whether the First Amendment applied to state and local law) was the City’s justification for its ordinance. Counsel for the city insisted that the ordinance served to protect the public health. As he argued:
- After he was charged for the violation, Permoli filed an answer claiming the protection of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
- As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the United States Supreme Court declined jurisdiction. The First Amendment does not apply to the states, and so there was no federal question for the Court to decide. The wardens won the legal skirmish; Father Permoli’s fine was upheld. The underlying dispute, however, continued. Ultimately, with no assistance from the courts, Bishop Blanc gained the upper hand. As non-French Catholics migrated to New Orleans, popular opinion eventually turned against the wardens, who ultimately relented and recognized the Bishop’s right of appointment of a priest to the cathedral. Although the wardens retained legal title to the property until 1883, they no longer attempted to use that power to control ecclesiastical governance.
- it was the first case to reach the United States Supreme Court in which a party explicitly invoked the protections of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Unfortunately for Father Permoli, the Court rejected his argument, holding, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Catron, that the Free Exercise Clause does not apply to the acts of state and local governments. The case is now cited, along with
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First Amendment Stories 3 results
Chapter 7: The Story of the School Prayer Decisions: Civil Religion Under Assault 12 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Interestingly, the opinion spent as much time on the Fourteenth Amendment’s history as on the First Amendment’s, a balance that would shift in later cases as the courts simply assumed “jot for jot” incorporation of the First Amendment in the Fourteenth and therefore discussed only founding-era history. Meyer added that prayers were accepted in public institutions at the time of First Amendment too. Finally, considering the case law “[e]ven without the constitutional history,” Meyer found that the brief prayer, recited outside of classroom time, “cannot be deemed religious instruction” invalid under
- If common ground can be defined which permits once conflicting faiths to express the shared conviction that there is an ethic and a morality which transcend human invention, the sense of community and purpose sought by all decent societies might be advanced. But though the First Amendment does not allow the government to stifle prayers which aspire to these ends, neither does it permit the government to undertake that task for itself.… [Our] precedents caution us to measure the idea of a civic religion against the central meaning of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, which is that all creeds must be tolerated and none favored. The suggestion that government may establish an official or civic religion as a means of avoiding the establishment of a religion with more specific creeds strikes us as a contradiction that cannot be accepted.
- School Prayer: The Court, the Congress, and the First Amendment
- were fully embedded in the Court’s First Amendment case law.
- Even television celebrity Bishop Fulton Sheen, who attacked the Court for relying on the “myth” of church-state separation, cautioned against altering the First Amendment. Prayer opponents were equally unsuccessful in Senate hearings in 1966, a House floor debate in 1971, and House and Senate hearings during the first years of the “Reagan revolution” in the early 1980s. The proposals failed whether they sought to change the First Amendment in substance or to deny the federal courts jurisdiction to hear school prayer cases.
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- presented the Court with the problem of whether CO status had to be extended to a person who rejected participation in war as a matter of conscience, but who was an avowed atheist. When it ruled in Welsh’s favor, the Court offered the fullest answer it has yet given to a central constitutional problem: the definition of the “religion” which is protected by the First Amendment.
- The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.… In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between Church and State.”
- Justice Black circulated his own concurrence, agreeing with Goldberg that the statute was unconstitutional, and responding to Harlan’s deference to Congress. Congress can draft armies, but that does not mean “that in exercising this great and indispensable power Congress can run roughshod over the First Amendment by selecting the soldiers who must do the dangerous fighting on the basis of whether or not they are religious persons.”
- This generates a puzzle. It is not logically possible for the government both to be neutral between religion and nonreligion and to give religion special protection. Some justices and many commentators have therefore regarded the First Amendment as in tension with itself.
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- case raises a number of important points for students of law and religion and the First Amendment more generally.
- the First Amendment. This line of cases left those who wanted some place for prayer at graduations and other school ceremonies eager to find some way to treat those prayers as “student-initiated” private speech rather than as government-sponsored prayer.
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Chapter 15: The Stories in Lukumi: Of Sacrifice and Rebirth 8 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The earliest “incorporating” was accomplished by way of dictum in Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (1925), assuming for argument that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause embraced the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech. The Free Exercise Clause was “incorporated” in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940).
- case, see Garrett Epps, “The Story of Al Smith: The First Amendment and Grandfather Peyote,”
- , at 31; 61 U.S. L. Week at 3348 (the latter identifying Scalia, J.). Before the case was decided, I assigned to my First Amendment class the
- . The case involved a First Amendment claim, but its applicability in equal protection cases was suggested in the
- , not—as ten Third Circuit judges have imagined—that the city’s interest in avoiding cruelty to animals was insufficiently “compelling.” United States v. Stevens, 533 F.3d 218, 226 (3d Cir. 2008) (10–3 en banc), affirmed on grounds of First Amendment overbreadth, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010).
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- The Institutional Press and Its First Amendment Privileges
- American Broadcasting and the First Amendment
- This civil/criminal separation must have made him more comfortable with an independent meaning for “indecent.” Third, Stevens concluded that the FCC had not violated the First Amendment by finding Pacifica’s broadcast indecent. He contended that broadcasting is a special context in which the interests of child welfare and unwilling audiences justify efforts to channel indecent content into certain timeslots.
- Stevens also defended the constitutional holding with the idea that sexually explicit content is covered by the First Amendment yet has less constitutional value than, for example, political messages.
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- Publication Date: October 27th, 2011
- ISBN: 9781599417752
- Subject: First Amendment
- Series: Law Stories
- Type: Overviews
- Description: This Stories title will enrich First Amendment courses and help students appreciate the premises that animate the cases and the values that are at stake in religious-liberty and free-speech controversies, rarely captured fully by doctrinal presentations. This collection offers carefully selected and rich cases that involve real stories, which can themselves serve as points-of-entry to the many great, ongoing debates that run through our free speech and religious liberty traditions.
