Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Price Laboratory School Citizenship Program, the First Amendment Schools, ASCD and the CoE’s American Democracy Project extend student’s knowledge of First Amendment rights and responsibilities with government and business involvement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In a recent series of U.S. court cases involving media ownership regulation, broadcasters have invoked the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to resist ownership limitations, while civil society organizations have raised free speech rights as a rationale to promote the idea of ownership restrictions. Informed by political economy, this study reviews First Amendment jurisprudence on the matter of broadcast ownership regulation since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and explores the potential for a consequential rhetorical shift in the U.S. federal courts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article explores whether American citizens’ rights are violated when excluded from official White House event based on the citizens’ speech. In particular, this paper examines an event which took place in April, 2005, where three citizens were excluded from a Social Security “town-hall” meeting because the vehicle they arrived in exhibited a bumper sticker critical of Bush administration policies. The key question examined is whether private individuals who volunteered at the event can be considered “state actors” thereby implicating the citizens’ First Amendment rights. The issue is highly relevant, especially in America, given the increasing importance and power in our society of private institutions and individuals and given that such private persons are generally not constrained by the Constitution. The paper also provides a good launching pad through which to discuss other countries treatment of freedom of expression and the differences between the First Amendment and its counterparts or lack thereof in other societies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: By Justice Breyer’s light, his approach to legal interpretation emphasizing the Constitution’s democratic objective better resists judicial “willfulness” and brings us closer to the proper balance between democracy and its constitutional limits than the rival originalist approach championed by Justice Scalia. In effect, Breyer seeks to seize from Scalia’s originalist interpretive method its purported justification. Since the dispute over the import of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 1 clauses often lies at the heart of the charge that the Court has invaded the domain of democracy, I propose to examine whether the values ascribed by Breyer and Scalia to these clauses can be reconciled with their respective approaches to constitutional interpretation. To begin, I scrutinize the theoretical nature of Breyer’s and Scalia’s interpretive approaches. My inquiry suggests that Breyer’s emphasis on the underlying purpose of a constitutional text and on the consequences of a particular state action for this purpose leads to differences with Scalia’s originalism that are unappreciated. Moreover, I suggest that Breyer’s characterization of Scalia’s originalist method as “literalist” and as having no justification except the pretension that it better controls judicial subjectivity and provides clearer rules of decision-making ignores important complexities. Finally, I undertake my analysis of the constitutional values Breyer and Scalia find in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 1 clauses from the vantage of their respective interpretive approaches. I reach the ironic conclusion that the open-ended values Breyer imputes to the Section 1 clauses are more easily defended from a literalist position than the values Scalia ascribes to these clauses.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript