Note: Summer schedule until September 6th when I will return to a regular Wednesday weekly schedule.
Professors Geof Stone & Vince Blasi
This book was in some ways an accident. One day in occurred to me [that] the Supreme Court has made, what I regard, all this progress in these various areas relating to sexual freedom, over the last 60 years. (It’s was actually 50 years ago when I had that thought. . . .) I said, ‘what would the framers have thought of this?’ Not that I’m an originalist, because I’m not. I was just sort of curious. Because I really didn’t have any idea of wat they would have thought of the world we’re living in today. — Geoffrey Stone
Last month, the First Amendment Salon hosted its 14th salon, which consisted of a conversation betwwen Professors Vince Blasi and Geoffrey Stone. The dialogue, which was introduced by Lee Levine, focused on Stone’s latest book, Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century (Liveright, 2017).
→ A video of this rich and engaging dialogue can be found here, thanks to Nico Perino and the folks at FIRE.
→ The next salon will occur in New York on November 14th at 6:00 pm. It will consist of a Second Circuit reargument of the the Masses case (2nd Cir., 1917). Details forthcoming in early fall. This Salon will follow the all day conference at New York Universtiy celebrating the 100th anniversary of Judge Learned Hand’s district court opinion in that case.
“Ninth Circuit poised to resolve major free speech issue in secret proceeding”
Paul Alan Levy writing in the Consumer Law & Policy Blog notes that “[t]he United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued an order signed only by the Clerk declaring that a significant free speech issue bearing on the rights of anonymous Internet users will be decided in a totally secret proceeding, involving sealed briefs, a sealed record, and without any help from would-be amici (including Public Citizen) seeking to explain the dangers posed by the proceeding.”
Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen
“The case arises from a subpoena served by the United States on the employer-rating site Glassdoor, originally demanding identifying information about the owners of more than one hundred pseudonymous accounts that had, it appears, been used to post reviews of a particular employer whose contracting practices were subject to a federal criminal investigation. Over the past few years, Glassdoor has been one of the most aggressive companies demanding strong justification for civil subpoenas seeking to identify its users (considering how expensive legal services are, this company commitment earns it much credit in my book). Extending this approach to the criminal law context, Glassdoor refused to produce the information demanded by the grand jury subpoena, citing the First Amendment right of its users to speak anonymously.”
“In an effort to compromise, the government limited its production demand to eight specified reviewers. Glassdoor responded to that offer by proposing that it notify the users of the subpoena and provide identifying information for such of its users who were willing to be identified to the prosecutors. After the government rejected this offer, Glassdoor moved to quash the subpoena, invoking its users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously which, Glassdoor contended, created a privilege against production of the information. At the same time, it notified its users of the subpoena, thus meeting one of the conditions of the Dendrite line of cases that it cited in its motion. Those cases rely on the First Amendment right to speak anonymously as a basis for posing procedural and substantive obstacles to civil subpoenas seeking to identify online speakers so that they can be served with process and sued for wrongful speech. Eventually, Glassdoor also invoked Bursey v. United States, a decision in which the Ninth Circuit quashed in part a grand jury subpoena directed at the process of publishing the newspaper of the Black Panther Party.”
“The entire subpoena litigation was conducted under seal, but we know some of the details because, having taken a contempt citation to secure its ability to appeal, Glassdoor next obtained the government’s stipulation for the partial unsealing of the briefs exchanges by the two sides on Glassdoor’s motion to quash. Glassdoor had appealed, and raised the possibility that parties beside itself might wish to provide the Court of Appeals with the benefit of their views of the applicable law. The trial judge granted that request; as a result the briefs supporting and opposing the Glassdoor motion to quash, as well as reply briefs both from Glassdoor and from the government, are available in the public record, as is the judge’s ruling on the motion. . . .”
[ht: Volokh Conspiracy]
Professor Ruthann Robson
Robson on New First Amendment Rulings
- Ruthann Robson, Third Circuit: First Amendment Right to Record Police, Constitutional Law Prof Blog, July 7, 2017 (In its opinion in Fields v. City of Philadelphia, the Third Circuit concluded that “Simply put, the First Amendment protects the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers conducting their official duties in public.’ As the panel majority opinion by Judge Thomas Ambro noted, ‘Every Circuit Court of Appeals to address this issue (First, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh) has held that there is a First Amendment right to record police activity in public’; the Third Circuit joined ‘this growing consensus.'”)
→ Video of oral arguments in Third Circuit
- Ruthann Robson, District Judge Finds Utah’s “Ag-Gag” Law Violates the First Amendment, Constitutional Law Prof Blog, July 12, 2017 (“In a careful and well-reasoned opinion in Animal Defense Fund v. Herbert, United States District Judge for Utah, Judge Robert J. Shelby, has concluded that Utah’s so-called ‘ag-gag’ statute, Utah Code §76-6-112, is unconstitutional as violating the First Amendment.)
See also: Rebecca Tushnet, Court gags on Utah’s ag-gag law (July 13, 2017)
→ Related: Press Release: Animal Legal Defense Fund Puts Wisconsin Hunting Statute in the Cross Hairs (“Today the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to strike down a recently amended Wisconsin statute which bans photographing, videotaping, approaching or even “maintaining a visual or physical proximity” to a hunter. The organization argues the law unconstitutionally restricts free speech and violates the First Amendment.”)
[ht: David Keating]
National Review headline: “Republicans, Don’t Sacrifice Free Speech to Punish the Media”
Here is how Elliot Kaufman begins the above titled editorial: “You can’t call yourself a supporter of the First Amendment if you would deny the rights it guarantees to those with whom you disagree.”
Elliot Kaufman
“By a margin of over two to one, Republicans support using the courts to shut down news media outlets for “biased or inaccurate” stories, according to a recent poll from The Economist and YouGov. When asked if cracking down on the press in this manner would violate the First Amendment, a narrow majority of Republicans agreed that it does, seeming to create a contradiction. However, a further question gave them a chance to clear the air and reaffirm the primacy of principle over political expediency: “Which is more important to you?” it asked, ‘(A) Protecting freedom of the press, even if that means media outlets sometimes publish biased or inaccurate stories; (B) Punishing biased or inaccurate news media, even if that means limiting the freedom of the press; (C) Not sure.'”
“Shockingly, a full 47 percent of Republicans support “punishing biased or inaccurate news media, even if that means limiting the freedom of the press,” versus just 34 percent who support “protecting freedom of the press, even if that means media outlets sometimes publish biased or inaccurate stories.” By contrast, 59 percent of Democrats said they prioritize protecting the freedom of the press, dwarfing the 19 percent who see it the other way. On this issue, the Democrats are right. Freedom of the press is included in the Bill of Rights for two reasons: It matters, and there is perpetually an illiberal temptation to extinguish it. Republican politicians will always call CNN and the New York Times ‘biased’ and ‘inaccurate.’ . . . .”
Looking Back: 1972 | Pressmen Balk at an Impeachment Ad in The Times
Writing in the New York Times recently, David Dunlap began his story with this: “‘A Resolution to Impeach Richard M. Nixon as President of the United States,’ said the headline across a two-page political advertisement in The New York Times. It had nothing to do with Watergate. In fact, the break-in at the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex — the “third-rate burglary” that ultimately doomed President Nixon — hadn’t even occurred on May 31, 1972, when the ad ran. . . .”
“Down in The Times’s basement pressroom at 229 West 43rd Street, the men who printed the newspaper were having none of it. . . . The pressmen demanded that The Times remove the ad. The management refused. Then they demanded space in the paper to express their opposition. The management refused again. By this time, the start of the press run had been delayed almost 15 minutes — a critical interval given delivery timetables that required Times trucks get to newsstands, depots, railroad stations and airports on a pinpoint schedule.”
“Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher, was infuriated. . . .”
Ira Glasser responds in letter-to-editor:
“Later, the ACLU (a corporation) itself was effectively barred by campaig
Ira Glasser
n finance law from running an ad in the Times criticizing President Nixon for his views on school integration. We sued, and again the Times vigorously supported our free speech right against restrictions in campaign finance law, and our ad was published.”
The writer was executive director of the NYCLU 1970-78 and of the ACLU 1978-2001.
3 Notable Forthcoming Scholarly Articles
→ Al-Amyn Sumar, Are All Prior Restraints Equal? The Constitutionality of Gag Orders Issued under the Stored Communications Act, Yale Journal of Law & Technology (Forthcoming 2017)
Al-Amyn Sumar of Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz
Abstract: The First Amendment abhors no restriction on speech more than a prior restraint. A prior restraint on expression — a restriction that “forbid[s] certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur” — is “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on FirstAmendment rights,” and bears a “heavy presumption” of unconstitutionality. Put simply, the prohibition on prior restraints under black letter First Amendment law is “near-absolute.”
The focus of this Essay is the source of an unexpected but important challenge to classic prior restraint doctrine: government surveillance in the digital era. Ongoing litigation about the constitutionality of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) highlights that challenge. The SCA authorizes the government both to obtain a person’s stored Internet communications from a service provider, and to seek a gag order preventing the provider from even notifying a person of that fact. In April 2016, Microsoft brought a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in federal court, alleging that gag orders issued under the SCA constitute unconstitutional prior restraints and content-based restrictions on speech. In a February 2017 decision, the court denied the government’s motion to dismiss Microsoft’s First Amendment claims and allowed the suit to proceed.
The court was right to do so, and it should ultimately invalidate the SCA’s gag-order provisions. SCA gag orders are prior restraints on speech, and the statute cannot withstand the heavy scrutiny that applies to them. However, recent decisions addressing the constitutionality of similar gag orders involving National Security Letters suggest that courts are sympathetic to the view that such orders are not “typical” prior restraints, and therefore attract a lesser standard of scrutiny. That premise appears dubious. But even granting it, the SCA poses serious constitutional problems, and it should be either invalidated and then amended or interpreted to avoid those issues. If courts are to carve out an exception allowing for prior restraints in the era of digital surveillance, that exception should be exceedingly narrow.
→ Martin H. Redish & Matthew Fisher, Terrorizing Advocacy and the First Amendment: Free Expression and the Fallacy of Mutual Exclusivity, Fordham Law Review (Forthcoming 2017)
Professor Martin Redish
Abstract: Recent concern about modern terrorists’ attempts to induce ideologically-driven violence has given rise to a First Amendment dilemma. Some conclude that to preserve our free speech tradition, unlawful advocacy must be protected absent the imminent danger of harm. Others argue that traditional First Amendmentprotection must be suspended in the specific context of terrorist speech to prevent potentially violent catastrophes. We seek to resolve this dilemma by recognizing a new hybrid category called “terrorizing advocacy.”
This is a type of traditionally protected public unlawful advocacy that simultaneously exhibits the unprotected pathologies of true threats. When a speaker urges a willing listener to commit violence against an intended victim who is an intended recipient of the speaker’s advocacy, the speech constitutes a blend of protected persuasive and unprotected coercive speech. We propose a new multi-factor test designed to balance these competing elements in a manner that protects unlawful advocacy when appropriate but suppresses inherently coercive threats where they dominate the expression. In this manner we have recognized an inherent duality of two types of criminal speech when to date courts and scholars have implicitly assumed the mutual exclusivity of unlawful advocacy and true threats doctrine.
→ Robert Yablon, Campaign Finance Reform Without Law, Iowa Law Review (forthcoming 2017)
Professor Robert Yablon
Abstract: Conventionally understood, campaign finance reform is a matter of public regulation. Reformers believe that, without adequate government intervention, wealthy individuals and entities are destined to exert outsized influence over elections and governance. Propelled by that belief, they have spent decades advocating regulatory fixes, with relatively little to show for it. Many existing regulations are watered down and easy to circumvent. Efforts to bolster them have repeatedly hit doctrinal and political roadblocks — obstacles that are more formidable today than ever before.
This Article seeks to shift campaign finance discourse toward private ordering. Because scholars and reformers have long focused on public regulation, they have largely overlooked possible private correctives. The Article maps that uncharted terrain, revealing an array of extra-legal mechanisms that at least somewhat constrain money’s electoral clout. This survey suggests that numerous private actors have incentives and capacities to implement additional extra-legal reform. The Article then sketches several potential private interventions, and it assesses the interplay between public regulation and private reform. Private reform is no silver bullet, but to ignore private ordering even as public regulation flounders makes little sense. Especially given the significant constraints on public intervention, it is vital for campaign finance scholars and reformers to look beyond the law.
New & Forthcoming Books
- Sigal R. Ben-Porath, Free Speech on Campus (University of Pennsylvania Press, July 28, 2017)
Abstract: From the University of California, Berkeley, to Middlebury College, institutions of higher learning increasingly find themselves on the front lines of cultural and political battles over free speech. Repeatedly, students, faculty, administrators, and politically polarizing invited guests square off against one another, assuming contrary positions on the limits of thought and expression, respect for differences, the boundaries of toleration, and protection from harm.
In Free Speech on Campus, political philosopher Sigal Ben-Porath examines the current state of the arguments, using real-world examples to explore the contexts in which conflicts erupt, as well as to assess the place of identity politics and concern with safety and dignity within them. She offers a useful framework for thinking about free-speech controversies both inside and outside the college classroom, shifting the focus away from disputes about legality and harm and toward democracy and inclusion. Ben-Porath provides readers with strategies to de-escalate tensions and negotiate highly charged debates surrounding trigger warnings, safe spaces, and speech that verges on hate. Everyone with a stake in campus controversies—professors, students, administrators, and informed members of the wider public—will find something valuable in Ben-Porath’s illuminating discussion of these crucially important issues.
- Loren Glass, Rebel Publisher: How Grove Press ended censorship of the printed word in America (Seven Stories Press, March 20, 2018)
Abstract: Grove Press and its house journal, The Evergreen Review, revolutionized the publishing industry and radicalized the reading habits of the “paperback generation.” In telling this story, Rebel Publisher offers a new window onto the long 1960s, from 1951, when Barney Rosset purchased the fledgling press for $3,000, to 1970, when the multimedia corporation into which he had built the company was crippled by a strike and feminist takeover. Grove Press was not only one of the entities responsible for ending censorship of the printed word in the United States but also for bringing avant-garde literature, especially drama, into the cultural mainstream. Much of this happened thanks to Rosset, whose charismatic leadership was crucial to Grove’s success. With chapters covering world literature and the Latin American boom; experimental drama such as the Theater of the Absurd, the Living Theater, and the political epics of Bertolt Brecht; pornography and obscenity, including the landmark publication of the complete work of the Marquis de Sade; revolutionary writing, featuring Rosset’s daring pursuit of the Bolivian journals of Che Guevara; and underground film, including the innovative development of the pocket filmscript, Loren Glass covers the full spectrum of Grove’s remarkable achievement as a communications center for the counterculture.
- Russell L. Weaver, Understanding The First Amendment (6th ed., Carolina Academic Press, July 21, 2017)
Abstract: 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.
- P.G. Ingram, Censorship and Free Speech: Some Philosophical Bearings (reprint: Routledge, October 7, 2017)
Abstract: This title was first published in 2000: While there are many philosophical studies of free speech, treating censorship historically, politically, or by the medium restricted (films, press etc.), little has been written on censorship and free speech dealing with issues philosophically and approaching them from the perspective of restrictions. This book treats censorship and free speech as a problem of ideas, examining the issues as an aspect of our wider social and political lives and critically examining mainstream arguments against censorship. This unique approach takes issue with the concept of censorship as something aberrant, to examine where the limits of free speech lie in ensuring individual development and collective harmony. Examining the possibility of accepting censorship positively to serve legitimate purposes, it will be a thought-provoking challenge to prescriptive arguments for free speech.
Litigation Journal: “Chutzpah” Issue
The forthcoming summer issue of Litigation Journal (vol. 43 #4) is devoted to the topic of “Chutzpah” and the law. Included in the issue are the following two articles:
- Robert Corn-Revere “’I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It.’ But How? (A look at First Amendment cases and how to plead them successfully.)
- Joel Gora, Money, Speech, and Chutzpah (The ins and outs of the decades-long battle over campaign finance limitations and free speech.)
Last Scheduled FAN # 159: Flying Dog quits Brewers Association over censorship flap