First Amendment Rights

passing, so most of this section relates the Good News Club decision to the Court's prior cases. The article concludes that the Court correctly decided both the free speech and Establishment Clause issues and that its decision poses no threat either to religious liberty or to the separation of church and state. Ever since the Supreme Court first held that the Establishment Clause was binding on the states in Everson v. Board of Education, 11 in 1947, the Court's jurisprudence in this area has been marked by bitter internal divisions, seeming inconsistency and at times incoherence. For example, the familiar three-part test of Lemon v. Kurtzman,1 2 to determine whether the Establishment Clause has been violated, has been criticized by a majority of Supreme Court Justices 1 3 and has; at times been totally disregarded by the Court 14 but has never been officially overruled. The Supreme Court decisions outlawing the non-denominational New York Regents-approved prayer 15 and Bible reading in the 11330 U.S. at 16. 12 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971) ("First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster 'an excessive government entanglement with religion."') (citations omitted).

As an issue of first impression in the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction, a United States District Court in Texas considered whether it is impossible to state a claim for speech retaliation which involves the loss of a plaintiff's volunteer ministry rights and credentials. The court, in line with decisions from other federal courts and analogous Supreme Court cases, determined that being a volunteer is the type of governmental benefit or privilege the deprivation of which triggers First Amendment scrutiny, and it held that the volunteer chaplain stated a valid claim for retaliation. This article summarizes the law concerning retaliation against volunteers based on the exercise of their First Amendment rights, as well as analogous Supreme Court law. The article concludes that other federal courts that decide the issue, including the United States Supreme Court, will likely and should continue the pattern and decide that volunteers are protected from retaliation based on their exercise of First Amendment rights.

All countries except the USA must be inhabited by apes, otherwise why would they need Ape Speech Laws?

It strikes one as odd, given First Amendment law, that some Americans seem to have been raised in a European legal environment where freedom of speech exists only for what the powers that be allow and everything they label extremist is doomed to endless state persecution.

As prostitution, as pactum turpe or meretricious contract, is forbidden in all states but Nevada, pornography that necessitates such contracts for its making cannot be legal except in Nevada, yet the idea that pornography, when it involves real performers, is banned occurs to no one. Is the U.S. a mobocracy?

It is the rare case that is decided solely on Free Speech grounds yet directly impacts the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Pleasant Grove City v. Summurn is such a case. Although all nine Justices concurred in the judgment-that a privately donated monument in a public park is a form of "government speech" that is not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause-the case spawned five different opinions as the Justices attempted to explain the effect of the Court's decision on the Free Speech and Establishment Clauses. This Article analyzes the interaction between Sumrnum's "recently minted" government speech doctrine and the Establishment Clause. In particular, with respect to the Free Speech Clause, I argue that Summum resolves an ongoing circuit split regarding a common medium of expression-specialty license plates. Recently, six circuits have reached at least three different conclusions with respect to the status of specialty license plates, and two other circuits have addressed the First Amendment issue in passing. In addition, a petition for writ of certiorari has been submitted seeking Supreme Court review of a 2008 Seventh Circuit case dealing with this very issue. I maintain that Summum's new test for government speech is * Scott Gaylord is an Associate Professor of Law at the Elon University School of Law. He received his B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. from Colgate University, earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and graduated summa cum laude from Notre Dame Law School.

As an issue of first impression in the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction, a United States district court in Texas considered whether it is impossible to state a claim for speech retaliation which involves the loss of a plaintiff's volunteer ministry rights and credentials. The court, in line with decisions from other federal courts and analogous Supreme Court cases, determined that being a volunteer is the type of governmental benefit or privilege the deprivation of which triggers First Amendment scrutiny, and it held that the volunteer chaplain stated a valid claim for retaliation. This article summarizes the law concerning retaliation against volunteers based on the exercise of their First Amendment rights, as well as analogous Supreme Court law. The article concludes that other federal courts that decide the issue, including the United States Supreme Court, will likely, and should, continue the pattern and decide that volunteers are protected from retaliation based on their exercise of First Amendment rights.

In the last month we have seen a black record store owner and father of four convicted of obscenity for selling a "2 Live Crew" cassette tape to an undercover police officer, while three members of the band itself were acquitted of obscenity charges stemming from a live performance of the same music. The obvious unfairness of these contradictory rulings should cause us to reconsider the idea of free expression and the problem of obscenity.

The Supreme Court's recent decision compelling a public university to fund a student religious magazine is more than "an indication" of the Court's emerging "conservative block." It is a significant setback for religious freedom. And it may be a constitutional disaster of monumental proportions.

This module explores possible boundaries to freedom of expression. It highlights John Stuart Mill’s Harm to Others Principle as well as the Offence Principle: Can we say that sometimes, the harm or the offence brought about by a certain speech constitutes such an injury that it cannot be tolerated? More specifically, the question is: Under what conditions preventing offence can provide adequate grounds for limiting freedom of expression. Attention will be given to examples taken from the United States, Canada, Britain and Israel. We will touch upon controversial expressions such as racism; hate speech; incitement; true threats; media coverage of terrorism; violence on TV and in songs and the movies; cyberbullying; hard core, soft core, and virtual pornography.