Associated Press Retracts Terry McAuliffe Story – Brian Feldman – The Atlantic Wire
Might be good facts for an exam question: More »
Texas Privacy Act update
I’ve been pretty open with folks that I think the Texas Privacy Act, passed this summer, is unconstitutional. The act reads: More »
Supreme Court Declines to Decide When Online Speech Becomes an Illegal Threat | Threat Level | Wired.com
Attorneys for the veteran, Franklin Jeffries, maintained that the federal threats law — which dates to a 1932 statute making extortion illegal and applies to the offline world as well — was unconstitutional. A felony conviction, these lawyers said, is wrongly based on whether a “reasonable person” (.pdf) would believe the threatening statement was made with the intent to inflict bodily injury and was uttered to achieve some goal through intimidation. More »
Supreme Court Lets Stand 2 Decisions on Campus Speech | Inside Higher Ed
These are both prior restraint cases. It’s important to remember that the Supreme Court not taking the case is not as decisive as the court taking the case and upholding the lower court decision. However, the practical effect in each case is the same. More »
In Conversation With Antonin Scalia — New York Magazine
Don’t feel obliged to read the whole interview, but I was intrigued by the exchange regarding Satan and his recommendation of The Screwtape Letters. Have you read The Screwtape Letters recently? More »
Court: website alleging police corruption shouldn’t have been shut down | Ars Technica
The applicable common law here is Near v. Minnesota, it would seem. More »
Court dismisses libel suit against Foreign Policy | McClatchy
This is a helpful example of how SLAPP statutes are used to defend against libel suits. More »
Writing Across the Curriculum information
Because Comm Law has been designated a writing-intensive course, your research papers are reviewed anonymously by faculty members after the semester has ended to evaluate how well the university is teaching writing skills. More »