The First Amendment & the Fourth Estate: The Law of Mass Media provides text, court opinions & other materials. Topics include an introduction to freedom of expression & the American legal system, defamation, privacy, liability for emotional & physical harm, obscenity, confidentiality, & press coverage of the administration of justice. Also included are copyright & trademark, national security, advertising regulation, & ownership. The book provides an introduction to broadcasting & broadcast programming, & cable & other new communication technologies. This edition includes edited court opinions of more than 25 principal cases & treatment of many more cases in note form.
In 1964 the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan guaranteeing constitutional protection for caustic criticism of public officials, thus forging the modern law of freedom of the press. Since then, the Court has decided case after case affecting the rights and restrictions of the press, yet little has ben written about these developments as they pertain to the Fourth Estate. Lucas Powe's essential book now fills this gap. Lucas A. Powe, Jr., a legal scholar specializing in media and the law, goes back to the framing of the First Amendment and chronicles the two main traditions of interpreting freedom of the press to illuminate the issues that today ignite controversy: How can a balance be achieved among reputation, uninhibited discussion, and media power? Under what circumstance can the government seek to protect national security by enjoining the press rather than attempting the difficult task of convincing a jury that publication was a criminal offense? What rights can the press properly claim to protect confidential sources or to demand access to information otherwise barred to the public? And, as the media grow larger and larger, can the government attempt to limit their power by limiting their size? Writing for the concerned layperson and student of both journalism and jurisprudence, Powe synthesizes law, history, and theory to explain and justify full protection of the editorial choices of the press. The Fourth Estate and the Constitution not only captures the sweep of history of Supreme Court decisions on the press, but also provides a timely restatement of the traditional view of freedom of the press at a time when liberty is increasingly called into question.
A lively and controversial overview by the nation's most celebrated First Amendment lawyer of the unique protections for freedom of speech in America The right of Americans to voice their beliefs without government approval or oversight is protected under what may well be the most honored and least understood addendum to the US Constitution--the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams, a noted lawyer and award-winning legal scholar specializing in First Amendment issues, examines the degree to which American law protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is the case anywhere else in the world, including democratic nations such as Canada and England. In this lively, powerful, and provocative work, the author addresses legal issues from the adoption of the Bill of Rights through recent cases such as Citizens United. He also examines the repeated conflicts between claims of free speech and those of national security occasioned by the publication of classified material such as was contained in the Pentagon Papers and was made public by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.
A comprehensive and in-depth study of the legal position in international law of heads of state, heads of government and other senior state officials, this book analyses relevant treaties, case law, and custom to set out the law in this area and provide practical guidance.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
"As traditional for-profit news media in the United States declines in economic viability and sheer numbers of outlets and staff, what does and what should the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press mean? The book examines the current news ecosystem in the U.S. and chronicles historical developments in government involvement in shaping the industry. It argues that initiatives by the government and by private-sector actors are not only permitted but called for as transformations in technology, economics, and communications jeopardize the production and distribution of and trust in news and the very existence of local news reporting. It presents ten proposals for change to help preserve the free press essential to our democratic society"--
Firmly rooting its argument in democratic and economic theory, the book argues that a more democratic distribution of communicative power within the public sphere and a structure that provides safeguards against abuse of media power provide two of three primary arguments for ownership dispersal. It also shows that dispersal is likely to result in more owners who will reasonably pursue socially valuable journalistic or creative objectives rather than a socially dysfunctional focus on the 'bottom line'. The middle chapters answer those agents, including the Federal Communication Commission, who favor 'deregulation' and who argue that existing or foreseeable ownership concentration is not a problem. The final chapter evaluates the constitutionality and desirability of various policy responses to concentration, including strict limits on media mergers.
In the 1980s alone, some 100 periodicals were published by and for inmates of America's prisons. Unlike their peers who passed their sentences stamping out licence plates, these convicts spent their days like reporters in any community - looking for the story. Yet their own story, the lengthy history of their unique brand of journalism, remained largely unknown. In this volume James McGrath Morris seeks to address the history of this medium, the lives of the men and women who brought it to life, and the controversies that often surround it.
Despite public support for the death penalty, a remarkable number of countries in different parts of the world have banned capital punishment in all its forms, regardless of the nature of the crime or the criminal. Arguing that international norms are often a critical source of ideas for change in state policy, but that impact varies greatly, Sangmin Bae offers a systemic explanation of how, when, and under what conditions a country complies with international norms. She examines four countries that reached different stages of norm compliance with respect to the death penalty—Ukraine, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States. Focusing on the role of political leadership and domestic political institutions, Bae clarifies the causal mechanisms that lead to state compliance or noncompliance with the norm.
This book discusses the problems of applicable law in international copyright infringement cases and examines the solutions proposed to them in the recent projects by the American Law Institute (ALI) and the European Max Planck Group for Conflict of Laws and Intellectual Property (CLIP). In particular, the book analyses how the territoriality principle and the lex loci protectionis rule are applied in traditional, broadcasting and online cases in selected European and US jurisdictions. It then evaluates whether the rules on ubiquitous infringement, de minimis, initial ownership and party autonomy, as proposed by ALI and CLIP, address the identified problems. This detailed and thorough study will appeal to academics, researchers, postgraduate and doctorate students, as well as to EU and international policymakers in the field of intellectual property and international private law.
