By Helen Ruhlin
Texas v. Johnson (1989)
Ever been called the B-word in Boston? You may be entitled to compensation.
"What a b!tch!" "B!tch please." "SON OF A B!TCH!" Whether it comes from a college frat bro, a drunken Red Sox fan, a Starbucks-yielding lady you accidentally bumped into on the street, or the average Massachusetts driver on a Monday morning––getting called a bitch is basically Boston's rite of passage. The well-known swear first got... Continue Reading →
Content regulation: Is it about what we say or how we say it?
While a first-reading of Vikram Amar's The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech; Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate can often leave you feeling like "what did I just read?" the message behind content regulations in Part III is actually pretty relevant. The two types of content limitations presented in Amar's book are content-neutral and... Continue Reading →
Private information is a news source too
We'd like to believe that ethics and morality are the founding pillars of good journalism, and in the grand scheme of things, I truly believe they are. But when leaked, private information becomes a journalist's only source, those moral pillars often seem to crumble. According to an article written for the Columbia Journalism Review, in... Continue Reading →
The fine line between sex and obscenity; a First Amendment conundrum
Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought that we Hate tackled another taboo subject from our handy list of human rights this week. In his chapter titled "Another's Lyric," Lewis outlined how the Supreme Court decides what’s too raunchy for media and what isn’t. As one of mankind’s greatest motives, sex is a historically hot topic... Continue Reading →
Sure, but I’m not putting my name on it
In most landmark decisions, the opinion of the Court is written by the Chief Justice or most senior justice joining in the opinion. Because they are the cases that will studied for many years to come, justices want be the ones to pen the opinion and determine its language. It is through their written opinions... Continue Reading →
Free Press Free Speech 