The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost: Individualism,Collectivism And Conflict In Commercial Speech Doctrine

The Supreme Court of the United States has spent more than two decades constructing its commercial speech doctrine but has failed to articulate a principled approach, which has created disarray in the definition and protection of commercial speech. Analysis of the Court's conception of commercial speech protection, using individualist and collectivist political philosophies, concludes that the Court's commercial speech doctrine has suffered from a fundamental internal conflict arising from the difficulty in choosing one or the other of those political philosophies. That conflict will continue-as will the Court's inability to express a coherent commercial speech doctrine-until the Court makes an overt choice between collectivist and individualist approaches to the protection of commercial speech. The principled solution is for the Court to adopt a strict scrutiny approach to commercial speech, thus giving it protection commensurate with that given ideological speech.     

The Heckler’s Veto: Using First Amendment Theory and Jurisprudence to Understand Current Audience Reactions Against Controversial Speech

Pundits have recently used the term “heckler's veto” to describe instances in which vocal audiences seek to silence offensive or controversial speech by putting pressure on institutions that control the private forums that host the speech. The use of the term in these contexts, however, fails to take into account the jurisprudential nuances of the heckler's veto principle, as well as the principle's unique position within First Amendment theory. This article fills a void in mass communication law scholarship by examining the development of the heckler's veto principle in cases from the Supreme Court of the United States that discuss the persistent challenges that the heckler's veto principle presents and by analyzing the principle from the perspective of First Amendment theory. The purpose of these analyses is to distill the social values of tolerating extreme speech, and to apply those values to the governance of private forums of communication.     

Protecting Tobacco Advertising Under the Commercial Speech Doctrine: The Constitutional Impact of Lorillard Tobacco Co.

Since 1980, the Supreme Court has used a complex form of intermediate constitutional scrutiny-the Central Hudson analysis-when government regulations of commercial speech are challenged on First Amendment grounds. In Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, the Court used this analysis for the first time to test the constitutionality of government restrictions on tobacco advertising. This article reviews the Court's commercial speech doctrine including previous treatment of governmental attempts to restrict harmful product advertising. The article then provides an overview of the national regulatory framework for tobacco advertising and analyzes the Supreme Court's 2001 opinion in Lorillard Tobacco. The article then explores the impact of the case on the Court's commercial speech doctrine and in subsequent lower court opinions.     

Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party‐Based View of One‐Minute Speeches in the House of Representatives

Previous studies of House members' speech‐giving behavior treat the behavior as a product of members' individual goals. By uncovering leadership memoranda soliciting member participation in one‐minute speech giving, I find, first, that parties significantly structure one‐minute speech giving, with party‐orchestrated message campaigns accounting for about one‐third of the speeches given. Second, I find that a party‐based explanation illuminates individual members' speech‐giving behavior. Ideological proximity to the party leadership and party organizational factors strongly influence a member's willingness to be “on message.” These findings have important implications for studies of both party message politics and members' speech‐giving behavior.     

To Filter or Not To Filter: The Role of the Public Library in Determining Internet Access

To filter or not to filter-that is the question facing public librarians who are trying to decide whether to install Internet blocking software on computers. The filtering question hinges on the First Amendment, balancing adults' rights to constitutionally protected speech against the protection of minors and determining what materials might be considered harmful to minors. The purposes of this article are to examine the theoretical and practical aspects of blocking Internet content and to analyze the 1998 federal district court's ruling that found a Virginia library's filtering policy was unconstitutional. In addition, this article will review alternatives designed to protect minors and propose a three-pronged solution that both ensures adults' access to constitutionally protected speech and restores decision-making to the family in protecting minors from harm.     

From Sullivan to Nike: Will the Noble Purpose of the Landmark Free Speech Case Be Subverted to Immunize False Advertising?

In deciding not to rule in Nike, Inc. v. Kasky, the Supreme Court of the United States passed up an ideal opportunity to answer an urgent question that derives from two legacies of New York Times v. Sullivan: When speech implicates both the commercial speech doctrine and the political speech doctrine, how should that speech be assessed in terms of First Amendment protection? This analysis focuses upon the essential principles emphasized in Sullivan's landmark assessment of the societal value in protecting some false speech in the discussion of public issues. Concerns over the Nike case's implications for corporate expression must be weighed against the societal interest in preventing false commercial speech from being immunized by attaching it to a public issue.     

No Place in the Law: The Ignominy of Criminal Libel in American Jurisprudence

The application of the Sullivan standard to the crime of libel was a mistake. There is no common law affiliation with or legal justification for the existence of criminal libel in a democracy. Its existence is antithetical to the First Amendment's guarantees of equality of speech, as well as to the broader constitutional guarantees of equality of speaker. The crime has become almost completely indistinguishable from the tort of libel, both in form and function, as a result of its evolution in America-from the importance of truth as a defense to the audience's responsibility for its own reaction to the speech, violent or not. And the American experience demonstrates clearly and ignominiously that the abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and even the mere threat of prosecution, results in the suppression of constitutionally protected speech.     

The Contentious American Debate: The First Amendment and Internet-based Hate Speech

This essay reviews the debate over what constitutes hate speech and whether or not such speech is protected by the American First Amendment. First, the concept of white racialism and white supremacy is defined and illustrated. Then after a brief discussion of the legal debate, the nature and problematic definition(s) of hate speech is presented. The unique speech environment of the internet is reviewed alongside attempts to limit and censor topics available on the internet. The arguments for and against restricting first amendment protection are discussed, with a focus on Michael Israel's five criteria for withdrawing first amendment protections. The work concludes with a discussion of the difficulty in constraining discourse on the internet.     

An empirical testing of leverage effects via the common distribution network

The paper aims to empirically test the significance of leverage effects via the common distribution network in the conglomerate mergers between beer and soju manufacturers of Korea in the time period of 1994–2003. In this paper, a beer (or soju) manufacturer's ability to push the sales of soju (or beer) products via the common regional liquor distribution network is measured by the beer (or soju) firm's market share in the region. If the leverage effect is significant, we expect consumer choices to be significantly affected by the merged firm's ability to push. For a consistent estimation of the leverage effect on consumer demands, this paper adapts a logistic demand function for Yellow Pages in Rysman [Rysman, M. (2004). Competition between networks: A study of the market for yellow pages. Review of Economic Studies, 71, 483–512], controlling other demand-side variables such as prices, consumer loyalty, quality and the introduction of new products. The hypothesis test results indicate that the leverage effects via the common distribution network were not significant at the significance level of 0.1. This conclusion is robust to different specifications of leverage effects and the number of potential drinking.     

Forceful Self‐Help and Private Voice: How Schauer and McAdams Exaggerate a State's Ability to Monopolize Violence and Expression

Frederick Schauer's The Force of Law (2015) and Richard McAdams's The Expressive Powers of Law (2015) are noteworthy contributions. However, both authors exaggerate the importance of law, as opposed to other means of social control. Schauer largely omits the role that self‐help measures, ranging from negative gossip to violent self‐defense, play in deterring misconduct. Contrary to Max Weber, the state in practice cannot monopolize the legitimate use of physical force. McAdams valuably analyzes law's potentially expressive effects. He might have devoted more attention, however, to identifying the contexts in which state speech tends to be more salient than private speech, such as a statement by the pope or another esteemed private pundit.     

Homicide in Ireland

The homicide rate in Ireland is the lowest in Europe in the 1990's and has declined sharply during the 158 year period from 1837–1994. The rate has also remained stable in the 1980's and 1990's. These trends are contrary to the view held by the Irish public and the Irish and International media and raise questions about the reputation of the ‘'wild Irish'’ who emigrated to the U.S. and other countries in the 19th century.     

Regulating for responsibility: reputation and social media

The framework brought forward by the United Kingdom's Defamation Act 2013 underlines a traditional hierarchy of expression in which news media are viewed as high-level speech. Although of a different form, social media are a dominant means of expression. The current study explores the rationale for a more robust and forceful discussion of responsibility in speech on social media platforms. The underlying premise here is that speech should be viewed as a qualified good and that a more appropriate paradigm is one found in the phrase ‘freedom to participate’.     

Caution in the Classroom: K-12 Teacher In-Class Speech,The Federal Courts and Garcetti

The federal courts’ approach to regulating K-12 public school teacher speech in the classroom has been split during the past twenty years. Some circuit courts use Pickering v. Board of Education, in which speech is examined to see if it touches on a matter of public concern. Others prefer Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, which focuses on whether speech is school-sponsored and whether the school had a legitimate reason for restricting it. In 2007, Garcetti v. Ceballos offered a new perspective on public employee speech. In that case, speech was examined to determine whether it was related to an employee's professional duties. An examination of federal court treatment of in-class teacher speech before and after Garcetti shows the case has further complicated the issue because it is being embraced by some federal courts as an appropriate precedent when dealing with classroom speech.     

“Executing the Powers With Which it is Intrusted”: Justifications,Definitions and Limitations of Government Speech

Federal, state and local governments have realized that an effective way to counter an undesirable private message is to swallow it up within the government's own speech. So far, the Supreme Court of the United States has acquiesced, including its February 2009 opinion in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. This article explores the roots, definition and limits of government speech through a close examination of not only Summum but two other recent Supreme Court opinions granting the government a right to communicate even when others contend that the speech conflicts with their own messages. The article concludes that the government speech doctrine needs further explanation with regard to its justification and contours. The rational basis test and political process may not be sufficient to contain government speech within desirable bounds; instead, government speech should be subjected to judicial scrutiny to ensure it remains germane and proportional.     

China's Exchange Rate Reform and Exports

The paper argues that exchange rate reform is a vital supply-side factor in China's export growth. It contributes to China's export expansion by affording a realistic exchange rate and allowing freer access to foreign exchange, thereby leading to the reduction of anti-export bias and strong supply response. In an imperfect substitutes model, China's long-run export supply and demand functions are estimated in a system context. Evidence is found that the exchange rate reform is one of the most influential factors in China's long-run export expansion, inducing significant response of exports supply. In the short-run, the exchange rate reform and the export volume are also cross-linked through the error-correction process. China's exchange rate policy adjusts speedily to ensure the long-run equilibrium of the supply-side relationship and is likely to have played a dominant role in the adjustment. The study confirms, thanks to the exchange rate reform, China's exchange rate policy has benefited China's remarkable growth of exports before 1994.     

THE SEMANTICS OF SYMBOLIC SPEECH

More than half a century ago, the Supreme Court held that the free speech protection of the First Amendment is not limited to verbal communication, but also applies to such expressive conduct as saluting a flag or burning a flag. Even though the Supreme Court has decided a number of important cases involving expressive conduct, the Court has never announced any standards for distinguishing such conduct from conduct without communicative value. The aim of this paper is to examine which conceptions of nonverbal expression underlie judicial decisions on expressive conduct, and to offer an account of expressive conduct grounded in contemporary semantic theory. The central hypothesis of this paper is that significance of expressive conduct can be explained by principles that explain important features of linguistic meaning. I propose an analysis of expressive conduct that takes the meaningfulness of conduct as a function of the action and its consequences in context. I develop a theory of expressive conduct whose underlying conception of expression is based on a number of ideas from speech act theory. These are Grice's account of nonnatural meaning, Austin's theory of illocutionary force, and Grice's work on conversational implicature. My analysis understands the meaningfulness of conduct in terms of its relational properties and relevant features of the context upon which illocutionary force, perlocutionary properties and implicature are predicated. The natural and conventional properties of types of conduct, features of the context, and underlying social and cultural presumptions and expectations about human conduct thus play a role in the constitution of symbolic speech.     

Protecting Children While Silencing Them: The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Children's Free Speech Rights

In 1998, Congress passed the first law protecting the privacy of individuals on the Internet. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) restricts the online collection of personal information from children aged 12 or younger. Under the law, Web sites that maintain chat rooms directed at children must either condition a child's participation on the consent of a parent or guardian or monitor the chat room and censor references to personal information. This article examines whether COPPA's chat room restrictions infringe on the free speech rights of children. The examination finds that aspects of the chat room restrictions are constitutionally suspect because it is questionable whether the parental consent requirement is narrowly tailored.     

‘You caught ’em!’…or not? Feedback affects investigators’ recollections of speech cues thought to signal honesty and deception

Purpose. When eyewitnesses to crime receive feedback about their choice of a suspect from a line‐up (or post‐identification feedback), such information can substantially alter their recollections of the witnessing experience. This study examined whether feedback exerts similar effects on investigators’ recollections of a suspect's behaviours. Methods. Participant‐investigators received training on speech cues that they were told, when present in a speaker's account, signal either honesty or deception. After hearing a suspect's account of a theft, participants decided whether the suspect was lying or telling the truth. One‐third of participants subsequently received immediate confirming feedback about their performance, while another third received disconfirming feedback. The remaining one‐third of participants did not receive feedback about their decision. Finally, participants rated the frequencies of speech cues that they had been instructed to detect in the suspect's account. Results. Disconfirming feedback significantly altered retrospective judgments about the characteristics of the suspect's account. Specifically, when told that the decision they made about the speaker's credibility was incorrect, participants judged the speaker as having exhibited fewer behaviours consistent with the credibility decision they had made, relative to those who either received no feedback or confirming feedback. Conclusions. Biases in recollections of a suspect may have consequences in real‐world interrogations wherein investigators assess credibility on the basis of numerous behavioural cues. Results are discussed in light of findings of post‐identification feedback studies on eyewitnesses.