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ICYMI: Teaching Tips for New Professors

I wrote these tips a few years ago and reviewed them before reposting for anyone who is interested.

1.  Begin a little more strictly than you mean to go on.  If you start out strict and stern, you have room to lighten up. If you start out lax, you will pay a real price if you need to impose order later on.

2.  If you put a policy in the syllabus, stick to it even if you think you might have been wrong.  I learned this the hard way.  The first time I taught Professional Responsibility, I stated in the syllabus and in class that the exam would be a two-hour exam.  After I wrote it, I decided it was a bit too hard and I would be "nice" and give them an extra hour to complete it.  I had a young woman in my office 30 minute before the exam so angry I thought she would spit on me. I told her she was welcome to finish in two hours instead of three, but that didn't placate her. I finally told her she'd have to take it up with the associate dean, and I'll be damned if she didn't march down there and do just that.  Thankfully, he backed me up, but I never again made a major policy shift midstream.  She wasn't the only disgruntled student that day, either.

3. Put everything you can think of in the syllabus, even things that should go without saying.  For example, if you are teaching a seminar, you should consider a policy stating that plagiarism is a ground for failing the course, and you should have an extended explanation in the syllabus explaining what plagiarism is.  You might think that everyone accepted to law school already knows what plagiarism is, but you would be wrong.  More importantly, by explaining what plagiarism is in the syllabus, you deprive the student of the ARGUMENT that s/he didn't know s/he was committing plagiarism.  Another example of something you might want to put in the syllabus is a statement that it is rude and disruptive to come late to class, to come and go during class, or to leave class early without notifying the professor beforehand.  Frankly, I'm not sure I realized how distracting these habits are before I started teaching, and many of your students won't, either.

4. "Don't be moody." 

This is a piece of advice I received early on from a relatively new law teacher, and it has always stuck in my head. The person who gave me the advice was male, and he evidently had gotten burned by violating it.  What the advice boils down to, I think, is that students desperately need you to be predictable. It is comforting to them when they know roughly what to expect each day. I thought of this advice a lot as dean, too. The Dean's "mood" affects the whole institution, and it is important to remain predictably but not Pollyanna-ishly optimistic no matter what comes along. As an aside, I think this is important as a parent, too. My motto: We'll deal!

5. Students decide very, very quickly whether you're on their side or not. If they decide you are, they will forgive a multitude of mistakes. If they decide you're not, nothing you do will be right.  I've been teaching for 28 years, and I only had one class that hated me.  They decided early on that I was mean, and everything I did provided confirmation.  They even hated how I started the class and what I wore. (I'd given birth the month before the class started, and my wardrobe was limited). Frankly, I grew to dislike most of them, too.  However, in telling this story, I'm violating the next tip in my list.

6. Be careful about generalizing how "the class" feels.  A communications researcher would probably insist that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "class." (See Ien Ang).  Instead, a "class" is a collection of individuals with disparate needs and interests and judgments about the classroom experience.  That said, it is easy to assume that outspoken students represent the feelings of the entire group.  It so happens that what I think of as "the class that hated me" (discussed above) included two especially delightful students, who took one of the most fun Media Law classes I ever taught. I still keep in touch with them even though they graduated more than two decades ago.

7. Watch out for group dynamics.  Let's say you have a student who is engaging in disruptive behavior. You may be tempted to call the student out for his or her behavior in front of the whole class, but this is usually a bad idea.  Even if other students started out being annoyed at the disruptive student, they may turn on you if you come down too harshly on the student or make him lose face. What should you do instead? I use what I call "class regulation by raised eyebrow."  For example, if a student is late, I may visibly lose my train of thought and stare at him with a completely blank expression on my face for a few seconds--just long enough to be socially awkward.  That does the trick 99 percent of the time.  If you try informal means of "discipline" and they don't work, however, the next step is to call the student into your office. The student won't lose face, and you won't run the risk of having the entire class turn against you for being "mean." Also, you don't know what's really going on with the student. Often, it's not about you or your class at all, and seemingly rude behaviors can be a sign of a student who is in serious distress, especially if the behaviors begin suddenly.

8. Try not to project insecurity. In other words, fake it until you make it.  Although you may be tempted to reveal to the class that you are brand new or are learning the material for the first time, you certainly don't have to and some would argue you shouldn't.  Remember that the students are lucky to have a teacher who is energetic and curious and enthusiastic and can reach them at their level.  Also remember that as little as you think you know, you still can read a case far better than even your brightest student.  So project confidence, but . . . [see next rule.]

9. When you make mistakes, fix them.  When I first taught Torts, I slept with the Prosser & Keeton hornbook by my bedside.  I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking "what if they ask me X?" I would then flip through Prosser & Keeton, read it, perhaps even take notes, and then go back to sleep.  I realize now that every first-time teacher makes mistakes; it is just a question of how you handle them.  Sometimes you will just have to say, "I don't know. Let me research that and get back to you tomorrow." [But make sure you have the answer when you promised it.]   One classic dodge is to say:  "Hold that question. We'll get to that later in the class (or tomorrow or next week)." [Make sure you research the answer and come back to it when you said you would.]  If you realize you didn't explain something well or your explanation was misleading, one way to handle it is to say at the start of next class:  "I'd like to begin by clarifying X that we were discussing yesterday." [Then give your 5-10 minute summary/totally correct explanation.]  Occasionally, you will realize that you said something completely wrong, and you will just have to apologize and fix it. As consolation, remember that you are modelling for them how to handle mistakes, and it may be one of the most valuable lessons you can teach future lawyers.  Law is a complicated business, and we all make mistakes from time to time no matter how hard we try or how smart we are.

10.  Trade-offs are inevitable.  More depth or more coverage? Encourage participation and intellectual curiosity, or hew to an organizational scheme?  Stick to your syllabus, or spend more time on the things the class seems interested in or doesn't understand readily? There are lots of other trade-offs of this sort that you'll have to make and then re-make when you realize you've tilted the balance too far toward one value at the expense of another. 

11. Make ideas "sticky." Try to come up with ways to make the material you teach memorable.  Silly is sticky.  Graphics (pictures, drawings on the board) are sticky. Funny is sticky. Music is sticky. Videos can be sticky. My Trusts and Estates professor even danced on the table to reinforce a principle, and I remember it (the dancing) 30 years later.  The principle had something to do with whether separate property acquired after the marriage becomes community property or not.  Okay, so the idea wasn't that sticky, but my point still holds.

12. Use the board more than you think you need to. It helps keep the class structured, and it helps the visual learners in the class.   Conversely, use Power Point less than you think you need to.   Power Point is good for pictures and videos, and it can be used to examine closely the text of a rule or to convey highly detailed and technical material through lecture. It can also be used as a background with the main points (no more than 3-4) you're going to cover.  Do NOT put giant blocks of text on Power Point and then simply read to the class from the slides. EVER.  

13. It's not about you; it's about the students. Try to keep their needs foremost, instead of your own desire for ego gratification or anything else. This is probably the most important piece of advice on this list. You're not trying to convince the students you're smart; you're trying to convince the students they're smart. This happens to be good advice for leaders, too!

14. Keep a degree of formal distance between you and your students.  You can treat them like future colleagues, but you cannot be friends with students until they have left your class.  Your role requires you to sit in judgment of your students when you grade them, and that role can be compromised if you don't maintain formal distance.

15. Never use the same exam twice!!  Violate this rule at your extreme peril.

16. Ask colleagues for advice but remember you don't have to take all the advice you receive.

17. You will teach a class best the third time you teach it.

18. If you are teaching a large class and don't feel that voice projection is one of your gifts, consider wearing a microphone. I've never had this problem, but I've heard plenty of complaints from students about being unable to hear some of my colleagues. It is impossible to be an effective teacher if the students cannot hear you.

19. Consider wearing a suit when you're new. Even if you don't plan to wear it forever, it may help as a crutch for faking it until you make it and can help you maintain some formal distance from the students.  I don't wear a suit every single day, but I believe in signaling I take the endeavor seriously by dressing professionally.

20. If you are teaching 1Ls, talk to students about how to learn. You might think they know, but not all of them do. Talk about what hard work looks like. One of my favorite books about learning is "Make It Stick," which is recommended reading for all teachers and learners.

21.    Talk to students about mental health at the beginning of class and throughout and especially right before exams. Make it okay for them to seek help if they need it.

22.   One of my greatest joys as an experienced teacher is seeing my former students reach the pinnacles of their careers. Think about the fact that the students in front of you will someday be extraordinary lawyers, judges, and leaders. You may think you will change the world as a scholar, and maybe you will. But you can definitely change the world by helping one student at a time find what they were meant to do with their one short and precious life and giving them the knowledge, skills, and courage to pursue it. 

23.  Try to learn names. I've been bad at doing this while teaching as a dean. Now that I'm a full-time prof again, I'm looking forward to redoubling my efforts on this front. 

24. Tell students why they should come to office hours. Tell them that they can seek general advice from you if they need it. About two years ago, a student taught me how important this is for first-generation students. I wish I'd known it sooner. 

Finally, if you're new and you'd like to talk about any of the subjects I teach (mostly Torts, Media Law, Advanced Torts, First Amendment Law, Constitutional Law), I'd be happy to share any materials I have.

Disinformation & Defamation: A Loss for Veritas, A Strike for Truth?

A variety of defamation lawsuits connected to the discredited allegations of massive election fraud in the 2020 presidential election (sometimes called the "Big Lie") are proceeding to discovery. These suits not only seek to vindicate the reputations of the plaintiffs accused of participating in election fraud; they also seek to strike back against the campaign of disinformation underpinning the Big Lie.  For example, Dominion Voting Systems’ suits against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell; former Overtock CEO Patrick Byrne; Newsmax; and Fox Corporation have all gotten the green light to proceed. Smartmatic, another voting systems company, is also proceeding with a number of separate defamation suits. 

Now another defamation case involving accusations of election fraud joins them, this time involving an Erie, Pennsylvania postmaster. A Pennsylvania trial court has held in Weisenbach v. Project Veritas that discovery can proceed against Project Veritas, its founder James O'Keefe, III, and postal employee Richard Hopkins. The postal employee, Hopkins, accused Erie Postmaster Robert Weisenbach of backdating mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election. Hopkins based his accusations, which were published by Project Veritas and O'Keefe, on a conversation he supposedly overheard between Weisenbach and another postal supervisor. After the initial publication of these accusations, Hopkins was interviewed by the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General. Hopkins recanted his accusations during the interview, but later told Project Veritas he was coerced into doing so. Despite the questionable reliability of Hopkins' accusations, Project Veritas kept publishing them, and they were picked up and repeated by a number of Trump partisans and Trump himself. Meanwhile, the accused Postmaster Weisenbach, who was actually a registered Republican and Trump voter, had to flee his home. Hopkins lost his job with the postal service, but he was able to solicit, through online crowdfunding, hundreds of thousands of dollars from Project Veritas readers. A report of the Office of Inspector General found no evidence supporting Hopkins' allegations, but Project Veritas did not retract them. Postmaster Weisenbach sued Hopkins, O'Keefe, and Project Veritas for defamation and concerted tortious activity.

Defendants filed "Preliminary Objections" in the nature of a demurrer to the Postmaster Weisenbach's complaint. The judge overruled the objections, meaning the case against defendants proceeds to discovery. 

Defendant Hopkins' first objection was jurisdictional. He contended that the Federal Tort Claims Act gives exclusive jurisdiction to federal courts for claims made against federal employees acting in the scope of their employment. In other words, Hopkins argued that he made his allegations to Veritas and O'Keefe about the Postmaster Weisenbach while acting within the scope of his federal employment. The trial judge, however, found that Plaintiff's Complaint sufficiently pleaded that Hopkins made his statements to Project Veritas outside the scope of his employment and that he "was driven by financial gain and a desire to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the election and the integrity of his employer." The court found the complaint sufficiently alleged that Hopkins was not acting in the scope of his employment because he was not making the allegations to achieve his employers' "ultimate objective of delivering the mail, but more in the nature of a personal errand." 

Defendants' second objection went to the sufficiency of the Plaintiff's pleading of defamation and concerted tortious activity. The judge found the allegations that Plaintiff had engaged in election fraud "because he was a Trump hater" capable of a defamatory meaning. The judge's phrasing is interesting, because it is not normally defamatory to misattribute someone's political party. The court indicated that Plaintiff alleged he can prove that he is not a "Trump hater," but it is unclear whether what is defamatory in the Plaintiff's allegation is the misattribution of political party or the allegation of illicit motive for backdating mail-in ballots. Regardless, the accusation of committing election fraud was clearly capable of a defamatory meaning! The court also rejected the argument that Project Veritas' allegations were mere hyperbole uttered online in the heat of an election contest, stating that consideration of context might by appropriate at trial but is inappropriate at the pleading stage, when all reasonable inferences must be drawn in the Plaintiff's favor. 

The judges also found the Postmaster's allegations that Hopkins, Veritas, and O'Keefe "conspired" to defame him sufficient to support his substantial assistance or "aiding and abetting" claim. The court wrote: "Count III indicates a laundry list of ways in which Project Veritas and O'Keefe substantially assisted Hopkins, including through encouragement to come forward, the drafting of the affidavit, instructions on how to profit from the crowdfunding account, keeping lawyers on retainer to defend Hopkins, and consulting with Hopkins on a daily basis, all with the common goal of defaming Weisenbach." The judge refers to the this as "concerted 'character assassination,'" rather than journalistic reliance on an inside source. 

Finally, the court held that regardless of whether a Postmaster is a public official, the Plaintiff's complaint adequately pled actual malice as to all defendants. The Complaint alleged that Project Veritas drafted Hopkins' affidavit, encouraged and aided him to solicit donations through online crowdsourcing, flew him to New York to be interviewed, and got him legal counsel.  The Complaint also alleged that Project Veritas initially claimed they had "multiple sources" for their false accusations. Moreover, Project Veritas "doubled down" after Hopkins recanted his story. Even after the Postal Service Inspector General issued a report stating there was no evidence the Postmaster had engaged in backdating, Project Veritas would not retract their accusations. Thus, the judge concluded: "Taken together, these facts, if ultimately proven, could be credited as circumstantial evidence that Project Veritas and O 'Keefe fabricated evidence to bolster their story, or at least harbored serious doubts as to the truth of Hopkins' claims." The judge also stated that a jury might find actual malice if it found, consistently with Plaintiff's averments, that Project Veritas had developed a pre-conceived story line and solicited information to fit based on a desire to "erode confidence in the security of mail-in voting."  The court therefore concluded that the Postmaster's "mosaic of averments" related to Project Veritas' fabrication of evidence, deliberate avoidance of truth, and "ulterior motive for publishing" constituted sufficient facts "such that a jury could eventually conclude by clear and convincing evidence that the alleged defamatory statements were published with actual malice." The judge acknowledged that Project Veritas' arguments that "their reporting 'had to be done quickly'" in the election context would be relevant to the ultimate determination of actual malice but was not relevant at the pleading stage. 

The judge also found sufficient the Complaint's allegations as to Hopkins' actual malice. This issue was straightforward, given the allegations that Hopkins overheard and deliberately misconstrued an ambiguous conversation, recanted his initial allegations, and then benefitted financially from his tale. 

The judge concluded by acknowledging the that the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions strike a balance between "the need for a vigorous and uninhibited press and the legitimate interest
in redressing wrongful injury." He nonetheless noted: "The constitutional deck is not all stacked to one side."  Despite being "mindful of the chill that lawsuits such as this may have on our press freedoms," the judge allowed Weisenbach's claims to withstand Defendants' demurrers, stating "For now, 'the balance between the needs of the press and the individual's claim to compensation for wrongful injury' weighs in favor of the Plaintiff."

This suit is being brought on Weisenbach's behalf by Protect Democracy, which has a press release about the case here. 

 

 

Parler v. Amazon Web Services: Defamation & the Promotion of Violence in Social Media

Parler v. Amazon Web Services presents some intriguing issues concerning the role of social media in fomenting violence, the market power of Amazon and its web services to suppress speech businesses, and the continued controversy over who is and who is not a public figure. See Parler v. Amazon, Complaint, CASE #: 21-2-02856-6 SEA (Sup. Ct. Wash., Mar. 2, 2021); Parler v. Amazon Web Services, CASE NO. 2:21-cv-0031-BJR, Order Denying Motion for Preliminary Injunction (W.D. Wash. Jan 21, 2021).

Amazon Web Services indefinitely suspended the social media company Parler from its site a few days after the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, contending that “Parler was used to incite, organize, and coordinate the Janary 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

Shortly after being suspended, Parler sought an injunction against AWS in federal district court in the state of Washington. Parler, which describes itself as a “conservative microblogging alternative and competitor to Twitter” and Facebook, asserted that AWS was using its market power to disable a potential competitor and claimed that AWS had engaged in conspiracy in restraint of trade, breach of contract, and tortious interference with business expectancy. AWS countered that Parler’s inadequate moderation of its site violated AWS’s Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits “illegal, harmful, or offensive” use or content. AWS also contended that Parler was in breach of its Customer Service Agreement, which justified AWS in suspending Parler. The federal district court denied Parler’s motion, finding that Parler had failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim. The judge concluded that Parler supplied no evidence of any conspiracy in restraint of trade, and Parler’s breach of its agreement with AWS and the Acceptable Use Policy made Parler’s breach of contract suit unlikely to succeed. Similarly, Parler’s breach also made its tortious interference claim weak. Evaluating the balance of hardships in the case, the court stated: “AWS has convincingly argued that forcing it to host Parler’s users’ violent content would interfere with AWS’s ability to prevent its services from being used to promote—and, as the events of January 6, 2021 have demonstrated, even cause—violence.” The court further held that the public interest did not support granting an injunction forcing AWS to host the incendiary speech that some of Parler’s users engaged in, opining that the riots at the Capitol “was a tragic reminder that inflammatory rhetoric can—more swiftly and easily than many of us would have hoped—turn a lawful protest into a violent insurrection.”

Parler was off the internet for more than a month while it tried to find replacement web services. On March 2nd, 2021 Parler filed suit against Amazon Web Services and Amazon.com in state court in Washington. In its complaint, Parler insisted that AWS’s suspension was motivated by a desire to eliminate the threat Parler poses to “surveillance capitalism” because it does not sell user data. The complaint recounts instances of violence-promoting content appearing on Amazon, Twitter and other social media sites, suggesting that AWS’s suspension of Parler with less than 30 hours’ notice was based on concerns other than its content moderation. Further, Parler alleges, implausibly and without support, that AWS directed hackers to Parler’s backup datacenters and began secretly selling Parler’s user data.

Parler brought various claims against AWS, including deceptive trade practices, defamation, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, tortious interference with contract or business expectancy, unfair competition, negligence, and other claims (for a total of fourteen claims). The suit seeks trebled and exemplary damages and attorneys’ fees.
The basis for the defamation claim was an email AWS allegedly leaked to BuzzFeed that stated that AWS was indefinitely suspending Parler because it was unable or unwilling “to remove content that encourages or incites violence against others.” Parler asserts that AWS made this claim, despite being aware that Parler had a history of removing problematic content and was testing a new artificial intelligence system to moderate problematic content. Parler asserts that it is not public figure and its content moderation policies were not a matter of public concern, but even if it were, AWS acted with knowledge or reckless disregard of the falsity of its allegations that Parler had been lax in moderating troubling content. AWS complained that this defamation cost it millions in lost business.

Is Parler a public figure? While it is true that a defendant cannot bootstrap a plaintiff into becoming a public figure by virtue of the defendant’s defamatory allegation, Parler was in the public eye based on its business practices before AWS leaked the email. Indeed, a Washington Post article published the day before the Capitol riots on January 6 stated that “[t]alk of guns and potential violence is rife on . . . the conservative social media site Parler.” Parler suggests that it is no more responsible than other social media for allowing violent content on its site linked to the events of January 6th. If this allegation its true, it would lend credence to Parler’s claim that the blame for the riots has been falsely pinned on its site; however, Parler did not sue the media linking its site to the riots but instead sued AWS. AWS may assert that the leaked email about Parler is technically true: Parler was unable to keep up with moderating violence-promoting content. Moreover, if AWS relied on credible news sources to conclude that Parler was being used to foment violence, it would be hard for Parler to prove that AWS knew or recklessly disregarded the falsity of AWS’s attribution of inadequate moderation to Parler. On a side note, it seems at least as likely that AWS booted Parler for damaging AWS’s own reputation as it does that AWS booted Parler for anti-competitive reasons. Regardless, if this defamation action helps uncover whether Parler’s lax content moderation was more responsible than that of other social media for the riots of January 6, it will be doing a public service.

Tucker Carlson: Not to be Treated as Making Factual Statements (in Former Model's Defamation Case)

In McDougal v. Fox News Network, 2020 WL 5731954 (Sept. 24, 2020), Fox News essentially argued that Tucker Carlson was not to be taken seriously, and a federal judge agreed. Here's the background to the court's dismissal in the defamation case brought by former actor-model Karen McDougal.

National Enquirer CEO David Pecker, on behalf of parent company American Media, Inc., purchased the rights to a story about an alleged 2006-2007 affair between former model and actress Karen McDougal and Donald Trump. Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen then purchased the rights from American Media, Inc. This purchase was allegedly a “catch and kill” operation—that is, the Enquirer’s parent company American Media, Inc. bought the rights to McDougal’s story to prevent her from revealing damaging information about Donald Trump. News of this catch and kill operation (and another similar one) came out in the 2018 investigation of Michael Cohen on charges of violation of campaign finance law. Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty.

In the meantime, Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired a segment on December 10, 2018, shortly before Michael Cohen’s sentencing, in which he described the conduct of Karen McDougal and the other woman who had accused Trump of infidelity as follows:  “Two women approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn't give them money. Now, that sounds like a classic case of extortion.”

The district court held that Carlson’s statements were non-actionable hyperbole that no reasonable viewer would treat as factual. The court reached this conclusion by analogizing the case to a series of prior decisions in which courts had treated similar statements as exaggerations for effect rather than accusations of crime, especially when the statements involved contested political disputes. The court also interpreted the “extortion” statement in the context of Carlson’s show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The court noted that the stated purpose of the show is to “challenge[ ] political correctness and media bias,” and its “general tenor” tips viewers off that Carlson “is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.”  The court even suggested that the commentary could be viewed as “bloviating” and further noted Carlson’s disclaimer that he was assuming what Michael Cohen said was true “for the sake of argument,” which would put his listeners on notice that they were not dealing with “a sober factual report.” Finally, the court posits “this overheated rhetoric is precisely the kind of pitched commentary that one expects when tuning in to talk shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, with pundits debating the latest political controversies.” The court therefore held that the statements were “not factual representations and, therefore, cannot give rise to a claim for defamation.”

As an alternate basis for dismissal, the court also held that McDougal, a public figure, had failed to plead Carlson made his statements with reckless disregard for their falsity (that is, with actual malice). Allegations that Carlson was personally and politically biased in favor of Trump—as allegedly evidenced by Trump’s “47 Tweets” in support of Carlson--were insufficient grounds from which to infer actual malice.

[For a somewhat similar case suggesting Rachel Maddow’s “colorful commentary” on a news story was not actionable as defamation based in part on the fact that reasonable viewers would “expect her to use subjective language that comports with her political opinions” Herring Networks, Inc. v. Maddow, 445 F. Supp.3d 1042 (S.D. Cal. 2020)]. [This last part was added after my original post: I found the Maddow case a few hours later while doing further research on recent defamation cases.--LL]

Upcoming 2020 Victor Schwartz Lecture in Torts: Modernizing Defamation Law

I am honored to be giving the 2020 Victor Schwartz Lecture in Torts at the University of Cincinnati College of Law on October 6. Here's my topic: 

The common law tort of defamation acquired its distinctive shape and labyrinthine doctrines over the course of the last five centuries. In this century, the tort is being confronted with its biggest challenge since the invention of the printing press, namely how can defamation law protect reputation and free expression in a world where social media invite billions of people to impulsively comment on every conceivable topic from devices they carry in their pockets, all while creating a record of their carelessly chosen words? At this juncture in defamation’s long history, the American Law Institute has appointed reporters Robert Post and Lyrissa Lidsky (that would be me), along with a stellar panel of advisers, to “restate” the tort of defamation. The launching of this project creates an opportunity to reconsider how defamation law can accommodate free speech and reputation in a society that weights them very differently than Sixteenth Century England or even the United States of the late 1970s when the Restatement (Second) of Torts: Defamation was completed. This presentation (and a forthcoming essay) will examine and critique recent trends in defamation cases to scry what they portend for modernizing defamation law for the digital age.

After the Golden Age: The Fragility of the Fourth Estate

The period between 1964 and 1984 was the Golden Age of press cases in the United States Supreme Court. In that twenty-year span, the Court decided more landmark press cases than ever before or since. The press cases decided during this Golden Age contain some of the US Supreme Court’s loftiest rhetoric about the role the press plays in our democracy, and when read as a whole, the cases evince a strong commitment to the idea that the press serves as the Fourth Estate—the unofficial branch of government tasked with checking the other three. Though the Court never wholly embraces the terminology of the Fourth Estate, its foundational decisions contemplate the press playing a vital role in our constitutional scheme of separation of powers. This role makes the press the watchdog that informs us what the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government are up to and continually replenishes the stock of news – real news – that enables informed public discussion and rational public policy. 

As I hope to show in an article I've been working on for some time now, the Court during the Golden Age implicitly recognized that the press was a powerful institution that could protect its role in fostering democratic discourse between government and its citizens. Although the Court recognized in dicta the special role played by the press in democracies, the Court was reluctant to grant special privileges to an institution that could leverage its power and resources to fight against incursions by the official branches of government. Thus, the Court granted the press (and often simultaneously individual speakers) strong constitutional protection from direct government censorship, such as prior restraints or compelled publication, but was reluctant to grant affirmative rights such as access to information in government hands (with press and public access to criminal trials being a notable exception).

At the time, the Court had before it impressive examples of the press performing its role of checking government abuse of power and informing citizens without any assistance from the government. The press had the resources and will to deploy investigative expertise, leverage public opinion, and pursue legal challenges to fend off attempts by the legislature or executive branches to limit press power. Moreover, the press of the day played a critical role as an intermediary, facilitating communications between and among the legislative, executive and judicial branches with the public.  In light of this, the Court's reluctance to grant "special rights" or exemptions from generally applicable laws to the media is understandable. It explains how the Court could lionize the press in its rhetoric but still reiterate that the First Amendment provided the press no rights beyond those granted to the public: the press of the Golden Age simply didn't need government assistance to fulfill its democratic functions. Just as the official branches of government must leverage their political power to win battles in the public arena, so, too, did the Court expect the press to leverage its power and resources to protect its ability to function as the Fourth Estate. 

What about now? The press of today bears little resemblance to the press of the Golden Age, and the assumptions about press power underlying the Supreme Court's Golden Age press cases deserve renewed scrutiny.

The institutional press is no longer the powerful juggernaut of the Watergate era, united by a set of professional norms and capable of uncovering corruption at the highest levels of government by deploying sustained and expensive investigative expertise. Instead, the institutional press has been beset by devastating competitive and economic forces. Advertisers have fled. Just since 2008, newsrooms lost half their employees--and that was BEFORE the pandemic, which promises further newsroom carnage. Traditional media continue to face a crisis of legitimacy, with public opinion about their performance split along partisan lines. The public increasingly turns to social media speakers rather than traditional media for information, further eroding traditional media’s roles as gatekeepers and translators of news and information. At the same time, the President of the United States has conducted a sustained campaign to undermine the credibility of traditional news media, branding them "fake news" and the "enemy of the people" in over 1,900 anti-press tweets between 2015 and 2019. He has also sued journalists for libel, has tried to bar critical reporters from White House press briefings, and has issued executive orders designed to silence other critics. (To be fair, the prior President wasn't great for the press, either). Meanwhile, money to hire media lawyers to litigate these issues is in short supply.

What seems clear is that traditional media's ability to play the role of Fourth Estate is declining, and there is no obvious successor stepping into the breach. Instead, we are faced with a diminishing supply of reliable information about what our government is up to, with serious consequences for our democracy.

In my new article, I expect to argue that at a minimum, this decline should lead us to reexamine the assumptions underlying the Golden Age press freedom cases. If the press is less able to use "self-help" to maintain the separation of powers”\ between itself and the official branches of government, than perhaps it is time to impose more affirmative constitutional obligations on government officials to enable an institution or individuals to play a watchdog role. Perhaps some "special rights" must be accorded to those willing and able scrutinize our officials and provide reliable information about what they're up to. Even though dicta in Roberts Court decisions suggests skepticism of, if not outright hostility to, the press, our democracy depends on an informed citizenry armed with facts and not just opinions about those who govern them.  From that perspective, analysis of whether the First Amendment might play a role in shoring up today's Fourth Estate seems overdue. 

ICYMI: Ten (No, Make that Nineteen) Tips for New Law Professors

I wrote these tips a few years ago and reviewed them before reposting for anyone who is interested.

1.  Begin a little more strictly than you mean to go on.  If you start out strict and stern, you have room to lighten up. If you start out lax, you will pay a real price if you need to impose order later on.

2.  If you put a policy in the syllabus, stick to it even if you think you might have been wrong.  I learned this the hard way.  The first time I taught Professional Responsibility, I stated in the syllabus and in class that the exam would be a two-hour exam.  After I wrote it, I decided it was a bit too hard and I would be "nice" and give them an extra hour to complete it.  I had a young woman in my office 30 minute before the exam so angry I thought she would spit on me. I told her she was welcome to finish in two hours instead of three, but that didn't placate her. I finally told her she'd have to take it up with the associate dean, and I'll be damned if she didn't march down there and do just that.  Thankfully, he backed me up, but I never again made a major policy shift midstream.  She wasn't the only disgruntled student that day, either.

3. Put everything you can think of in the syllabus, even things that should go without saying.  For example, if you are teaching a seminar, you should consider a policy stating that plagiarism is a ground for failing the course, and you should have an extended explanation in the syllabus explaining what plagiarism is.  You might think that everyone accepted to law school already knows what plagiarism is, but you would be wrong.  More importantly, by explaining what plagiarism is in the syllabus, you deprive the student of the ARGUMENT that s/he didn't know s/he was committing plagiarism.  Another example of something you might want to put in the syllabus is a statement that it is rude and disruptive to come late to class, to come and go during class, or to leave class early without notifying the professor beforehand.  Frankly, I'm not sure I realized how distracting these habits are before I started teaching, and many of your students won't, either.

4. "Don't be moody." 

This is a piece of advice I received early on from a relatively new law teacher, and it has always stuck in my head. The person who gave me the advice was male, and he evidently had gotten burned  by violating it.  What the advice boils down to, I think, is that students desperately need you to be predictable. It is comforting to them when they know roughly what to expect each day. I think of this advice a lot as dean, too. The Dean's "mood" affects the whole institution, and it is important to remain predictably but not Pollyanna-ishly optimistic no matter what comes along. As an aside, I think this is important as a parent, too. My motto: We'll deal!

5. Students decide very, very quickly whether you're on their side or not. If they decide you are, they will forgive a multitude of mistakes. If they decide you're not, nothing you do will be right.  I've been teaching for 25 years, and I only had one class that hated me.  They decided early on that I was mean, and everything I did provided confirmation.  They even hated how I started the class and what I wore. (I'd given birth the month before the class started, and my wardrobe was limited). Frankly, I grew to dislike most of them, too.  However, in telling this story, I'm violating the next tip in my list.

6. Be careful about generalizing how "the class" feels.  A communications researcher would probably insist that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "class." (See Ien Ang).  Instead, a "class" is a collection of individuals with disparate needs and interests and judgments about the classroom experience.  That said, it is easy to assume that outspoken students represent the feelings of the entire group.  It so happens that what I think of as "the class that hated me" (discussed above) included two especially delightful students, who took one of the most fun Media Law classes I ever taught. I still keep in touch with them even though they graduated more than a decade ago.

7. Watch out for group dynamics.  Let's say you have a student who is engaging in disruptive behavior. You may be tempted to call the student out for his or her behavior in front of the whole class, but this is usually a bad idea.  Even if other students started out being annoyed at the disruptive student, they may turn on you if you come down too harshly on the student or make him lose face. What should you do instead? I use what I call "class regulation by raised eyebrow."  For example, if a student is late, I may visibly lose my train of thought and stare at him with a completely blank expression on my face for a few seconds--just long enough to be socially awkward.  That does the trick 99 percent of the time.  If you try informal means of "discipline" and they don't work, however, the next step is to call the student into your office. The student won't lose face, and you won't run the risk of having the entire class turn against you for being "mean."

8. Try not to project insecurity. In other words, fake it until you make it.  Although you may be tempted to reveal to the class that you are brand new or are learning the material for the first time, you certainly don't have to and some would argue you shouldn't.  Remember that the students are lucky to have a teacher who is energetic and curious and enthusiastic and can reach them at their level.  Also remember that as little as you think you know, you still can read a case far better than even your brightest student.  So project confidence, but . . . [see next rule.]

9. When you make mistakes, fix them.  When I first taught Torts, I slept with the Prosser & Keeton hornbook by my bedside.  I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking "what if they ask me X?" I would then flip through Prosser & Keeton, read it, perhaps even take notes, and then go back to sleep.  I realize now that every first-time teacher makes mistakes; it is just a question of how you handle them.  Sometimes you will just have to say, "I don't know. Let me research that and get back to you tomorrow." [But make sure you have the answer when you promised it.]   One classic dodge is to say:  "Hold that question. We'll get to that later in the class (or tomorrow or next week)." [Make sure you research the answer and come back to it when you said you would.]  If you realize you didn't explain something well or your explanation was misleading, one way to handle it is to say at the start of next class:  "I'd like to begin by clarifying X that we were discussing yesterday." [Then give your 5-10 minute summary/totally correct explanation.]  Occasionally, you will realize that you said something completely wrong and you will just have to apologize and fix it. As consolation, remember that you are modelling for them how to handle mistakes, and it may be one of the most valuable lessons you can teach future lawyers.  Law is a complicated business, and we all make mistakes from time to time no matter how hard we try or how smart we are.

10.  Trade-offs are inevitable.  More depth or more coverage? Encourage participation and intellectual curiosity, or hew to an organizational scheme?  Stick to your syllabus, or spend more time on the things the class seems interested in or doesn't understand readily? There are lots of other trade-offs of this sort that you'll have to make and then re-make when you realize you've tilted the balance too far toward one value at the expense of another. 

11. Make ideas "sticky." Try to come up with ways to make the material you teach memorable.  Silly is sticky.  Graphics (pictures, drawings on the board) are sticky. Funny is sticky. Music is sticky. Videos can be sticky. My Trusts and Estates professor even danced on the table to reinforce a principle, and I remember it (the dancing) 28 years later.  The principle had something to do with whether separate property acquired after the marriage becomes community property or not.  Okay, so the idea wasn't that sticky, but my point still holds.

12. Use the board more than you think you need to. It helps keep the class structured, and it helps the visual learners in the class.   Conversely, use Power Point less than you think you need to.   Power Point is good for pictures and videos, and it can be used to examine closely the text of a rule or to convey highly detailed and technical material through lecture.  Do NOT put giant blocks of text on Power Point and then simply read to the class from the slides. EVER.  [I used the whiteboard feature in zoom this summer as a replacement for the board. It worked better than powerpoint in prompting interaction.]

13. It's not about you; it's about the students. Try to keep their needs foremost, instead of your own desire for ego gratification or anything else. This is probably the most important piece of advice on this list. It happens to be good advice for deans, too!

14. Keep a degree of formal distance between you and your students.  You can treat them like future colleagues, but you cannot be friends with students until they have left your class.  Your role requires you to sit in judgment of your students when you grade them, and that role can be compromised if you don't maintain formal distance.

15. Never use the same exam twice!!  Violate this rule at your extreme peril.

16. Ask colleagues for advice, but remember you don't have to take all the advice you receive.

17. You will teach a class best the third time you teach it.

18. If you are teaching a large class and don't feel that voice projection is one of your gifts, consider wearing a microphone. This tip was shared by my anonymous source. I've never had this problem, but I've heard plenty of complaints from students about being unable to hear some of my colleagues. It is impossible to be an effective teacher if the students cannot hear you.

19. Consider wearing a suit when you're new. Even if you don't plan to wear it forever, it may help as a crutch for faking it until you make it and can help you maintain some formal distance from the students. This tip also came from my anonymous source, but I fully concur. I don't wear a suit every single day now (I do as dean!), but I believe in signalling I take the endeavor seriously by dressing professionally.

Finally, if you're new and you'd like to talk about any of the subjects I teach (mostly Torts, Media Law, Advanced Torts, First Amendment Law), I'd be happy to share any materials I have.

Hate Speech Returns to Campus

Students are returning to campus soon, and with them they are sure to bring more controversies over where the lines are drawn between free speech and speech that may be censured and censored.

Just last week, a controversy broke out at Princeton about a student's use of the n-word in social media. A white Princeton student responded on Facebook to a Black Fordham graduate who posted "We know you hate n---s" by saying that the Black graduate had gone to prep school and could not "speak for the n---s." This incident followed publication by a Princeton classics professor of an op-ed questioning some of the racial justice proposals made in a faculty petition to Princeton administrators; in that op-ed, the Professor called one Black student group a "terrorist organization."

Inevitably, Princeton administrators issued statements deploring the speech used in both incidents. With regard to the white student's use of the n-word, administrators branded it “contrary to Princeton’s commitment to stand for inclusivity and against racism” but said that the speech nonetheless did not violate university policy. Similarly, the President of Princeton condemned the classics professor's labeling of the student group as a terrorist organization, calling it "irresponsible and offensive," but the President said the speech was nonetheless protected by university policy.  

Many students rejected these conclusions on the grounds that a university committed to inclusion cannot tolerate hate speech. Their views seem to mirror those found in a recent survey:  81 percent of students on college campuses said that colleges should not punish offensive speech, but when asked whether colleges should restrict racial slurs, 78 percent said yes.  Moreover, seventy-one percent of students surveyed believed colleges should be able to restrict the wearing of costumes that involve racial or ethnic stereotypes. 

Unlike other campus free speech controversies, Princeton's are not governed by the First Amendment, because Princeton is a private university. State universities like mine are forbidden by the First Amendment from punishing protected speech, but Princeton is not. Nonetheless, Princeton seems to have adopted policies that protect free speech on its campus to the same extent the First Amendment does.

In my experience, many students and faculty, among others, are often surprised to discover the First Amendment protects a great deal of deeply offensive and even hateful speech. Indeed, the Supreme Court has stated: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Though many countries criminalize hate speech—that is, speech that demeans or dehumanizes a person or group based on their race, religion, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation—hate speech simply is not a legal category in the United States. Hate speech uttered within a classroom can be punished because it substantially disrupts the learning environment, but hate speech uttered by students speaking as citizens in public spaces—including online spaces--usually cannot. In that situation, state universities can only punish a student’s hate speech if it happens to fall into a recognized category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment. These categories include incitement, threats, defamation, discrimination against an individual, or fighting words.  The Princeton student’s Facebook post occurred in an online conversation about a public issue and did not fall into any of these categories. Had he been a public university student, the First Amendment would tie the hands of administrators seeking to censor or discipline him, leaving them to resort to counterspeech asserting that his speech did not comport with their values.

To many students today, the First Amendment's recommended response to hate speech is no longer satisfactory. Throughout our history, the First Amendment has asked us to put up with speech that evokes strong emotions based on a belief in the protective and healing power of discourse and the ability and willingness of citizens to come together and speak out against hate. What’s happening now in our country—with engaged students and other citizens speaking out and marching against racist violence, racist policies, and racist iconography—is exactly what our First Amendment envisions. In the long run, counterspeech is supposed to drown out hateful voices and sweep away repugnant ideas through the process of public discourse. 

Yet, to many critics, the victory of counterspeech over hate speech seems uncertain and counterspeech seems an insufficient remedy for the emotional wounds that hate speech causes. What they would prefer is an authoritative declaration that some speech, and some thoughts, are outside the bounds of civilized discourse and need not be tolerated. They take little solace from the arguments that I find compelling: that we have chosen this path because the power to censor is more often used to protect the powerful than the powerless, and we trust citizens more than we trust our governments to decide which ideas will prevail in the competition for adherents. Moreover, consensus formed through public discourse lends legitimacy to policy outcomes. Critics of the counterspeech cure would seemingly reject the lofty rhetoric of Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote that the First Amendment presumes “that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.” From their perspective, "evil counsels" have for too long drowned out good ones, and government power should be used to drive out the evil counsel of racists for good. The problem with this stance is that it depends on the benevolence and good faith of our government leaders or administrators in deciding whose views are so far out of bounds they can't be tolerated. Such benevolence or wisdom or restraint is certainly not something I take for granted, especially not now. 

Nevertheless, I know that in the war of generations, the younger always wins.  I just wonder what victory looks like.

Sandmann: Bringing the Dream

Nicholas Sandmann settled his defamation action against the Washington Post this week, and he is not done yet.

Sandmann's defamation suits arose after several media outlets caricatured him as a smirking racist based on a video clip of him wearing a Make America Great Again hat and watching a Native American man beating a drum amidst a chaotic crowd at the Lincoln Memorial. The video clip went viral after it was posted by someone at the scene, and the media picked it up for repetition and commentary. Their spin on Sandman's supposed smirk was supported by statements from Nathan Phillips, the Native American man at the scene. The viral video spurred viral outrage. The problem was that the video as a whole, which was readily available, tended to dispel the narrative gleaned from the clip of Sandmann and Phillips. Viewing the video as a whole, Sandmann did not appear to be in a confrontational posture vis-a-vis the Native American man or others at the scene but instead seemed to be in the posture of an awkward teenager watching a curious scene with his peers as a group of Black Hebrew Israelites hurled insults and invective at them. 

Sandmann was fortunate to procure the counsel of famed attorney L. Lin Wood, who filed defamation suits against ABC News,  NBC News, CBS News, the New York Times, Gannett, Twitter, and Rolling Stone; having already settled with CNN and the Washington Post, Sandmann is still seeking damages in the aggregate of over $750 million, and he has threatened additional lawsuits. 

As a lawyer, I hesitate to put too much significance on any case before it has made its way into a published appellate opinion. Until then, it may very well be an anomaly. This case has drawn extensive publicity and partisan commentary because it has come to represent a strike against the perceived arrogance and bias of the mainstream media and the slipshod investigative habits old and new media actors employ in the digital era.  On its face, the video clip of Sandmann, together with statements made by the Native American man at the scene, seemed to confirm what many liberal partisans seem to believe: Anyone who wears a MAGA hat must be a heartless white supremacist. It is clear that many media outlets took the clip on its face and republished it and drew conclusions from it without watching the whole video, which became readily available at a rarely early juncture in the whole controversy. Conservative partisans have attributed the media's rush to judgment to bias at a minimum and possibly malice, but it is just as likely to be a result of laziness and a desire not to fall behind digital competitors. Regardless, Sandmann's settlements have led some to call for more defamation lawsuits to hold media accountable (and may be part of a larger trend of plaintiffs using defamation suits strategically as vehicles for political messages, but that's a story for another day, Devin Nunes).  

The partisan lenses through which the Sandmann cases are being refracted obscure the interesting legal questions the cases raise. One important question is about what's required to prove actual malice in this case, but another is this: under what conditions does a person who "goes viral" by being in the wrong place at the wrong time become a public figure for purposes of defamation law, and does it matter if that person is a child? The distinction between public figures and private figures is crucial in defamation law, because private figures can recover for defamation by proving the defendant published a defamatory falsehood about them negligently, but public figures must prove actual malice, that is, that the defendant published the defamatory falsehood knowingly or with reckless disregard of the truth. (Actual malice is a term of art not to be confused with common law malice). Sandmann's cases become much harder to win if he is a public figure and must prove actual malice, although he may choose to prove actual malice even if he is deemed a private figure, because doing so gives him access to larger damages awards. 

Some commentators have suggested that Sandmann should be treated as a limited-purpose public figure because he became embroiled in an event that was clearly of public concern at the site of the Lincoln Memorial. The Supreme Court's cases defining the category of limited-purpose public figures predate social media, but they do involve people who were thrust into larger controversies by the press or partisans; in general, they suggest that becoming a limited-purpose public figure requires a plaintiff to do something more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and thus becoming fodder for public controversy. For example, in Time Inc. v. Firestone, five Supreme Court justices concluded that a woman married into a prominent family did not become a public figure simply by seeking a divorce through the judicial process. In Wolston v. Reader's Digest Ass'n, the Court held that a man who had previously been convicted of contempt for refusing to respond to a grand jury investigation on mental health grounds was not a public figure. And in Hutchinson v. Proxmire, a research scientist applying for a federal grant was not public figure, either.  Extrapolating from the Supreme Court cases, plaintiff should not be treated as a limited-purpose public figure because others embroil him in a public controversy of their creation: his entrance into the controversy must involve some degree of volition. The absence of meaningful volition is bolstered by the fact he was a minor on a school field trip standing on the steps of a public monument when he went viral.  Even examining Sandmann's actions through the lens of the multiple factors indicating limited-purpose public figure status elucidated by lower courts, Sandmann arguably did not do "enough" to be treated as a limited-purpose public figure. The factors lower courts look to often include whether (1) the plaintiff has access to channels of effective communication; (2) the plaintiff voluntarily assumed a role of special prominence in the public controversy; (3) the plaintiff sought to influence the resolution or outcome of the controversy; (4) the controversy existed prior to the publication of the defamatory statement; and (5) the plaintiff retained public figure status at the time of the alleged defamation. Sandmann apparently did nothing to ask for the infamy that attached to him based on the publication and misinterpretation of the viral video clip (and likely spurred at least in part by his hat). He did, however, gain access to the media after the fact to rebut any allegedly defamatory falsehoods. For some courts, this might be enough to tip Sandmann into the limited-purpose public figure category (see, for example, Gilmore v. Jones, 370 F. Supp. 3d 630 (E.D. Va. 2019), though that conclusion would not be faithful to the parameters of the category defined by the Supreme Court. 

A better, though still problematic, argument is that Sandmann and other "victims" of viral videos like him are involuntary public figures. This category comes from dicta in the Supreme Court's 1974 case, Gertz v.Robert Welch, in which the Supreme Court speculated: "Hypothetically it may be possible for someone to become a public figure through no purposeful action of his own."  The Supreme Court has left the definition of the category to the lower courts, which have not reached consensus on how to define involuntary public figures and, indeed, whether the category even continues to exist.  (Cf., e.g., Clyburn v. News World Communications, Inc., 1990; Marcone v. Penthouse Int’l Magazine, 1985; Schultz v. Readers Digest Ass’n, 1979)  One approach is represented by Dameron v. Washington Magazine, Inc, 779 F.2d 736 (D.C. Cir. 1985).  A plane crashed when Dameron was the sole air-traffic controller on duty, although subsequent investigations absolved him of any blame for the crash.  Eight years later, however, a magazine article attributed the crash to controller error.  The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals held that Dameron was an involuntary public figure for purposes of discussion of the crash, and therefore his libel action failed for lack of proof of actual malice on the part of the magazine. The D.C. Circuit concluded that even though Dameron had taken no voluntary actions,  "[t]here was indisputably a public controversy" in which "Dameron played a central role."  Thus, the court concluded that a person may become an public figure simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit took issue with this approach in Wells v. Liddy on the grounds that it "rest[s] involuntary public figure status upon ‘sheer bad luck.’"  According to the Fourth Circuit, the relevant factors in determining involuntary public figure status are (1) whether the allegedly defamatory statement arose in the context of a discussion of a "significant public controversy" in which the plaintiff was a "central figure," and (2) whether the plaintiff "assumed the risk of publicity."  A plaintiff assumes the risk of publicity by "pursu[ing] a course of conduct from which it was reasonably foreseeable, at the time of the conduct, that public interest would arise."  The court also demanded that, as in the case of limited-purpose public figures, the controversy must pre-exist the defamation, and the plaintiff must "retain[ ] public figure status at the time of the alleged defamation."  The Liddy court was thus much more careful than the Dameron court not to conflate public interest in an individual with that individual’s involvement in a public controversy.  

Sandmann's attorney Lin Wood is familiar with these categories. Lin Wood famously represented Richard Jewell, the security guard at the 1996 Olympics who was falsely reported in the media to have planted the bomb that killed two and injured 110.  Jewell, far from being the culprit, was actually a hero: he spotted the bomb and prevented more people from being injured.  Nonetheless, the mere fact that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and thus his actions became newsworthy led a Georgia court to label him an involuntary public figure when he sued the media for publishing defamatory falsehoods about him. 

Although Sandmann still has many defamation battles left to fight, they may never result in a precedent-setting legal opinion guiding the development of defamation doctrine in the digital era. In the meantime, though, these cases give those of us who love defamation law plenty to talk about. 

ICYMI: Ten (okay, Nineteen) Tips for New Law Professors

I wrote this a while ago and offer it again in case it may be of use.

1.  Begin a little more strictly than you mean to go on.  If you start out strict and stern, you have room to lighten up. If you start out lax, you will pay a real price if you need to impose order later on.

2.  If you put a policy in the syllabus, stick to it even if you think you might have been wrong.  I learned this the hard way.  The first time I taught Professional Responsibility, I stated in the syllabus and in class that the exam would be a two-hour exam.  After I wrote it, I decided it was a bit too hard and I would be "nice" and give them an extra hour to complete it.  I had a young woman in my office 30 minute before the exam so angry I thought she would spit on me. I told her she was welcome to finish in two hours instead of three, but that didn't placate her. I finally told her she'd have to take it up with the associate dean, and I'll be damned if she didn't march down there and do just that.  Thankfully, he backed me up, but I never again made a major policy shift midstream.  She wasn't the only disgruntled student that day, either.

 3. Put everything you can think of in the syllabus, even things that should go without saying.  For example, if you are teaching a seminar, you should consider a policy stating that plagiarism is a ground for failing the course, and you should have an extended explanation in the syllabus explaining what plagiarism is.  You might think that everyone accepted to law school already knows what plagiarism is, but you would be wrong.  More importantly, by explaining what plagiarism is in the syllabus, you deprive the student of the ARGUMENT that s/he didn't know s/he was committing plagiarism.  Another example of something you might want to put in the syllabus is a statement that it is rude and disruptive to come late to class, to come and go during class, or to leave class early without notifying the professor beforehand.  Frankly, I'm not sure I realized how distracting these habits are before I started teaching, and many of your students won't, either.

 4. "Don't be moody." 

This is a piece of advice I received early on from a relatively new law teacher, and it has always stuck in my head. The person who gave me the advice was male, and he evidently had gotten burned  by violating it.  What the advice boils down to, I think, is that students desparately need you to be predictable. It is comforting to them when they know roughly what to expect each day. 

5. Students decide very, very quickly whether you're on their side or not. If they decide you are, they will forgive a multitude of mistakes. If they decide you're not, nothing you do will be right.  I've been teaching for 19 years, and I only had one class that hated me.  They decided early on that I was mean, and everything I did provided confirmation.  They even hated how I started the class and what I wore. (I'd given birth the month before the class started, and my wardrobe was limited). Frankly, I grew to dislike most of them, too.  However, in telling this story, I'm violating the next tip in my list.

6. Be careful about generalizing how "the class" feels.  A communications researcher would probably insist that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "class." (See Ien Ang).  Instead, a "class" is a collection of individuals with disparate needs and interests and judgments about the classroom experience.  That said, it is easy to assume that outspoken students represent the feelings of the entire group.  It so happens that what I think of as "the class that hated me" (discussed above) included two especially delightful students, who took one of the most fun Media Law classes I ever taught. I still keep in touch with them even though they graduated more than a decade ago.

7. Watch out for group dynamics.  Let's say you have a student who is engaging in disruptive behavior. You may be tempted to call the student out for his or her behavior in front of the whole class, but this is usually a bad idea.  Even if other students started out being annoyed at the disruptive student, they may turn on you if you come down too harshly on the student or make him lose face. What should you do instead? I use what I call "class regulation by raised eyebrow."  For example, if a student is late, I may visibly lose my train of thought and stare at him with a completely blank expression on my face for a few seconds--just long enough to be socially awkward.  That does the trick 99 percent of the time.  If you try informal means of "discipline" and they don't work, however, the next step is to call the student into your office. The student won't lose face, and you won't run the risk of having the entire class turn against you for being "mean."

8. Try not to project insecurity. In other words, fake it until you make it.  Although you may be tempted to reveal to the class that you are brand new or are learning the material for the first time, you certainly don't have to and some would argue you shouldn't.  Remember that the students are lucky to have a teacher who is energetic and curious and enthusiastic and can reach them at their level.  Also remember that as little as you think you know, you still can read a case far better than even your brightest student.  So project confidence, but . . . [see next rule.]

9. When you make mistakes, fix them.  When I first taught Torts, I slept with the Prosser & Keeton hornbook by my bedside.  I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking "what if they ask me X?" I would then flip through Prosser & Keeton, read it, perhaps even take notes, and then go back to sleep.  I realize now that every first-time teacher makes mistakes; it is just a question of how you handle them.  Sometimes you will just have to say, "I don't know. Let me research that and get back to you tomorrow." [But make sure you have the answer when you promised it.]   One classic dodge is to say:  "Hold that question. We'll get to that later in the class (or tomorrow or next week)." [Make sure you research the answer and come back to it when you said you would.]  If you realize you didn't explain something well or your explanation was misleading, one way to handle it is to say at the start of next class:  "I'd like to begin by clarifying X that we were discussing yesterday." [Then give your 5-10 minute summary/totally correct explanation.]  Occasionally, you will realize that you said something completely wrong and you will just have to apologize and fix it. As consolation, remember that you are modelling for them how to handle mistakes, and it may be one of the most valuable lessons you can teach future lawyers.  Law is a complicated business, and we all make mistakes from time to time no matter how hard we try or how smart we are.

10.  Trade-offs are inevitable.  More depth or more coverage? Encourage participation and intellectual curiosity, or hew to an organizational scheme?  Stick to your syllabus, or spend more time on the things the class seems interested in or doesn't understand readily? There are lots of other trade-offs of this sort that you'll have to make and then re-make when you realize you've tilted the balance too far toward one value at the expense of another.

11. Make ideas "sticky." Try to come up with ways to make the material you teach memorable.  Silly is sticky.  Graphics (pictures, drawings on the board) are sticky. Funny is sticky. Music is sticky. My Trusts and Estates professor even danced on the table to reinforce a principle, and I remember it (the dancing) twenty years later.  The principle had something to do with whether separate property acquired after the marriage becomes community property or not.  Okay, so the idea wasn't that sticky, but my point still holds.

12. Use the board more than you think you need to. It helps keep the class structured, and it helps the visual learners in the class.   Conversely, use Power Point less than you think you need to.   Power Point is good for pictures and videos, and it can be used to examine closely the text of a rule or to convey highly detailed and technical material through lecture.  Do NOT put giant blocks of text on Power Point and then simply read to the class from the slides. EVER.   

13. It's not about you; it's about the students. Try to keep their needs foremost, instead of your own desire for ego gratification or anything else.  

14. Keep a degree of formal distance between you and your students.  You can treat them like future colleagues, but you cannot be friends with students until they have left your class.  Your role requires you to sit in judgment of your students when you grade them, and that role can be compromised if you don't maintain formal distance.

15. Never use the same exam twice!!  Violate this rule at your extreme peril.

16. Ask colleagues for advice, but remember you don't have to take all the advice you receive.

17. You will teach a class best the third time you teach it.

18. If you are teaching a large class and don't feel that voice projection is one of your gifts, consider wearing a microphone. This tip was shared by my anonymous source. I've never had this problem, but I've heard plenty of complaints from students about being unable to hear some of my colleagues. It is impossible to be an effective teacher if the students cannot hear you.

19. Consider wearing a suit. Even if you don't plan to wear it forever, it may help as a crutch for faking it until you make it and can help you maintain some formal distance from the students. This tip also came from my anonymous source, but I fully concur. I don't wear a suit every single day now, but I believe in signalling I take the endeavor seriously by dressing professionally.

Save the Date for AALS Panel on January 5, 2019: Promises & Pitfalls of Technology in Dispute Resolution

On January 5^th, 2019, a three-hour panel entitled “Promises and Pitfalls of Technology in Dispute Resolution” will feature the top minds in the field of Online Dispute Resolution. The speakers will examine the intersections of dispute resolution and technology on a broader scale. Panel members will discuss how technology, including AI, blockchain, smart contracts, and the like, are affecting dispute resolution. 

Speakers includes:

Professor Alyson Carrel (Northwestern)

Professor Noam Ebner (Creighton)

Professor Ethan Katsh (National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution)

Professor Dave Larson (Mitchell Hamline)

Professor Jan Martinez (Stanford)

Peter Reilly (Texas A&M) (Moderator)

Mr. Colin Rule (Tyler Technologies)

Professor Amy Schmitz (Missouri)

Professor Jean Sternlight (UNLV)

 

As Dean of the University of Missouri School of Law, I'm proud to announce that the speakers' papers presented at this AALS panel will be published in a special symposium edition of our Journal of Dispute Resolution. Professor Amy Schmitz of the University of Missouri and Peter O'Reilly of Texas A&M worked together to lay the foundation for this innovative panel and symposium issue.  It is sponsored by the “Litigation” and the “Technology, Law and Legal Education” sections of the AALS.

Truth, Trust, and the First Amendment in the Digital Age

The University of Missouri Schools of Law and Journalism co-sponsored a symposium last week at the National Press Club in D.C. entitled Truth, Trust, and the First Amendment in the Digital Age. C-Span carried the symposium, including the keynote by the inestimably fabulous First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams.

If you're interested, the panels and keynote are available to watch on C-Span at this LINK: 

Barbara Cochran of the School of Journalism moderated the journalism panel, which included remarks by:

Peter Baker, The New York Times
Dan Balz, The Washington Post
Major Garrett, CBS News
Hadas Gold, CNN
Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
Chris Buskirk, American Greatness
Margaret Talev, Bloomberg News

I moderated the media law scholars and media lawyers panel, which included remarks by:

Amy Gajda, Tulane University School of Law
Ronnell Andersen Jones, University of Utah College of Law
Mary-Rose Papandrea, University of North Carolina School of Law
Charles Tobin, Ballard Spahr LLP
Sonja West, University of Georgia School of Law
Kurt Wimmer, Covington & Burling LLP

 

 

#AALS2018 Panel Alert: Fake News, Alternative Facts, and the Future of Journalism

If you're in San Diego for AALS, I hope you'll come to the fake news panel organized by the Defamation & Privacy and Mass Communication Law sections. The program will take place on Jan. 3, 2018, at 1:30 pm. Here's our description of the panel: 

A discourse with no anchor in truth ceases to have value as discourse. The President’s accusations that the media are perpetuating “fake news” have raised numerous legal and ethical questions for lawyers, journalists, government officials, and citizens. This panel, comprised of experts in journalism and media law, will consider the phenomenon and politics of fake news; the law’s role, if any, in regulating truth in public discourse; the media’s role in ensuring public discourse is anchored in truth and their contribution to the fake news phenomenon; the role of independent fact-checking websites such as Snopes.com and Politifact.com in helping debunk fake news; and the potential impact of the fake news debate on First Amendment press freedoms.

 

LaVonda Reed (of Syracuse University College of Law) and I (now of the U. of Missouri Law School!) will be moderating. Speakers include Amy Gajda of Tulane Law School, Lili Levi of Miami Law School, Scott Lewis from the Voice of San Diego, Richard Marosi of the LA Times, David Mikkelson of Snopes.com, Rebecca Nee of San Diego State University, and Jestin Coler of DisInfoMedia. 

Commercial Photography in Public Parks--Is Police Presence Required?

Is a municipal ordinance requiring all businesses, including commercial photographers, to get a permit to use a public park a prior restraint subject to strict scrutiny? No, said the Eighth Circuit in Josephine Havlak Photographer, Inc. v. Village of Twin Oaks, 2017 WL 3159678 (8^th Cir. 2017). There, the court upheld the ordinance as a content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation subject only to intermediate scrutiny. In doing so, it applied the “narrowly tailored” prong of that constitutional standard very leniently, based on a Missouri municipality’s assessment that police presence should attend all commercial activity in public parks. This conclusion strikes me as dubious, and it also strikes me that the court's application of intermediate scrutiny looks a lot more like rational basis scrutiny than it ought. Here's a summary so you can judge for yourself.

The case involved a commercial photographer who brought facial and as applied challenges against a municipal ordinance requiring those wishing to engage in any commercial activity in a public park to seek a permit before doing so. The waiting period for a permit was two days for small-group events and fourteen days for larger-group events. The photographer asked for injunctive and declaratory relief, contending that the permit scheme created by the ordinance was a prior restraint subject to strict scrutiny. Both a federal district court and the Eighth Circuit court of appeals disagreed.

The Eighth Circuit first rejected the argument that a facial challenge was appropriate, because the challenger had failed to show how it would “significantly compromise recognized First Amendment protections of parties not before the [c]ourt.” The challenger’s arguments  centered only on “her own commercial photography” and failed to show how the ordinance would affect any other speech or speakers protected by the First Amendment. Presumably, her arguments would apply to all other commercial photographers wishing to use the park, but the court did not find this argument sufficient to create standing for a facial challenge. Therefore, the court instead addressed only whether the ordinance was unconstitutional as applied to her.

The first step in this analysis was determining whether the ordinance was content-based or content-neutral. The court determined it was the latter based on its text and purpose. The text of the ordinance did “not reference any specific commercial enterprise or any specific message,” and it applied equally “to commercial photographers and to hot dog vendors.” Nor was there any evidence that the ordinance had a “content-based purpose,” since the ban on commercial activity had a long history and was for the purpose of reducing park congestion and maintaining visitor safety. Finally, even though the ordinance discriminated between commercial and non-commercial photographers, there was no evidence that commercial photographers were disfavored speakers; the court therefore concluded that any burden on the speech of the challenger as a commercial photographer was purely incidental to regulation of commercial activity within the park.

Because the ordinance was content-neutral, the court treated the permit scheme it created as a time, place, and manner restriction on speech; therefore, the proper standard for judging the ordinance’s constitutionality was whether it was “narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest” and “[left] open ample alternatives for communication.” The photographer challenging the ordinance conceded that reducing park congestion and maintaining safety were significant governmental interests, but made four separate arguments that it was not narrowly tailored. First, the challenger contended that the ordinance was not narrowly tailored because the Village had not created a permit exception for commercial photography of small groups. The court held that the lack of a small-group exception did not invalidate the ordinance given the record evidence of “high demand, [a] history of congestion, and the limited facilities of the park.” The court also rejected the challenger's second argument that the ordinance should have focused only on known “congestion points” frequented by commercial photographers. This argument, according to the court, ignored that other commercial vendors might cause congestion at other points, making it rational for the Village to “globally promote maximum use of park resources and protect against damage to all park facilities.”

The third argument rejected by the court was that the ordinance’s “two-day application period (for events of fewer than ten people) and the 14-day period (for larger groups) [we]re not narrowly tailored because they serve[d] to chill artistic expression.” The court noted that commercial photography is typically planned in advance, giving photographers plenty of time to obtain the required permits, and the permit period were chosen to give the Village the time needed to process and, if necessary, review permit applications.  Finally, the court rejected the argument that the ordinance was not narrowly tailored because the $100 administrative fee charged by the Village was too high. According to the court, the Village hired police officer to watch over commercial activities in the park, and the court therefore found a “direct correlation” between the fee and the costs incurred by the Village. The court assumed, without further analysis, that the Village had made a rational decision to provide police to watch over hot dog vendors and commercial photographers and concluded that the $100 fee, which very well might be cost prohibitive for some commercial photographers, to be narrowly tailored to making the park secure. The court emphasized that because only intermediate scrutiny applied, narrow tailoring did not require that the Village choose the least restrictive means but instead required only that “the means chosen are not substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government's interest.” This standard was met.

 The court also found that the photographer had ample alternatives because “the natural attributes of the part exist[ed] in multiple locations across the Saint Louis area.” The photographer was not entitled to her “ideal venue” but merely to “ample alternative channels for communicating her message.” Apparently, any natural setting in the Saint Louis area would do.

Finally, the Court addressed the criteria imposed by the ordinance for issuing a permit (or license). Although the challenger argued that the ordinance’s vague criteria gave the Village unbridled discretion to deny permits, the Court held that the scheme imposed “objective factors” and “articulated standards,” such as “the nature of the activity, potential conflicts with other scheduled events, the number of participants, and other factors relevant to resource allocation.” None of the criteria for issuing a permit were content-based, and the ordinance’s plain language essentially guaranteed approval for small-group events and conditioned approval for larger events only on content-neutral factors related to “park use and safety.” Therefore, the Court held that the ordinance met “constitutional scrutiny as-applied [stet]” to the commercial photographer.

 

Dean Lidsky

Thanks to Howard for letting me back. I'm hoping to blog this month about the institutional place of law reviews within law schools; I might also say something about a new book I have coming out later this year. But before then, I want to congratulate Lyrissa Lidsky, my friend and long-time colleague as well as member (somewhat in hiding) of this blog, for her soon-posting as Dean at U. Missouri. She taught me more about Torts (as I was teaching it!) than my first-year Torts teacher did. Our great loss is Missouri's great gain. But to be clear, since she's now joined an SEC rival, Abe Simpson spoke for the Gator Nation regarding the Show-Me State.

 

 

Why We Need to Talk about Trump & Press Freedom

On Wednesday, January 5, AALS2017 kicks off with a panel on Trump & Freedom of the Press in the Plaza Room Lobby Level of the Hilton Union Square at 8:30 am.

RonNell Andersen Jones (Utah), Amy Gajda (Tulane), Sonja West (Georgia), Erwin Chemerinsky (UCI), John Diaz of the San Francisco Chronicle, and I will be discussing what the Trump presidency might bode for press freedom. In preparation for the panel, I thought I'd share with you the research I've done suggesting why this discussion is necessary and timely. In short, here are the reasons that the media (and those of us who value the role they play in our democracy) have legitimate causes for concern that press freedom might be curtailed during the Trump Administration. 

First, Donald Trump has shown himself to be remarkably thin-skinned about unflattering press coverage. Throughout his campaign and after, he has publicly berated  Saturday Night Live, the New York Times,  and many, many other news organizations and individual journalists (too many to enumerate here, as is evident from this list compiled by MediaMatters.org) for criticizing him or simply for covering him.  Shortly after the election, he called television news anchors and executives to Trump Tower  to browbeat them for their "dishonest" and "short sighted" and "outrageous" election coverage. He singled out CNN and NBC as the "worst," calling CNN "liars." All of this seems a bit churlish from a candidate who got at least $2 billion worth of free air time from these same media actors and did not hold a press conference from July 2016 until the end of December.  Nonetheless, it suggests that the relationship between this President and the press will not be a smooth one. 

However, more alarming than Trump's propensity to take offense at even the most innocuous press criticisms was his propensity to incite supporters against the press during his campain. Certainly other elected officials have villified and will doubtlessly continue to villify the press to score political points (think VP Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism").  However, Trump turned up the heat beyond anything previously seen. As Margaret Sullivan wrote in The Washington Post, "Donald Trump made hatred of the media the centerpiece of his campaign. Journalists were just cogs in a corporate machine, part of the rigged system." During his campaign events, he restricted press to a "pen" and then inflamed his supporters by calling them dishonest and accusing them of rigging the election and inventing stories to discredit him. His supporters often responded with boos, ugly gestures, and chants of "liars", "assholes," "CNN sucks!," and worse, causing some reporters to fear for their safety.

Trump further displayed a lack of appreciation (or perhaps contempt?) for pool reporters by denying them traditional avenues of access. Unlike previous candidates, Trump never allowed the press on his plane. He also revoked credentials  or denied credentials of those who garnered his special ire.  Although Trump has promised to have a "normal" press pool as president, he's shown a willingness since being elected to deny pool coverage of important meetings and to ditch his press pool at will. He's also stated he may change the format of press briefings, in an as yet unspecified way.  On a somewhat more positive note, he has  granted interviews to several outlets since his election, including The Today Show, 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine, though his anti-media rhetoric and disrespect for traditional channels of access cast doubt on whether this trend will continue once he's in office.

Other causes for concern about Trump's respect for press freedom abound. During the campaign, he promised, if elected, to "open up libel laws" to make it easier for public figures to sue the press, a threat that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of libel law and constitutional constraints on the President. More alarmingly, Trump has shown a propensity to threaten lawsuits against journalists or actually sue over both innocuous criticisms and normal news coverage. As an ABA report revealed, "Trump and his companies have been involved in a mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years and sent countless threatening cease-and-desist letters to journalists and critics. But the GOP presidential nominee and his companies have never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court." Defending libel suits is expensive, even if one ultimately wins; thus, the mere prospect of being sued for libel can have a chilling effect on reporting. In fact, there's evidence that Trump's reputation as a "libel bully' has already chilled some speakers and is likely to chill others.  

Beyond that, Trump has praised ruthless dictators who have trampled press freedoms and targeted journalists for assassination. In fact, when asked if his praise of Vladimir Putin was tempered by Russia's killing of journalists, Trump said no:  “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” Such rhetoric would be chilling, even in isolation, but of course it is not in isolation.

Meanwhile, Trump comes into office on the heels of a President who has already eroded the press's ability to perform its watchdog role by aggressively pursuing leaks investigation against government employees, subpoenaing reporters to reveal confidential sources, and monitoring telephone and email records of journalists in service of leaks investigation. As Dana Priest of the Washington Post stated: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory. The moral obstacles have been cleared for Trump’s attorney general to go even further, to forget that it’s a free press that has distinguished us from other countries, and to try to silence dissent by silencing an institution whose job is to give voice to dissent.” President-Elect Trump has not signaled whether he will continue such practices, but the fact that his former campaign manager  said that the executive editor of the New York Times should be in jail for publishing Trump's tax returns doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Trump also has not signaled how executive agencies within his administration will be directed to handle Freedom of Information Act requests, and although an RNC spokesman has praised the transparency of the Trump transition, Trump's previous treatment of the press, together with his refusal to release his tax returns, certainly gives reason for doubt on this score as well.

In addition to these causes for concern, the media have their own issues that may hamper their ability to perform their watchdog role during the Trump presidency. Trump is a genius at newsjacking. He is able to set the agenda of the media with his tweets and drown out negative coverage. Trump's "Hamilton" tweet, for example, garnered more eyeballs than the $25 million settlement of a fraud suit against Trump University. Meanwhile, the struggle to maintain press freedoms comes at a time when the public's views toward the media are increasingly hostile, many segments of the media face revenue challenges, and fake news undermines the role of legitimate journalism in furthering democratic self-governance. [Not to mention that "post-truth" was the OED's 2016 word of the year.] These issues, and many more, will give the Trump & Press Freedom panel ample fodder for discussion. I hope you can join us. 

Policing False Speech in Political Campaigns

I'm working on the update memo for my Mass Media Law casebook while simultaneously working on a new edition, which means I'm coming across some interesting cases I missed when they came out. One of these is Eighth Circuit's decision in  281 Care Committee et. al. v. Arneson, No. 13-1229 (Feb. 13, 2014), which strikes down a Minnesota law attempting to assign administrative law judges and county attorneys the job of policing the truth of statements partisans make for or against ballot initiatives. Arneson involved a challenge by advocacy organizations to the constitutionality of a Minnesota law making it a gross misdemeanor for a person to prepare or publish a political advertisement or campaign materials supporting or criticizing “a ballot question, that is false, and that the person knows is false or communicates to others with reckless disregard of whether it is false.” Minn.Stat. sec.211B.06, subd. 1. Under the statute, any person can trigger an investigation by an administrative law judge to determine whether probable cause supports the complaint. Upon such a finding, the ALJ may refer the case to a panel of three ALJs for further determination or may refer the matter to a county attorney to prosecute.

A district court held that the statute served a compelling interest in preserving fair elections and preventing frauds on the electorate. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. The Eighth Circuit held that the advocacy organizations had standing to challenge the statute and that the statute was a content-based regulation of political speech that violated the First Amendment. The district court, citing the plurality and concurrences in  United States v. Alvarez (striking down the Stolen Valor Act), determined that the appropriate constitutional standard was intermediate scrutiny, but the Eighth Circuit distinguished Alvarez because it did not involve core political speech; moreover, the court noted that the false assertion criminalized by the Stolen Valor Act--that one received a military honor one did not receive--is verifiable objectively. In contrast, the Minnesota law targeted "false" political speech that was likely to include opinion or other unverifiable political speech. The court therefore concluded that strict scrutiny was the appropriate standard to judge the Minnesota law. 

Applying strict scrutiny the court determined that, regardless of whether Minnesota’s interests in passing the statute were compelling, the statute was neither necessary nor narrowly tailored but instead was  “simultaneously overbroad and underinclusive, and [was] not the least restrictive means of achieving any stated goal.” The court bolstered this conclusion by observing that the State had failed to show “an actual, serious threat of individuals disseminating knowingly false statements concerning ballot initiatives.” Furthermore, and more central to the court’s analysis, was its determination that the statute “tends to perpetuate the very fraud it is allegedly designed to prohibit.” As the court cannily deduced, the Minnesota statute lends itself to use by political adversaries seeking to undermine the message of their opponents. Filing a complaint against one’s opponent can be used as a political tool to undermine the opponent’s message and force the opponent to “’to devote time, resources, and energy defending themselves.’” All of these strategic political goals can be accomplished  by a complainant whether or not his or her complaint is meritorious. The filing of the complaint itself becomes a news item and casts doubt on the credibility of the speaker, and the investigation takes up time and money even if the investigation ultimately terminates in one’s favor.

In light of this political reality, the court concluded that the mens rea requirement in the statute was not enough to render it constitutional. Most of the statute's chilling effect on political speech occurred because any person can file a complaint under the statute at any time: “[M]ost cynically, many might legitimately fear that no matter what they say, an opponent will utilize [the statute] to simply tie them up in litigation and smear their name or position on a particular matter, even if the speaker never had the intent required to render him liable.”

 The court further explained that the statute’s exemption for news media made its unconstitutionality all the more apparent. Exempting the media from liability for false statements while targeting advocacy groups did not advance the state’s interests in policing election fraud. The underinclusiveness of the statute undermined the state’s claims that its speech restrictions were necessary to achieve its stated aims.

Ultimately, the court’s decision to strike down the statute stemmed from both its understanding of the political process and its embrace of the First Amendment ideal of the marketplace of ideas. Counterspeech, not criminalization, is the remedy that the US Supreme Court’s decisions interpreting the First Amendment precribe for false speech during political campaigns. Counterspeech is clearly a less restrictive alternative than criminalization, and “[t]he citizenry, not the government, should be the monitor of falseness in the political arena.” 

The court's opinion thus relied on two central tenets (some would call them myths) of First Amendment jurisprudence. As I've previously described these tenets in an article called Nobody's Fools: The Rational Audience as First Amendment Ideal: "[t]he first is that audiences are capable of rationally assessing the truth, quality, and credibility of core speech. The second is that more speech is generally preferable to less." The problem, of course, is that these tenets, or assumptions, may be demonstrably wrong. False speech in political campaigns may bamboozle the electorate, if they're even paying attention. Nonetheless, the court in Arneson reached the right decision based on both Supreme Court precedent and democratic theory. An audience that is incapable of critically analyzing campaign speech is also incapable of participating in political discourse or engaging in democratic self-governance, and to abandon the ideal of the rational audience for political speech is to abandon the ideal of democracy. This is not (yet) something we're prepared to do.

 

 

SCOTUS Decides the Confederate Plates Case (5-4)

The US Supreme Court today held that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles did not violate the First Amendment when it rejected a proposed license plate featuring the confederate battle flag. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Breyer and  joined by Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, reached this conclusion by deploying the relatively newly minted government speech doctrine to allow Texas to pick and choose what messages its drivers can display on their specialty license plates based on whether others might find those messages offensive. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Kennedy dissented. 

Like many other states, Texas has a specialty license plate program through which it raises funds by allowing a variety of groups to create specialty plates. Justice Breyer's majority opinion notes, for example, that Texas has approved plates "featuring the words 'The Gator Nation,' together with the Florida Gators logo." [As a UF professor, I appreciate the SCOTUS shout-out!] Justice Breyer also notes that Texas has approved plates with slogans offered by private companies, such as "Get it Sold with RE/MAX." Writing for the majority, Justice Breyer nonetheless concludes that these messages are government speech, branded with the "imprimatur" of Texas.

The case began in 2009, when the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) first submitted to Texas a plate with their name, their organizational logo, and the Confederate battle flag. After public comment and an open meeting to consider the plate, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board rejected the plate on the grounds that "many members of the general public find the design offensive." The Board further deemed such comments by  the public to be "reasonable." (emphasis mine) [Cf. Snyder v. Phelps!] The SCV sought an injunction to force the Board to approve the plate on the ground that the denial violated the First Amendment. A federal district court entered judgment for the Board, but a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that the Board's viewpoint discrimination against the SCV plate was unconstitutional. 

Today, the Supreme Court held that Texas is the speaker when it chooses the contents of specialty license plates. In other words, the contents of the specialty plates are government speech, and Texas is therefore free to engage in viewpoint discrimination in choosing which plates to approve, subject to the constraints of the "democratic electoral process." The majority posited that the "government would not work" were it not free to convey its messages in the way it sees fit: "as a general matter, when the government speaks it is entitled to promote a program, to espouse a policy, or to take a position. In doing so, it represents its citizens and it carries out duties on their behalf." 

A reasonable observer could be forgiven for assuming that a Texas plate that favors The Gator Nation represents the views of the driver of the automobile rather than the views of the State of Texas. But the Court concluded that the plate messages are government speech based on the following. First, license plates historically have been used to convey state messages. "Second, Texas license plate designs 'are often closely identified in the public mind with the [State]." [The majority's process of discerning the "public mind' is a little unclear.] Third, Texas controls messages on its license plates by requiring Board approval of every plate design, a process which grants "final approval authority [that] allows Texas to choose how to present itself and its constituency." 

The Court further concluded that license plates do not constitute forums for the speech of private individuals (such as the drivers who choose the plates).  The Court emphasized that license plates, unlike public parks, are not traditional public forums [but then again neither are teacher mailboxes, as in Perry Education Ass'n]. More controversially, the Court asserted that the license plates are not designated public forums because the policies and practices of the state of Texas manifest its intent to maintain control of them. The opinion placed great weight on the fact that Texas has "final authority" to approve content, and it also emphasized the traditional role of license plates as "primarily . . . a form of government ID [that] bear[s] the State's name." In doing so, the opinion seems to ignore the conversion of the "traditional" license plate system into a revenue-raising scheme for the state. 

Finally, the majority rejected the notion that the plates are a non-public forum that can be used by private speakers, reasoning that the plates are predominantly used by Texas for its own "expressive conduct." As the opinion states, "we reach this conclusion based on the historical context, observers' reasonable interpretation of the messages conveyed by Texas specialty plates, and the effective control that the State exerts over the design selection process." 

 This 5-4 decision highlights a flaw in First Amendment doctrine that I've previously discussed in an article on public forum doctrine and government speech in social media. That flaw is that current doctrine "does not contemplate the possibility that [a forum for speech] might involve both government speech and a public forum." Supreme Court precedent left the majority with a Boolean choice: either the plates were a public forum or they were government speech. If the plates were a public forum, Texas's rejection of  any imaginable  plates on the grounds of offensiveness would constitute content-based and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. The result would be that Texas, and perhaps most states, would eliminate specialty license plate programs even if it meant giving up the extra revenues they bring. [Not that this result would be so terrible.] On the other hand, if the plates were deemed government speech, Texas could maintain the program while blocking the most objectionable types of plates. Reality, however, is more complicated than current free speech doctrine. The reality is that Texas specialty plates contain both government speech and private speech on one small square of metal. This case just points out the absurdity of having to choose inflexible doctrinal categories to get to a desired outcome. 

Justice Alito's dissent rightly observed that the case sets a dangerous precedent, allowing the government to regulate any offensive speech on government property simply by retaining final approval authority over that speech. Justice Alito refocused the historical analysis of licenses plates on the point AFTER the development of specialty plate programs, concluding that "history here does not suggest that the messages at issue are government speech." He also examined how the Texas license plate approval process actually worked: Texas accepts all private messages submitted "except those, like the SCV plate, that would offend some who viewed them." The mere fact that Texas has given its "blessing" to the private speech on most plates does not make those plates government speech. Instead, "Texas, in effect, sells [license plate] space to those who wish to use it to express a personal message," and by doing so, creates a limited public forum. Texas' decision to reject the SCV plate, or indeed  to reject any plate on grounds of offensiveness, was therefore unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. 

 

 

 

"Active Shooter"

My prayers and best wishes go out to the victims of the shooting at FSU for a speedy and complete recovery.

Tragically such shootings have become common enough that universities and schools must prepare and plan for them. A couple of years ago I attended an "active shooter" training lecture whose purpose was to prepare faculty and staff at my law school to respond to a situation involving an active shooter. According to that lecture, the active shooter is "considered the greatest terrorist threat on campuses." The shooter's "desire is to kill and seriously injury without concern for [the shooter's] safety or threat of capture." Although the shooter may have intended victims, he will accept "targets of opportunity" and will keep moving "until stopped by law enforcement, suicide, or other intervention." Here is a summary of the advice for faculty and staff in dealing with an active shooter situation: "Secure the immediate area. . . . Lock the door. Block the door . . . . If the shooter enters your room and leaves, lock the door behind them. If safe, allow others to seek refuge with you. . . . Stay quiet and out of sight. Put something between you and the shooter." The most chilling bit of advice, however, was the following: "We can no longer predict the origin of the next threat." No. No, we can't.

JOTWELL: Understanding Prophylactic Supreme Court Decisions

William Baude at JOTWELL has a review of my colleague John Stinneford's article, The Illusory Eight Amendment. Baude writes, "It is a rare achievement to write about a case in the constitutional law canon and tell us something we did not know. This is the achievement of John Stinneford's recent article . . . . " Professor Stinneford's article critiques Miranda v. Arizona, and contends, contrary to popular wisdom, that it did not truly create a prophylactic rule to prevent compelled confessions. Indeed, Professor Stinneford notes that "the Supreme Court in Miranda did not particularly care what the term 'compelled' means," and because of the Court's failure to address this issue directly, "many of the practices disliked by the Miranda court are still used today. As long as the police give the requisite warnings and obtain the requisite waiver, they can still keep the defendant alone in a room and question him for hours, using psychological pressure and trickery to induce a confession." Both Stinneford's perceptive article and Baude's review explore the implications of this analysis. 

Tips for New Law Teachers

If you are teaching law for the first time, you may be interested in this list of tips for new law professors. Best of luck!

Fair Use and News Reporting

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has stated that "[w]aving the news reporting flag is not a get out of jail free card in the copyright arena." In Swatch Group Mgmt. Services v. Bloomberg L.P., __ F.3d __, 2014 WL 2219162 (2014), however, the Second Circuit took a charitable view of such flag waving and interpreted fair use broadly to protect a news organization's dissemination of a highly newsworthy recording. The Second Circuit's broad interpretation of fair use to accommodate news reporting is especially noteworthy in an era in which news organizations are often faced with difficult questions about whether they may legally reproduce "user-generated content."

In Swatch Group Management Services v. Bloomberg, Swatch Group sued for copyright infringement because Bloomberg disseminated a sound recording of a conference call between Swatch and investment analysts to discuss the company's earnings report. Swatch did not admit the press to the conference call, but Bloomberg nonetheless obtained and disseminated a recording of the call to its paid subscribers. A district court granted summary judgment for Bloomberg on fair use grounds, and the Second Circuit affirmed.

First, the court found that “whether one describes Bloomberg’s activities as ‘news reporting,’ ‘data delivery,’ or any other turn of phrase, there can be no doubt that Bloomberg’s purpose in obtaining and disseminating the recording at issue was to make important financial information about Swatch Group available to investors and analysts.” That Bloomberg profited from the dissemination of the recording did not alter the court’s analysis, because almost all news services obtain profits by publishing factual information. The court further observed that the nature of Bloomberg’s use of the recording supported a finding of fair use even though Bloomberg reproduced the original verbatim: “[T]he need to convey information to the public accurately may in some instances make it desirable and consonant with copyright law for a defendant to faithfully reproduce an original work without alteration.” (emphasis added) This use even could be considered “transformative” because Bloomberg was publishing “factual information to an audience from which Swatch Group’s purpose was to withhold it.” [!]

 Analyzing the second fair use factor (i.e., the nature of the copyrighted work), the court found that Bloomberg’s use of the recording did not threaten Swatch’s copyright interests because the information disseminated was entirely factual, and Swatch had already “publicly disseminated the spoken performance embodied in the recording.” Third, the court assessed “the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.” Although Bloomberg used the entire work, the use “was reasonable in light of its purpose of disseminating important financial information to investors and analysts.” Fourth, Bloomberg’s use of the sound recording had no market effect on the value of Swatch’s unpublished recording, and Swatch created the recording for other advantages unrelated to “the possibility of receiving royalties.” Finally, the “balance of factors” favored Bloomberg’s dissemination being treated as a fair use, particularly given the importance of the public interest in financial information.

From a media law scholar's perspective, this decision  is praiseworthy because the court clearly recognizes that the public interest should play an important role in fair use analysis. (Compare the Ninth Circuit's decision in Monge v. Maya Magazines, Inc., 688 F.3d 1164, 1183 (2012), in which it said "fair use has bounds even in news reporting, and no per se public interest exception exists.").  Instead of getting hung up on technical application of the fair use factors, the court implicitly looked to the broader goals of copyright law and found that the newsworthiness of (and lack of originality in) the recording trumped the fact that Bloomberg had used the whole thing without alteration. 

Whether other courts will interpret the fair use factors as broadly when a defendant uses an entire copyrighted work remains to be seen. But in an era when copyright law is being (mis)used in an attempt to force takedowns of photos taken by monkeys, the Second Circuit's decision provides a neeeded dose of common sense.

 

UF Law's (and My) New MOOC: The Global Student's Introduction to US Law

I am now officially part of a MOOC, which went online today. It has been a learning experience (!!), with the biggest lesson being that it is nowhere as easy as you might think to put one of these courses together. I plan to blog about the experience at length when I get a chance. For now, though, you might be interested in viewing the University of Florida Law School's foray into the great MOOC experiment: The Global Student's Introduction to US Law. 

The course description is as follows: 

In this course, students will learn basic concepts and terminology about the U.S. legal system and about selected topics in the fields of constitutional law, criminal law, and contract law. A team of outstanding teachers and scholars from the University of Florida faculty introduces these subjects in an accessible and engaging format that incorporates examples from legal systems around the world, highlighting similarities to and differences from the U.S. system.  Students seeking an advanced certificate study additional topics and complete assignments involving legal research that are optional for basic level students. The course may be of interest both to U.S. students contemplating law school and to global students considering further study of the U.S. legal system.

My Senior Associate Dean Alyson Flournoy spearheaded the project, and we had excellent technical assistance, which was crucial, by Billly Wildberger. My colleagues Pedro Malavet, Jeff Harrison, Claire Germain, Loren Turner, Jennifer Wondracek, and Sharon Rush all provided lectures, and our research assistant Christy Lopez is providing support with the discussion forums. 

Of (Courtney) Love and Malice

Today Seattle Police released a note found on Kurt Cobain at his death excoriating wife Courtney Love. Based on her subsequent behavior, Love cannot have been an easy person to be married to. I've been researching Love lately for an article on social media libel that I'm writing with RonNell Andersen Jones.  Love is not only the first person in the US to be sued for Twitter libel; she's also Twibel's only repeat player thus far. According to news reports, Love has been sued for Twitter libel twice , and recently she was sued for Pinterest libel as well. 

Love's Twitter libel trial raises interesting issues, one of which is how courts and juries should determine the existence of  "actual malice" in libel cases involving tweets or Facebook posts by "non-media" defendants. As you probably recall, the US Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment requires public figures and public officials to prove actual malice--i.e., knowledge or reckless disregard of falsity--before they can recover for defamation. And even private figure defamation plaintiffs involved in matters of public concern must prove actual malice if they wish to receive presumed or punitive damages.  However, US Supreme Court jurisprudence elucidating the concept of actual malice predominantly involves “media defendants”—members of the institutional press—and the Court’s examples of actual malice reflect the investigative practices of the institutional press. Thus, the Court has stated that in order for a plaintiff to establish actual malice, “[t]here must be sufficient evidence to permit the conclusion that the defendant in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication." [St. Amant v. Thompson] Actual malice, for example, exists if a defendant invents a story, bases it on ‘an unverified anonymous telephone call,” publishes statements “so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation,” or publishes despite “obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of [an] informant or the accuracy of his reports." Id.

These examples have little resonance for “publishers” in a social media context, many of whom, like Love, post information spontaneously with little verification other than perhaps a perusal of other social media sources. The typical social media libel defendant is less likely than her traditional media counterpart to rely on informants strategically placed within government or corporate hierarchies or to carefully analyze primary sources before publishing. Moreover, the typical social media defendants has no fact-checker, editor, or legal counsel and is less likely than institutional media publishers to have special training in gauging the credibility of sources or to profess to follow a code of ethics that prizes accuracy over speed. 

The issue Courtney Love's libel trial appears to have raised is whether it constitutes reckless disregard of falsity if a defendant irrationally believes her defamatory accusation to be true. I say "appears," because one can only glean the issue from media accounts of Love's libel trial--the first full jury trial for Twitter libel in the US. The jury found that Love lacked actual malice when she tweeted in 2010 that her former attorney had been "bought off." Specifically, Love tweeted: “I was f—— devestated when Rhonda J. Holmes esq. of san diego was bought off @FairNewsSpears perhaps you can get a quote[sic].” Holmes sued Love in California state court for $8 million, arguing that the tweet accused Holmes of bribery. Love contended that her tweet was merely hyperbole. News accounts of the jury verdict in Love’s favor, however, indicate that the jury found that Love did not post her tweet with “actual malice." The jury deliberated for three hours at the end of the seven-day trial before concluding that the plaintiff had not proved by clear and convincing evidence that Love knew her statements were false or doubted their truth.

The Love case doesn't set any precedents, but it raises interesting issues for future cases. According to court documents and news accounts, Love consulted a psychiatrist for an “addiction” to social media. Certainly Love’s actions in the series of defamation cases she has generated do not seem entirely rational, but there is no “insanity defense” to a libel claim. Yet the determination of whether a defendant had “actual malice” is a subjective one, meaning that it is relevant whether the defendant suffered from a mental illness that caused her to have irrational, or even delusional, beliefs about the truth of a statement she posted on social media. It seems problematic, however, for the law to give no recourse to the victims of mentally disordered defamers pursuing social media vendettas based on fantasies they have concocted. As a practical matter, this problem is likely to be solved by the skepticism of juries, who will rarely accept a defendant’s argument that she truly believed her delusional and defamatory statements. Or at least I hope so. 

And in case you wondered . . . Love's first social media libel case involved her postings on Twitter, MySpace and Etsy calling  a fashion designer known as the "Boudoir Queen" a "nasty lying hosebag thief" and alleging that the Queen dealt cocaine, lost custody of her child, and committed assault and burglary. Love apparently settled that case for $430,000. Love's third social media libel case involves further statements about the Queen that Love made on the Howard Stern show and posted on Pinterest. Some people, it seems, are slow learners.

NYT v. Sullivan Anniversary Symposium at U. of Georgia

 The University of Georgia Law Review is hosting an impressive and impressively well organized symposium honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. Justice John Paul Stevens is the keynote speaker,  and David Savage of the LA Times will be giving a lunchtime talk.  The panels of speakers discussing press issues old and new include Justice Steven's former clerk Sonja West, RonNell Andersen Jones, William Lee, Amy Gajda, Amy Kristin Sanders, Lili Levi, Paul Horwitz, and Rodney Smolla, and Hillel Levin will be moderating at least one of the panels.

I will be participating on the "new media" panel, discussing my paper-in-progress, "The Press and Constitutional Self-Help, Then and Now," a synopsis of which is below.

Once upon a time, the U.S. Supreme Court routinely decided press cases, but that period of time came to an end about twenty years ago. The Court’s disinclination to decide press cases kicked in just as the Internet began eroding the press’ traditional role as gatekeeper and translator of news and information and threatening the financial viability of traditional media. As we near the fiftieth anniversary of New York Times v. Sullivan, it is striking how few landmark press cases have been decided since the Internet, and now social media, have entered the scene.

The Supreme Court decided the vast majority of its landmark press cases between 1964 and 1984, in what we media lawyers might now look back on as the “Golden Age” of press cases.  These cases contain some of the Court’s loftiest rhetoric about the special role the press plays in our democracy. Yet these same cases recognize only negative press freedoms; they protect only freedom from government intrusions such as prior restraints or compelled publication but refuse to interpret the First Amendment to provide the press with “special” access to governmental information or institutions not available to other citizens or special exemptions from generally applicable laws that interfere with newsgathering.  The Court’s refusal to recognize affirmative press rights during this period arguably suggests that the Court was merely paying lip service to the notion that the press plays a special role in democracy, for it seems intuitive that a “special role” should come with “special rights.”

I contend, however, that the Supreme Court that decided the press cases of the Golden Age was committed to a special constitutional role for the press but envisioned the press (or, more aptly, the media) as a true Fourth Estate—an unofficial branch of government capable of checking the other three by using its own powerful resources to safeguard its ability to play its special role. The Court assumed  that, in most instances, the media could use its own political and economic power to gain access to government information, protect confidential source relationships, and fight overreaching by the executive or legislative branches. In other words, the Court assumed that the media could engage in “constitutional self-help” to play their role. But this theory of constitutional self-help depends on a number of assumptions about the media that were largely true in the 1970s but may not be today. Media that are economically and politically powerful, popular with the public, and united in pursuit of common goals may indeed be able to fight off threats to their ability to play a special role in our democracy, especially when government officials depend on the media to carry government messages to the public. In light of recent developments, however, it is fair to question the ability of new media to use constitutional self-help to access government information or protect confidential sources, for reasons I will explore further in my talk (and my paper). Fundamental shifts in the balance of power between today’s Fourth Estate and the three official branches may signal a need to reexamine the assumptions underlying the press cases of the Golden Age.

---

 

Bad Day for Reporter's Privilege in Leaks Invesitgations: 4th Circuit in US v. Sterling

As is by now well know, the Obama administration has initiated six Espionage Act prosecutions against government officials accused of leaking national security information, more than all previous administrations combined. One case was against Jeffrey Sterling, a former member of the CIA's Iran Task Force.  The government suspected Sterling of being the source of an account in James Risen’s book “State of War” of a botched CIA attempt to sabotage Iranian nuclear research.  The government subpoenaed Risen, contending his testimony was essential to prove the case against Sterling. The district judge quashed the government’s subpoena insofar as it required Risen to identify his source, U.S. v. Sterling, 818 F.Supp.2d 945 (E.D.Va. 2011), but the government appealed to the Fourth Circuit, claiming that without Risen’s testimony it would be impossible to continue the prosecution. The Fourth Circuit today reversed the district court’s holding that a First Amendment reporter’s privilege prevented Risen from being compelled to reveal his source. The majority opinion on this issue analyzed both Supreme Court precedent (Branzburg v. Hayes) and Fourth Circuit precedent and concluded:

 There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or
qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify by the
prosecution or the defense in criminal proceedings about criminal conduct that
the reporter personally witnessed or participated in, absent a showing of bad
faith, harassment, or other such non-legitimate motive, even though the
reporter promised confidentiality to his source.

Read the whole case here.

The court's conclusion was shaped by the fact that Risen's testimony was sought in a criminal case in which he had "direct information" about the "commission of a serious crime."  The opinion stated: "Indeed, he can provide the only first-hand account of the commission of a most serious crime indicted by the grand jury--the illegal disclosure of classified, national security information by one who was entrusted by our government to protect national security, but who is charged with having endangered it instead." The majority emphasized that the public interest in "enforcing subpoenas issued to reporters in criminal proceedings" is compellling, given the public interest in "effective criminal investigation and prosecution," and the majority explicitly contrasted the lower public interest in enforcement of subpoenas to compel the testimony of reporters in civil cases. 

The court also ruled out the existence of a federal common law privilege that would shield Rosen from having to testify. The court felt bound by precedent not to recognize the privilege, but stated it would not even if it were at liberty to do. Even if a privilege were available, "the common law would not extend so far as to protect illegal communications that took place between Risen and his source or sources in violation of the Espionage Act."

Finally, the court (dotting its i's and crossing its t's) showed that even if a qualified privilege were recognized, the privilege would be overcome in this case based on the strong need for Risen's information.  Moreover, it suggested that Risen might have already waived the privilege by revealing the name of his source to a third-party.  

I hope you'll read this opinion, which is an important word, but perhaps not the last, on whether the First Amendment allows reporters to protect confidential sources whose identities might be relevant to leaks investigations. As the number of leaks investigations continues to grow, and the government uses more creative tactics to deter leaks and uncover leakers, the effect of the Fourth Circuit's holding on the ability of journalists to uncover government wrongdoing may grow. The opinion also seems to suggest at points, though subtly, that Risen's own behavior was criminal, which again raises the issue whether the government might choose to prosecute reporters who knowingly receive illegally leaked classifed information.

This post is intended to be a brief summary of this important case, about which I hope to write more later. There's much more to this 118-page opinion, including additonal legal issues not addressed here.

   

Anxiety on the Tenure Track: What YOU Can Do

Drexel Law Professor Lisa McElroy has an important piece on Slate.com (here) dealing with her struggles with anxiety while on the tenure track. Anxiety while untenured is common, indeed almost unavoidable, but Lisa's essay is about the hidden toll her severe anxiety disorder imposed on her during the already stressful tenure process. She tells her story to help others in her situation have the courage to get the help they need and to start the process of breaking down the stigma attached to mental illness. Another benefit, she notes, is allowing herself to finally be known by those around her, to be who she truly is. Her essay reminds us all that our friends and acquaintances and, yes, colleagues--even those who are tremendously accomplished by all objective measures--are often carrying heavy burdens that we know nothing about. We should do what we can to alleviate their suffering and not let fear prevent us from getting help to alleviate our own. 

A Missed Opportunity: Cert. Grant in Air Wisconsin v. Hoeper

In June the Roberts Court granted certiorari in its first libel case, Air Wisconsin Airlines
Corp. v. Hoeper, __P.3d__, 2012 WL 907764 (Colo. 2012), cert. granted __U.S__
(June 17, 2013). For a media lawyer, this development should be exciting. Unfortunately the Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to a narrow question of relatively little relevance to the media. Here's the story. 

In Hoeper an employee of Air Wisconsin Airlines informed the Transportation Safety Administration that an Air Wisconsin pilot was a possible threat and might be unstable. Earlier in the day, the pilot had failed a flight simulation test and had lost his temper, shouting and cursing at Air Wisconsin employees conducting the test. Air Wisconsin previously had stated it would fire the pilot if he failed the test. After the pilot’s outburst, employees of Air Wisconsin discussed his behavior and the fact that a TSA program allowed him to carry a weapon on an aircraft. An employee then reported the pilot to TSA as mentally unstable, potentially armed, and disgruntled over having been fired that day. The pilot sued for defamation.

Air Wisconsin moved for summary judgment based on the ATSA immunity provisions, but the trial judge denied the motion on the grounds that “the jury was entitled to resolve disputed issues of fact that controlled the determination of immunity.” After rejecting the airline’s claim of immunity, the jury found its statements to TSA were defamatory and made with actual malice. The trial judge entered the jury’s verdict of $1.4 million, and the airline appealed. A Colorado court of appeals affirmed, holding that the jury’s finding of actual malice was supported by clear and convincing evidence, and that statements at issue were neither opinion nor substantially true.

The Supreme Court of Colorado affirmed. Although the trial court erred in “submitting the immunity question to the jury” rather than determining the question as a matter of law before trial, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the error was harmless because Air Wisconsin’s statements were not entitled to immunity. Under the ATSA, an air carrier is not entitled to immunity for reporting a security threat to TSA if the report is made with knowledge or reckless disregard of its falsity. The Colorado Supreme Court determined “based on the record evidence” that Air Wisconsin’s defamatory statements were made with reckless disregard as to their falsity. Indeed, the court found that clear and convincing evidence supported the jury’s finding of actual malice. The court also determined that the statement that the pilot was “mentally unstable” and thus a threat to airline security was not a protected opinion but instead implied a false assertion of fact. The court found “substantial and sufficient” evidence to support the jury’s determination that the statements were false.

Three justices, dissenting in part, contended that the court’s opinion “threatens to undermine the federal system for reporting flight risks.” The dissent contended that the air carrier’s statements about the pilot were substantially true, because the pilot had indeed had an angry outburst during a training session and was facing termination at the time Air Wisconsin employees reported him to TSA. According to the dissent, Air Wisconsin thus was entitled to immunity as a matter of law.

Obviously the scope of air carrier immunity under the ATSA is an important question, and a narrow interpretation of that immunity might deter air carriers from reporting employees who pose threats to air safety to the TSA. From a media lawyer's perspective, the case raises another important question, and one with which lower courts have struggled: Must courts engage in independent appellate review of jury determinations of falsity in defamation cases involving matters of public concern?  The Supreme Court long ago held that courts must engage in independent appellate review of the jury's actual malice determinations, and actual malice must be established with "convincing clarity." See Bose; Sullivan. "Actual malice," of course, is a term of art meaning knowledge or reckless disregard of falsity. Because the actual malice determination is so closely linked with the falsity issue, some but obviously not all lower courts have assumed that they must independently review jury determinations for "clear and convincing evidence" of falsity. Indeed, the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press filed an amicus brief in support of Air Wisconsin's petition for certiorari, urging the Court to take the case to resolve the uncertainty among lower courts regarding whether independent appellate review of falsity determinations is required.

Alas, the Supreme Court granted cert limited to the question whether a court may deny an air carrier statutory immunity under ATSA for reporting an employee as a threat, without first determining that the air carrier's report was materially false. As documented here, the Roberts Court has shown little interest in addressing the concerns of the Fourth Estate, and its limited grant in Hoeper arguably continues that trend.

 

Libel Law, Linking, and "Scam"

Although I'm a little late to the party in writing about Redmond v. Gawker Media, I thought I'd highlight it here because, though lamentably unpublished , the decision has interesting implications for online libel cases, even though the court that decided it seems to have misunderstood the Supreme Court's decision in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal.

Redmond involved claims against "new media" company Gawker Media based on an article on its tech blog Gizmodo titled Smoke and Mirrors: The Greatest Scam in Tech. The article criticized a new tech "startup," calling it " just the latest in a string of seemingly failed tech startups that spans back about two decades, all conceived, helmed and seemingly driven into the ground by one man: Scott Redmond." The article further suggested that Redmond, the CEO of the new company, used “technobabble” to promote products that were not “technologically feasible”  and that his “ventures rarely—if ever—work.”  In other words, the article implied, and the title of the blog post stated explicitly, that Redmond’s business model was a “scam.” Redmond complained to Gizmodo in a lengthy and detailed email, and Gizmodo posted Redmond's email on the site. Regardless, Redmond sued Gawker and the authors of the post for libel and false light. Defendants filed a motion to strike under Califonia’s anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court granted the motion, and the California appellate court affirmed.

Unsurprisingly, the appellate court found that the Gizmodo article concerned an “issue of public interest,” as defined by the anti-SLAPP statute, because Redmond actively sought publicity for his company. The court described “the Gizmodo article [as] a warning to a segment of the public—consumers and investors in the tech company—that [Redmond's] claims about his latest technology were not credible.” This part of the decision is entirely non-controversial, and the court's interpretation of "public interest" is consistent with the goal of anti-SLAPP laws to prevent libel suits from being used to chill speech on matters of significant public interest.

More controversial is the court's determination that Gizmodo's use of the term “scam” was not defamatory (and thus Redmond could not show a probability of prevailing). The court noted that “’scam’ means different things to different people and is used to describe a wide range of conduct;” while the court's assertion is correct, surely at least one of the "different things" that "scam" can mean is defamatory. [For a similar statement, see McCabe v. Rattiner, 814 F.2d 839, 842 (1st Cir. 1987) ]. While the term "scam" is usually hyberbole or name-calling, in some contexts the term acts as an accusation of criminal fraud, especially when accompanied by assertions of deliberate deception for personal gain. However, the court found that "scam" was not defamatory as used in the Gizmodo article, relying heavily on the fact that the authors gave links to “evidence” about the fates of Redmond's prior companies and his method of marketing his new one.  The court concluded that the statement that Redmond's company was a “scam” was “incapable of being proven true or false.”

It is clear that the court's categorization of the statements about Redmond as “opinion rather than fact” relied on online context--both the conventions of the blog and its linguistic style. The court asserted that the article contained only statements of opinion because it was “completely transparent,” revealing all the “sources upon which the authors rel[ied] for their conclusions” and containing “active links to many of the original sources.” Technology-enabled transparency, according to the court,  “put [readers] in a position to draw their own conclusions about [the CEO] and his ventures.” The court also stressed the blog's  “casual first-person style." The authors of the article, according to the court, made “little pretense of objectivity,” thereby putting “reasonable reader[s]” on notice that they were reading “subjective opinions.”

As attractive as this reasoning is, especially to free speech advocates and technophiles, one should read the Redmond decision with caution because it almost certainly overgeneralizes about the types of "opinion" that are constitutionally protected. The Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal clearly and forcefully indicates that a statement is not constitutionally protected simply because a reader would understand it to reflect the author's subjective point of view.  Instead, the Milkovich Court held that a purported "opinion"  can harm reputation just as much as explicit factual assertions, at least when it implies the existence of defamatory objective facts. Hence, the Court declared that the statement "In my opinion Jones is a liar" can be just as damaging to the reputation of Jones as the statement "Jones is a liar," because readers may assume unstated defamatory facts underlie the supposedly "subjective" opinion. Moreover, even if the author states the underlying facts on which the conclusion is based, the statement can still be defamatory  if the underlying facts are incorrect or incomplete, or if the author draws erroneous conclusions from them. The Court therefore rejected the proposition that defamatory statements should be protected as long as it is clear they reflect the authors' point of view, or as long as they accurately state the facts on which they are based.  [This analysis is freely borrowed from  this article at pp. 924-25, full citations are included there.]

 

Does Not Translate?: How to Present Your Work to Real People

Recently I've agreed to give talks on social media law issues to "real" people. For example, one of the breakfast talks I've been asked to give is aimed at "judges, city and county commissioners, business leaders and UF administrators and deans." Later, I'm giving a panel presentation on the topic to prominent women alumni of UF. My dilemma is that I want to strike just the right tone and present information at just the right level for these audiences. But I'm agonizing over some basic questions. Can I assume that every educated person has at least an idea of how social media work? What segment of the information that I know about Social Media Law and free speech would be the most interesting to these audiences, and should I just skip a rock over the surface of the most interesting cases and incidents, accompanied by catchy images?  How concerned should I be about the offensive potential of talking about the real facts of disturbing cases for a general but educated audience? As a Media Law scholar and teacher, I'm perfectly comfortable talking about the "Fuck the Draft" case or presenting slides related to the heart-wrenching cyberbullying case of Amanda Todd that contain the words "Flash titties, bitch." But can I talk about this at breakfast? If I can, do I need to give a disclaimer first? And for a general audience, do I want to emphasize the disruptive potential of social media speech, or do I have an obligation to balance that segment of the presentation with the postive aspects for free speech? And do any of you agonize over such things every time you speak to a new audience?

Anyway, translation advice is appreciated. I gave our graduation address in December, and I ended up feeling as if I'd hit the right note by orienting the address around a memorable story from history that related to the challenges of law grads today. But the days and even the minutes preceding the speech involved significant agonizing, which you'd think someone whose job involves public speaking on a daily basis wouldn't experience.

 

 

A New Essay on the Roberts Court and the Press: Not a Free Press Court?

The abstract for my new essay , Not a Free Press Court?, is as follows:

The last decade has been tumultuous for print and broadcast media. Daily newspaper circulation continues to fall precipitously, magazines struggle to survive, and network television audiences keep shrinking. In the meanwhile, cable news is prospering, mobile devices are contributing to increased news consumption, and many new media outlets appear to be thriving. Despite the dynamism in the media industry, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has taken up relatively few First Amendment cases directly involving the media. The Court has addressed a number of important free speech cases since 2005, but thus far the only Roberts Court decisions directly involving the traditional media are the two decisions in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, both of which avoided the looming First Amendment issue they contained, and the only decision involving new media is Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n. This essay, taking its cue from Erwin Chemerinsky’s recent lecture, Not a Free Speech Court, attempts to read the jurisprudential tea leaves to determine what lines of argument the media might use and how they might fare in future cases before the Roberts Court. Though the evidence is scanty, the Roberts Court appears committed to protecting unpopular speech, limiting the spread of “medium-specific” First Amendment doctrines to new media, and broadly defining speech of public concern. As far as the media are concerned, however, this good news may be overshadowed by the bad. Not only has the Court sidestepped two opportunities to free broadcast media from the FCC’s content-based regulatory oversight, but, what is worse, the Court appears to see the “Fourth Estate” as little more than a slogan media corporations bandy about to further their selfish interests. In light of these observations,perhaps the media should be grateful that the Roberts Court has addressed few cases directly involving them and should hope the trend continues.

I wrote this small essay, which is now available on ssrn,  for a wonderful symposium at BYU Law School on the Roberts Court and the Press. The essay is forthcoming in 2012 BYU L. Rev. __ (2012).

A Reminder to Hiring Committees: Don't Google The Candidates?

Here's some advice to hiring committee members travelling to the AALS conference: While it may be natural to search the internet for additional information about candidates for faculty positions, how you use the information you find may subject your university to legal liability. Here are two cautionary tales involving university hiring to keep in mind.

Cautionary tale number one illustrates that the refusal to hire an employee based on information gleaned from social media can sometimes give rise to a discrimination claim under Title VII.  Two years ago, the University of Kentucky faced a Title VII lawsuit brought by a rejected job applicant who claimed that the University refused to hire him based on information about his religious views found by the hiring committee during an Internet search. Gaskell v. University of Ky., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124572 (E.D. Ky. Nov. 23, 2010). Evidence in the case indicated that the chair of the department conducting the search asked the candidate about his religious beliefs, which the chairman had "personally" researched on the internet. In addition, an email from a staff member to hiring committee members during the process noted: "Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with, but potentially evangelical."  The case settled for $125,000 after a judge denied cross-motions for summary judgment. 

Cautionary tale number two illustates that discrimination against hiring candidates on the basis of their political beliefs can subject state universities to liability for constitutional torts. This tale involves the University of Iowa's College of Law and the hiring of a legal writing instructor. In Wagner v. Jones, Teresa Wagner alleged that the College of Law refused to hire her because of her conservative political beliefs, and she sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The trial court granted summary judgment to the college, but a panel of Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed.

The Eighth Circuit determined that Wagner had made a sufficient claim of political discrimination to get to a jury. The court applied the following test (drawn from the Supreme Court's decision in Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle):

A plaintiff alleging First Amendment retaliation must first make a prima facie showing that (1) she engaged in conduct protected by the First Amendment; (2) she suffered an adverse employment action; and (3) the protected activity was a substantial or motivating factor in theemployer’s decision to take the adverse employment action. If a plaintiff makes this prima facie showing, then “a presumption of retaliation arises and the burden shifts to the defendant to advance a legitimate reason for the employment action.                                 

The court found Wagner had presented evidence from which a jury could conclude that her polticial beliefs were a substantial or motivating factor not to hire her.  Specifically, a deposition in the case indicated that the candidate's conservative views may have been discussed at a faculty meeting on her candidacy; there was also evidence that she was advised to hide the fact she'd been offered a job at Ave Maria during the interview process at the College of Law, and a contemporaneous email from an associate dean expressed concern that Wagner's politics could have played a part in the faculty's decision not to hire her. In addition, the court noted (several times!) that only one of the fifty faculty members of the College was a registered Republican at the time Wagner interviewed. There's more to the decision, of course, including full discussion of why the court rejected the argument that the Dean was entitled to qualified immunity. Regardless, the decision should be a reminder to hiring committee members at state schools not to use information found on the internet or anywhere else to discriminate against potential hires in violation of their First Amendment rights.

 

Free Speech Rights in Social Media for College Students: Tatro v. U. of Minn.

I've been working on putting together a comprehensive list of social media cases with a First Amendment angle, and I recently came across the fascinating case of Tatro v. University of Minnesota, 816 N.W.2d 509 (Mn. 2012), which the Minnesota Suprem Court decided at the end of June.  In case you missed reading this case in June, as I did, here's a summary.

The University of Minnesota sanctioned Tatro, a junior in its mortuary science program, by giving her a failing grade in her anatomy lab and forcing her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation because she posted “violent fantasy” (pretty tame stuff, really) and “satiric” comments about her human cadaver on Facebook.  Posting or "blogging" about her cadaver violated the University’s “Anatomy Bequest Program” policies, the Mortuary Science Student Code of Professional Conduct, and the rules of her anatomy course. She appealed the University’s imposition of sanctions on her speech through a writ of certiorari. The Minnesota court of appeals affirmed the constitutionality of the sanctions, and the Minnesota Supreme Court granted further review and also affirmed, basing its decision on the unique nature of the professional program in which the student was enrolled. 

The Minnesota Supreme Court treated the case as one of first impression, noting that the constitutional standard governing “a university’s imposition of disciplinary sanctions for a student’s Facebook posts that violate[ ] academic program rules” is “unsettled.” Although the court of appeals had resolved the case by applying  Tinker v. Des Moines Inc. Comm. Sch., the Minnesota Supreme Court held this standard  to be inappropriate because Tatro was disciplined not for the disruptiveness of her post but for its lack of “respect, discretion, and confidentiality in connection with work on human cadavers.” The Court instead determined that the appropriate standard was whether the university had “impose[d] sanctions for Facebook posts that violate academic program rules that are narrowly tailored and directly related to established professional conduct standards.” (The Court did not cite any particular Supreme Court precedent as the basis for this standard).  Applying this new standard, the Court concluded “that dignity and respect for the human cadaver constitutes an established professional conduct standard for mortuary science professionals.”  Having previously noted that the asserted purpose of the University’s rules was to “educate students” about their ethical duties in the funeral service profession and “maintain the viability of the Anatomy Bequest Program,” the Court found the academic program rules to be narrowly tailored even though they completely barred (!) blogging about cadaver dissection or the anatomy lab.  Tatro clearly violated these rules by giving her a “cadaver a name derived from a comedy film” and engaging in “widespread dissemination” of her comments, first through Facebook and later through the news media.  Consequently, punishing her for violating them did not abridge her First Amendment rights. 

This case raises some interesting issues, which I'd explore in more detail if I weren't staring down the barrel of multiple deadlines.  Some obvious questions raised are as follows: Is a standard proscribing "disrespect" unconstitutionally vague? How can a complete ban be narrowly tailored?  (Can't help thinking of Atul Gawande's writing in this context.)  Why doesn't ordering a psychiatric evaluation for "unprofessional" speech violate the First Amendment? (The Court didn't address whether the speech constituted a "true threat.")

As a media law professor, I noted with interest that my fellow media law professor Raleigh H. Levine, from William Mitchell College of Law, was an amicus in the case for the ACLU, along with Teresa Nelson.

YLS Admissions Blog: Unapologetically Elitist

My friend Lisa McElroy is a Legal Research and Writing Professor at Drexel.  She alerted me to this blog missive from Yale Associate Dean of Admissions Asha Rangappa, providing advice to potential transfer students: 

“The other part of your application that is going to carry a significant amount of weight is your law school recommendations (we require two).  We use these references to place your grades in context and also to determine what kind of student you are.  A common mistake on this front is to make one of your two required recommendations from a legal writing instructor -- most students do this because they've usually had much more one-on-one interaction with their legal writing instructor than with their other professors, and so the instructor usually knows them well.  There's nothing wrong with this per se, but the Admissions Committee generally likes to have at least two letters from one of your first year core subject area professors, who can speak to your ability to keep up with the subject material, contribute to class discussion, and think through difficult concepts (a third letter from your legal writing instructor is fine).  Letters from professors who went to YLS -- who as you probably know are ubiquitous in the legal academy -- are often especially helpful, since they usually discuss why the applicant would fit into the academic and cultural experience here.  But don't go stalking a Yale alum just for this purpose -- just pick professors from classes in which you have performed very well and you'll be on the right track.”

As Lisa writes (I'm closely paraphrasing her post on the LRW listserve) , the subtext of the advice is basically as follows:  (1) LRW is not a "core subject area;" (2) LRW profs don't really teach "subject material," or at least none that is hard to keep up with; (3) LRW profs don't lead class discussions, or none that require student contributions; (4) LRW profs don't teach difficult concepts, or ask students to think them through; (5) LRW profs are "instructors," and, as such, could not have attended YLS.  [Lisa went to Harvard Law, btw & fwiw!!]

Please also note that those of us who didn't go to YLS couldn't possibly understand the rigors of legal education there, and thus our letters are discounted.

[Addendum: It has been brought to my attention since I originally posted that it is unfair to single out Dean Rangappa as being "gratuitously insulting" simply for being bracingly honest about the elitism in legal academia, and I thought the point a fair one. Dean Rangappa's letter, in fact, is a way of levelling the playing field somewhat for students from non-privileged backgrounds seeking to transfer to YLS; it gives them access to valuable information about how the process really works.  The reason her letter has resonated among LRW profs and others is the fact that many, if not most, law schools treat their LRW profs as second-class citizens and LRW as an unimportant subject that can be picked up by osmosis.]

 

How Not to Criminalize Cyberbullying

My co-author Andrea Pinzon Garcia and I just posted our essay, How Not to Criminalize Cyberbullying, on ssrn.  In our essay, we provide a sustained constitutional critique of the growing body of laws criminalizing cyberbullying. These laws typically proceed by either modernizing existing harassment and stalking laws or crafting new criminal offenses. Both paths are beset with First Amendment perils, which our essay illustrates through 'case studies' of selected legislative efforts. Though sympathetic to the aims of these new laws, we contend that reflexive criminalization in response to tragic cyberbullying incidents has led law-makers to conflate cyberbullying as a social problem with cyberbullying as a criminal problem, leading to pernicious consequences. The legislative zeal to eradicate cyberbullying potentially produces disproportionate punishment of common childhood wrongdoing. Furthermore, statutes criminalizing cyberbullying are especially prone to overreaching in ways that offend the First Amendment, resulting in suppression of constitutionally protected speech, misdirection of prosecutorial resources, misallocation of taxpayer funds to pass and defend such laws, and the blocking of more effective legal reforms. Our essay attempts to give legislators the First Amendment guidance they need to distinguish the types
of cyberbullying that must be addressed by education, socialization, and stigmatization from those that can be remedied with censorship and criminalization. To see the abstract or paper, please click here or here. 

 

 

Cyberbullying News: Parts of Missouri's Cyberharassment Law Unconstitutional

In 2006, Missouri teen Megan Meier committed suicide after being "cyberbullied" on MySpace by Lori Drew, a former friend's 49-year-old mom. Megan's suicide in response to Drew's cruel online hoax galvanized national attention around the problem of cyberbullying and prompted widespread calls for legal reforms. Missouri, naturally, was one of the first states to respond.  There, state legislators modernized and updated their existing cyberharassment and cyberstalking laws in an attempt to cover conduct such as that that led to Megan's suicide.  A week and a half ago, the Missouri Supreme Court dealt a setback to Missouri's efforts to combat cyberbullying by striking down a portion of the amended harassment law , and its decision may contain lessons for those pushing new legislation to criminalize bullying.    

Notably, Missouri v. Vaughn, the Missouri Supreme Court's decision striking down portions of the law under the First Amendment, did not involve cyberharassment.  Instead, it involved a defendant who repeatedly telephoned his ex-wife, leading prosecutors to charge him under  subdivision (5) of Mo. Rev. State 565.090.1 for ""knowingly mak[ing] repeated unwanted communication to another person," and under subdivision (6) for "[w]ithout good cause engag[ing] in an[ ] act with the purpose to frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress to another person, [which does in fact] cause such person to be frightened, intimidated, or emtionally distressed, and such person's response to the act is one of a person of average sensibility considering the age of such person."    

The court held that section 565.090.1(5) was constitutionally overbroad, despite the State's proffer of a narrowing construction that would have made the statute applicable only when the defendant's communications were repeated, unwanted, and targeted at a "particularized person," whatever that means. The court held that "[e]ven with the State's suggested constructions, subdivision (5) still criminalizes any person who knowingly communicates more than once with another individual who does not want to receive the communications."  The court gave examples illustrating subdivision (5)'s overbreadth, noting that it would apply to peaceful picketers or teachers calling on students once asked to stop. The court also found that the statute stretched well beyond what might be justified by the protection of residential privacy or "captive audience" members. The court therefore "severed" and struck subdivision (5) from the statute.

The court, by contrast, upheld subdividision (6) by reading it narrowly to address only fighting words and finding that prohibition of speech made "without good cause" was not vague. Section 565.090.1(6) makes it a crime to "[w]ithout good cause engage[ ] in any other act with the purpose to frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress to another person, cause such person to be frightened, intimidated, or emotionally distressed, and such person's response to the act is one of a person of average sensibilities considering the age of the person."  The court found that the legislature's exclusion of "the sorts of acts for which there could be good cause" meant that it only applied to expressive conduct that was intended to and actually did provoke "immediate substantial fright, intimidation, or emotional distress." (emphasis in original)  Though the reasoning is opaque [I'm being generous], the court seemed to believe that the "legislature's intent" underlying the good cause requirement transformed the statutory provision into one that only addressed "unprotected fighting words." Specifically, the court stated: "because the exercise of constitutionally protected acts clearly constitutes 'good cause,' the restriction of the statute to unprotected fighting words comports with the legislature's intent."

Separately, the court found that subdivision (6) was not vague. According to the court, there is a "common understanding" regarding what would "frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress" to a reasonable person. More dubiously, the court asserted that the "good cause" language of the statute would give a citizen adequate notice of what expression was unprotected by the statute as well as adequately constrain law enforcement discretion.  Relying on prior case law, the court stated: "'Good cause' in subdivision (6) means 'a cause that would motivate a reasonable person of like age under the circumstances under which the act occurred." Although earlier in the opinion, the court seemed to equate "good cause" with "protected by the First Amendment," here the court seemed to be using a standard legal definition of good cause, meaning done with justifiable motive. Regardless, court's determination that the "good cause" language is not vague is certainly contestable. 

Although the court upheld subdivision (6), the victory is probably a pyrrhic one for advocates of broad laws to address bullying behaviors.  The court apparently saved the constitutionality of subdivision (6) by adopting a ridiculously strained interpretation of it; under this interpretation, it only covers fighting words--those "which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace"--as defined by the Supreme Court in its 1942 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.  It is worth noting that the Supreme Court has not upheld a conviction for the utterance of fighting words in the seventy years since it decided Chaplinsky. Moreover, as Rodney Smolla has noted, there is a "strong body of law expressly limiting the fighting words doctrine to face-to-face confrontations likely to provoke immediate violence."  In other words, the Missouri Supreme Court's interpretation of subdivision (6) makes it difficult to use as a tool for addressing cyberharassment, since it is unlikely to trigger immediate violence in the manner envisioned by Chaplinsky.

There are no doubt more conclusions to be drawn from Missouri v. Vaughn, and I hope to draw them in an article that my co-author Andrea Pinzon Garcia and I are rushing to complete. That article is currently called Coming to Terms with Cyberbullying as Crime, though the title is subject to change. Look for a link to it here or on SSRN before the end of the month.

 

Productivity: A Mother's Day Blog Post

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd write about work-life balance, which is a bit like the Marquis de Sade writing about abstinence. This year my scales have had the elephant of work on one side and the feathers of my life on the other, and still I constantly feel as if I should do more better faster.

My husband has been on my case about this problem, and for good reason. But he finally said something last week that hit home, so to speak. I was complaining that I hadn't been "productive" during the week, and he replied, "That's because you've defined productivity to exclude anything to do with home."  His words weren't angry nor were they an attempt to be consoling.  He was just stating a fact, which is what made his words so resonant for me. It would be an overstatement to say that I define productivity by my word count, but not by much.

As a wife and mother of three sons, my family is my top priority. But I'm not sure I consistently send them that message, and it can be hard to know what making family your top priority means on a moment-t0-moment or day-to-day basis.  I definitely put a high value on time spent in direct interaction with them: I try never to work late nights or weekends, and I've gotten rid of cable television and wi-fi at home to prevent distractions from swamping family life.  That said, I don't much value the time I spend making home "a home." I almost completely discount the value of performing the mundane chores that make up this thing called a life.  I tend to begrudge every second spent folding the Sisyphean piles of laundry on my dining room table, taking the emotionally withholding cat to the vet, or doing the dishes, treating these chores as obstacles to productivity. I don't even enjoy cooking much anymore because it takes "too much time."  I do all these things, but they give me little sense of accomplishment, and I tend to view them as getting in the way of what I "should" be doing.

As I write this, it sounds pretty misguided.  The worst part is that I suspect I'm not the only academic who has defined productivity so narrowly that she has trouble setting a satisfying work-life balance as a result. The problem, ultimately, is one of accounting.  On the life side of the balance, motherhood has fleeting and fortuitous moments of joy, but one finds few signposts, while guiding children to adulthood, that one is headed in the right direction. Even when one knows certain tasks are necessary, there are few direct measures that tell one whether one is doing them well or poorly. [Is yelling ever warranted to make sure the kids' homework gets done? I sure hope so.] For many of the tasks, indeed, such concepts seem entirely beside the point.

Work, on the other hand, has a strict system of productivity accounting. (Academia's productivity accounting is much too strict, but that's a topic for a different productivity blog post.) One can measure one's productivity by words written, articles published, lectures delivered, students taught, and there are often encouraging signs along the way that one is doing one's tasks well.  It is easy, therefore, to let work, with its tangible rewards, overbalance life, with its intangible ones.

My hope for Mother's Day is that I can recalibrate.

 

Electoral Lies and Stolen Valor: Is the Cure Worse Than The Disease?

Does the First Amendment protect lies that cause only diffuse and intangible harms? That's the issue at the heart of U.S. v. Alvarez, which is currently before the Supreme Court and which addresses the constitutionality of punishing those who lie about receiving military honors. (Listen to the oral arguments in Alvarez here.) It is also the issue at the heart of a petition for certiorari in 281 Care Committee v. Arneson., 638 F.3d 621 (8th Cir. 2011), which addresses the constitutionality of a Minnesota law that makes it a "gross misdemeanor" to make a knowingly or reckless false statement about a ballot issue or a candidate during an election campaign. Though Alvarez and Arneson are p0tentially distinguishable, the Supreme Court decision in the former will inevitably shape the answer to whether the Minnesota election law statute, and the sixteen other state statutes like it, is ultimately deemed constitutional. I've long been interested in this topic (see my essay, Where's the Harm?), so it is particularly nice to come across Christina Wells' new article (discussed below), which breathes fresh life into the debate over whether lies receive First Amendment protection.

Your stance in this debate is likely shaped by how you begin your analysis. If you start by asking whether intentional or reckless falsehoods have any constitutional value--whether they make any positive contribution to public discourse--then you are more likely to conclude that criminalizing lies is constitutional, even if they cause no harm. If you start with the presumption that government may not regulate speech without an important or perhaps even compelling justification, then you are more likely to presume that lies causing only diffuse harms are protected by the First Amendment.

First Amendment jurisprudence does not protect falsehoods as such, but it does acknowledge that falsehoods are sometimes inevitable in public debate and that it is not always easy to distinguish truth from falsity. Therefore, the First Amendment does not allow punishment of merely negligent falsehoods, and it broadly protects speech that cannot be interpreted as stating actual facts or that is not provably false. But all of the Supreme Court cases allowing the punishment of lies involved lies that caused concrete harms--lies that defamed an individual (or corporation), or invaded his privacy, or enabled fraud. In contrast, the question before the Court in the Stolen Valor case (Alvarez) is whether the First Amendment allows an individual to be punished for an intentional or reckless falsehood, doubtless offensive to most, that harms public discourse by polluting the information stream, and thereby diluting the value of military honors and muddying the message the government tries to convey by awarding them. Similarly, the question with regard to statutes regulating knowingly or recklessly made falsehoods during election campaigns is whether the harm they cause--pollution of the stream of information available to voters about candidates and issues and p0ssible distortion of electoral outcomes--is sufficient to justify government regulation.

Even granting that lies potentially pollute public discourse, one might still question whether a governmental remedy is needed. Mr. Alvarez, who lied about receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, was detected after he told his lie to a former Marine who uncovered the truth in "just minutes" after "a few text messages and a check of a website with information on the fewer than 100 living Congressional Medal of Honor winners." And lies during election campaigns can be "policed," albeit imperfectly, by news media, websites like Politifact, and ordinary citizens willing to engage each other online and off. Even if these alternative methods for policing falsehoods do not work as well as government action, it is still worth questioning whether government investigation of political truths might cause enough negative effects that the government cure for lies would be worse than the disease.

In her new article forthcoming in 59 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse (2012) and titled Lies, Honor, and the Government's Good Name: Seditious Libel and the Stolen Valor Act, Chris Wells uncovers new evidence of negative consequences flowing from governmental suppression of lies. She does so, perhaps paradoxically, by delving into the history of prosecutions for seditious libel and comparing them to the regulation of lies under the Stolen Valor Act. (Get her article on ssrn here ).

Professor Wells points out that the government's asserted justifications for punishing seditious libels are similar to its justifications for punishing false claims to military honors. "Historically, government officials justified seditious libel prosecutions by claiming criticism undermined the government's honor and authority and reduced the public's respect for it, ultimately threatening national security. . . .The government's justifications for the Stolen Valor Act are eerily similar. The government seeks to punish all intentional lies about receiving a military honor because they 'misappropriate the prestige and honor associated with the medal.'" The argument further links lies about the medals to impairment of military readiness, ultimately "punish[ing] lies because they arguably undermine respect for government or government personnel." (Id. at 1-2.)

Professor Wells then traces the English roots of seditious libel and the rise and fall of seditious libel prosecutions within the United States. She recounts, of course, the debate over the Sedition Act of 1798, but she also discusses the punishment of seditious speech under the Espionage Act of 1917, when thousands were arrested simply for criticizing the US war effort. She notes: "Courts, applying a combination of constructive intent and the 'bad tendency' test, convicted hundreds" of critics of the war effort, on the grounds that their criticisms would undermine that effort. Gradually, however, the Supreme Court came to appreciate that punishing speech based on "bad tendency" insufficiently constrained official discretion, and the "Court developed its modern low value speech framework largely in response to [this problem.]" (Id. at 12).

Under this framework, the low value categories of speech all involve "independent harms" apart from their putative effects on government reputation or prestige. As Professor Wells writes, "The harm requirement is integral to creating low value speech categories. It allows the Court to create narrow categories that do not punish speech because of its disfavored content, but because that speech in a particular context makes no contribution to the exchange of ideas as evidenced by external indicia of harm." Under this framework, the government may not begin with the presumption that lies are unprotected because they do not involve "speech that matters." Instead, it must begin with identification of concrete harm caused by the speech it seeks to regulate, for any other approach gives undue discretion to government officials to suppress speech they dislike. Professor Wells' argument in its full form is cogent and persuasive, and I hope I've not done it an injustice in my summary. It is my hope that our Supreme Court will take note of the lessons of the history of seditious libel Chris explains, lest they doom us to repeat it.

[Full Disclosure: Christina Wells is my co-author, together with Ron Krotoszysnki, Jr., and the late Steve Gey, of an Aspen casebook on First Amendment Law. This blog post was inspired by this Adam Liptak article on Ohio's election falsehoods statute.]

First Amendment Access to "Horse Gathers"?

In Leigh v. Salazar, decided last week, a Ninth Circuit panel reversed and remanded for reconsideration a trial court's denial of a preliminary injunction to a photojournalist seeking unrestricted access to a "horse gather" of wild horses by the Bureau of Land Management. Roundups of wild horses by the BLM are statutorily authorized when necessary to remedy overpopulation. During one of these roundups, the BLM allowed daily public viewings, but restricted the public and a photojournalist for Horseback Magazine to "designated viewing areas" and required them to "sit down and remain quiet during parts of the gather." The journalist challenged the access restrictions. The Ninth Circuit held that the access claims were not moot because the restrictions "could apply to future horse gathers . . . and to [the journalist's] request for unrestricted access to horses in holding facilities" after the gather. Notably, the court interpreted the Supreme Court's courtroom access cases, particularly Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court (Press-Enterprise II), as setting the framework for analyzing whether the press and public had a First Amendment qualified right of access to the horse gathers. This is notable because the court might justifiably have applied the far less generous access precedent of Hourchins v. KQED, which dealt with access to prisons and indicated that the First Amendment does not "mandate[ ] a right of access to government information or sources of information within the government's control." (See, e.g., Flynt v. Rumsfeld, in which the D.C. Circuit refused to apply the courtroom access precedent "outside the context of criminal proceedings").

That said, application of the Press-Enterprise II framework does not guarantee the press and public will receive unrestricted access to the horse gathers or any other government activities. As described by the Ninth Circuit, the Press-Enterprise II framework requires courts to examine whether there is a historical tradition of public access to the particular government activity at issue and whether "public access plays a positive role in the functioning" of the government activity. If these two tests are met, the government may still "overcome" the right of access "by demonstrating an overriding interest" and establishing that its restrictions "are narrowly tailored to serve those interests." Even though the Ninth Circuit's holding does not grant access, it at least evinces a willingness to examine the question closely and perhaps tip the balance in favor of transparency. [The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the National Press Photographers Association wrote amicus briefs in the case.]

Criminalizing Cyberbullying and the Problem of CyberOverbreadth

In the past few years, reports have attributed at least fourteen teen suicides to cyberbullying. Phoebe Prince of Massachusetts, Jamey Rodemeyer of New York, Megan Meier of Missouri, and Seth Walsh of California are just some of the children who have taken their own lives after being harassed online and off.

These tragic stories are a testament to the serious psychological harm that sometimes results from cyberbullying, defined by the National Conference of State Legislatures as the "willful and repeated use of cell phones, computers, and other electronic communications devices to harass and threaten others." Even when victims survive cyberbullying, they can suffer psychological harms that last a lifetime. Moreover, an emerging consensus suggests that cyberbullying is reaching epidemic proportions, though reliable statistics on the phenomenon are hard to come by. Who, then, could contest that the social problem of cyberbullying merits a legal response?

In fact, a majority of states already have legislation addressing electronic harassment in some form, and fourteen have legislation that explicitly uses the term cyberbullying. (Source: here.) What's more, cyber-bullying legislation has been introduced in six more states: Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, and New York. A key problem with much of this legislation, however, is that legislators have often conflated the legal definition of cyberbullying with the social definition. Though understandable, this tendency may ultimately produce legislation that is unconstitutional and therefore ineffective at remedying the real harms of cyberbullying.

Consider, for instance, a new law proposed just last month by New York State Senator Jeff Klein (D- Bronx) and Congressman Bill Scarborough. Like previous cyberbullying proposals, the New York bill was triggered by tragedy. The proposed legislation cites its justification as the death of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, who committed suicide after being bullied about his sexuality. Newspaper accounts also attribute the impetus for the legislation to the death of Amanda Cummings, a 15 year old New York teen who committed suicide by stepping in front of a bus after she was allegedly bullied at school and online. In light of these terrible tragedies, it is easy to see why New York legislators would want to take a symbolic stand against cyberbullying and join the ranks of states taking action against it.

The proposed legislation (S6132-2011) begins modestly enough by "modernizing" pre-existing New York law criminalizing stalking and harassment. Specifically, the new law amends various statutes to make clear that harassment and stalking can be committed by electronic as well as physical means. More ambitiously, the new law increases penalties for cyberbullying of "children under the age of 21," and broadly defines the activity that qualifies for criminalization under the act. The law links cyberbullying with stalking, stating that "a person is guilty of stalking in the third degree when he or she intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, engages in a course of conduct directing electronic communication at a child [ ], and knows or reasonably should know that such conduct: (a) causes reasonable fear of material harm to the physical health, safety or property of such child; or (b) causes material harm to the physical health, emotional health, safety or property of such child." (emphasis mine) Even a single communication to multiple recipients about (and not necessarily to) a child can constitute a "course of conduct" under the statute.

Like the sponsors of this legislation, I deplore cyber-viciousness of all varieties, but I also condemn the tendency of legislators to offer well intentioned but sloppily drafted and constitutionally suspect proposals to solve pressing social problems. In this instance, the legislation opts for a broad definition of cyberbullying based on legislators' desires to appear responsive to the cyberbullying problem. The broad statutory definition (and perhaps resorting to criminalization rather than other remedies) creates positive publicity for legislators, but broad legal definitions that encompass speech and expressive activities are almost always constitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment.

Again, consider the New York proposal. The mens rea element of the offensive requires only that a defendant "reasonably should know" that "material harm to the . . . emotional health" of his target will result, and it is not even clear what constitutes "material harm." Seemingly, therefore, the proposed statute could be used to prosecute teen girls gossiping electronically from their bedrooms about another teen's attire or appearance. Likewise, the statute could arguably criminalize a Facebook posting by a 20-year-old college student casting aspersions on his ex-girlfriend. In both instances, the target of the speech almost certainly would be "materially" hurt and offended upon learning of it, and the speakers likely should reasonably know such harm would occur. Just as clearly, however, criminal punishment of "adolescent cruelty," which was a stated justification of the legislation, is an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of expression.

Certainly the drafters of the legislation may be correct in asserting that "[w]ith the use of cell phones and social networking sites, adolescent cruelty has been amplified and shifted from school yards and hallways to the Internet, where a nasty, profanity-laced comment, complete with an embarrassing photo, can be viewed by a potentially limited [sic] number of people, both known and unknown." They may also be correct to assert that prosecutors need new tools to deal with a "new breed of bully." Neither assertion, however, justifies ignoring the constraints of First Amendment law in drafting a legislative response. To do so potentially misdirects prosecutorial resources, misallocates taxpayer money that must be devoted to passsing and later defending an unconstitutional law, and block the path toward legal reforms that would address cyberbullying more effectively.

With regard to criminal law, a meaningful response to cyberbullying--one that furthers the objectives of deterrence and punishment of wrongful behavior--would be precise and specific in defining the targeted conduct. A meaningful response would carefully navigate the shoals of the First Amendment's protection of speech, acknowledging that some terrible behavior committed through speech must be curtailed through educating, socializing, and stigmatizing perpetrators rather than criminalizing and censoring their speech.

Legislators may find it difficult to address all the First Amendment ramifications of criminalizing cyberbullying, partly because the term itself potentially obscures analysis. Cyberbullying is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of behaviors, including threats, stalking, harassment, eavesdropping, spoofing (impersonation), libel, invasion of privacy, fighting words, rumor-mongering, name-calling, and social exclusion. The First Amendment constraints on criminalizing the speech behavior involved in cyberbullying depends on which category of speech behavior is involved. Some of these behaviors, such as issuing "true threats" to harm another person or taunting them with "fighting words," lie outside the protection of the First Amendment. (See Virginia v. Black and Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire; but see R.A.V and my extended analysis here.). Some other behaviors that may cause deep emotional harm, such as name-calling, are just as clearly protected by the First Amendment in most contexts. (Compare, e.g., Cohen v. California with FCC v. Pacifica).

But context matters profoundly in determining the scope of First Amendment protection of speech. Speech in schools and workplaces can be regulated in ways that speech in public spaces cannot (See, e.g., Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser). Even within schools, the speech of younger minors can be regulated in ways that speech of older minors cannot (Cf. Hazelwood with Joyner v. Whiting (4th Cir)) , and speech that is part of the school curriculum can be regulated in ways that political speech cannot. (Compare, e.g., Tinker with Hazelwood). Outside the school setting, speech on matters of public concern receives far more First Amendment protection than speech dealing with other matters, even when such speech causes tremendous emotional upset. (See Snyder v. Phelps). But speech targeted at children likely can be regulated in ways that speech targeted at adults cannot, given the high and possibly compelling state interest in protecting the well-being of at least younger minors. (But see Brown v. Ent. Merchants Ass'n). Finally, even though a single instance of offensive speech may be protected by the First Amendment, the same speech repeated enough times might become conduct subject to criminalization without exceeding constitutional constraints. (See Pacifica and the lower court cases cited here).

Any attempt to use criminal law to address the social phenomenon should probably start with the jurisprudential question of which aspects of cyberbullying are best addressed by criminal law, which are best addressed by other bodies of law, and which are best left to non-legal control. Once that question is answered, criminalization of cyberbullying should proceed by identifying the various forms cyberbullying can take and then researching the specific First Amendment constraints, if any, on criminalizing that form of behavior or speech. This approach should lead legislators to criminalize only particularly problematic forms of narrowly defined cyberbullying, such as . While introducing narrow legislation of this sort may not be as satisfying as criminalizing "adolescent cruelty," it is far more likely to withstand constitutional scrutiny and become a meaningful tool to combat serious harms.

Proposals to criminalize cyberbullying often seem to proceed from the notion that we will know it when we see it. In fact, most of us probably will: we all recognize the social problem of cyberbullying, defined as engaging in electronic communication that transgresses social norms and inflicts emotional distress on its targets. But criminal law cannot be used to punish every social transgression, especially when many of those transgressions are committed through speech, a substantial portion of which may be protected by the First Amendment.

[FYI: This blog post is the underpinning of a talk I'm giving at the Missouri Law Review's Symposium on Cyberbullying later in the week, and a greatly expanded and probably significantly changed version will ultimately appear in the Missouri Law Review, so I'd particularly appreciate comments. In the article, I expect to create a more detailed First Amendment guide for conscientious lawmakers seeking to regulate cyberbullying. I am especially excited about the symposium because it includes mental health researchers and experts as well as law professors. Participants include Barry McDonald (Pepperdine), Ari Waldman (Cal. Western), John Palfrey (Berkman Center at HLS), Melissa Holt (B.U.), Mark Small (Clemson), Philip Rodkin (U. Ill.), Susan P. Limber (Clemson), Daniel Weddle (UMKC), and Joew Laramie (consultant/former direction of Missouri A.G. Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce).]

Predicting FCC v. Fox: Counting the Oral Argument Tea Leaves

Political science research suggests that the more questions the Supreme Court asks a party at oral argument, the more likely that party is to lose. The tenor of the questions counts, too: hostile questions help predict hostile outcomes. (For some of the research, see Sarah Shullman here, and Timothy Johnson et. al. here). Moreover, a study by Epstein, Landes and Posner suggests, "Justices are more prone to question at oral argument parties against whom they will vote than parties for whom they will vote."

With this in mind I examined and listened to the recent oral argument (1/10/12) in FCC v. Fox Television Stations et. al (docket 10-1293). When decided, Fox will be the first Roberts Court case directly involving the mainstream media, so it is highly significant for media lawyers and anyone concerned about press (and specifically broadcast) freedom. The Fox case asks not only whether the FCC's policy against use of "fleeting expletives" violates the First Amendment, but also whether the entire indecency enforcement regime for broadcasting is unconstitutional. [My analysis of the oral arguments is below.]

Predicting the outcome of Fox is a challenge. Only eight justices will decide the case, because Justice Sotomayor is recused. In the Fox case's prior trip to the Supreme Court for resolution of whether the FCC's adoption of the fleeting expletives policy was arbitrary and capricious, Justice Thomas already clearly signalled his belief that Red Lion and Pacifica, which underpin the FCC's authority to regulate broadcast content in ways that would be unconstitutional in other media, are no longer valid; in that same case, Justice Ginsburg signalled her belief that the FCC's fleeting expletives policy exceeds the bounds of permissible regulation of indecency outlined in Pacifica, and she questioned whether cultural changes might have undermined the entire edifice of indecency regulation constructed pursuant to Pacifica. In light of this, getting the three additional votes necessary to strike down the current system of broadcast indecency regulation does not seem like such an uphill battle.

The oral argument tea leaves, however, arguably aren't as auspicious for dramatic change. Oral argument was an hour long. The Solicitor General Donald Verilli argued for the FCC for 26 minutes initially and then spoke four minutes in rebuttal. Verilli was questioned by Kagan (3+1 during rebuttal), Scalia (3+1 during rebuttal), Kennedy(2), Ginsburg(4+1 during rebuttal), Breyer(1), Alito (1), for a total of 17 questions during his initial argument and his rebuttal. [Note: I didn't count it as a separate question if a Justice asked a clarifying questions incident to his/her first question; for example, Justice Breyer asked only one question of the SG, but he pursued it for some time. Also, I counted as "questions" instances in which the Justice interjected with a statement, because the advocates felt bound to respond or react to these statements. Obviously, however, I made a few judgment calls at the margin that some might disagree with.].

This evidence might signal that Kagan, Scalia, and Ginsburg are highly skeptical of the SG's arguments, and perhaps more prone to vote against him. At least in the case of Kagan and Ginsburg, my bet is that they will vote against the FCC, though whether on narrow or broad grounds is harder to say. However, when one looks at the tone of the questions, there is a difference in the tone of Justices Kagan's and Ginsburg's questions and the tone of Justice Scalia's. Justice Kagan and Ginsburg both sound more skeptical in their questions of the SG's arguments on behalf of the FCC than does Scalia. For example, Justice Kagan kicks off the questioning of the SG with "But, General Verilli, it seems to me that this contract notion of yours can only go so far." (emphasis mine). Justice Ginsburg's first question to the SG, which is the fourth question from the bench, refers to the FCC as "the censor" and asks about the "appearance of arbitrariness" of its indecency decisions. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, seems to be asking a question to help the SG sort out whether regulation of broadcast indecency is justified by the history of regulation, by the acceptance by broadcasters of free and exclusive use of public spectrum, or by precedent and whether the FCC's context based approach to identifying indecency is unconstitutionally vague. Justice Kenndy also questions the SG, but in his question, he seems to be reaching out to "assist" the SG to articulate his best argument for a broadcast "safe haven." The SG takes the cue and seizes upon the lifeline Justice Kennedy has thrown him, and the Justice follows up with more assistance; finally, Justice Kennedy's point is even seized by Justice Scalia, who says "Sign--sign me up as supporting Justice Kennedy's notion that this [regulation of indecency on broadcast airwaves] has a symbolic value, just as we require a certain modicum of dress for the people that attend this Court . . . these are public airwaves, the government is entitled to insist upon a certain modicum of decency. I'm not sure it even has to relate to juveniles, to tell you the truth." Justice Ginsburg, for her part, enters the fray (cutting off the SG) noting that the words that the FCC is regulating are "in common parlance today" and "the children are not going to be shocked by them the way they might have been a generation ago."

Carter Phillips argued the case for Fox. Phillips was questioned by Roberts (3); Kagan (2); Alito (3); Breyer (1); Scalia (2); Kennedy (1), for a total of 12 question. Then Seth Waxman argued on behalf of ABC and others regarding the FCC's sanctions on the broadcasting of nudity and was questioned by Roberts (3); Breyer (4 total with a very extensive follow-up on one of the questions); Kennedy(2); Scalia (1); Alito (1), for a total of 11 questions. It is noteworthy that Philllips and Waxman were asked a total of 23 questions, 6 more questions than the SG was asked in the same amount of time. It is also noteworthy that Chief Justice Roberts took a very active role, asking six questions of the two advocates, even though he asked no questions of the SG. Chief Justice Roberts also tipped his hand in the manner of his questioning. Roberts stated at one point: "People who want to watch broadcast where these words or expose their children to broadcasts where these words are used, where there is nudity, there are 800 channels where they can go for that. All we are asking for, what the government is asking for, is a few channels where you can say I'm not going to --they are not going to hear the S word, the F word. They are not going to see nudity." It seems very clear from this "question" that the Chief Justice is actually stating an argument he finds persuasive. At another point, the Chief Justice also interjects to support Justice Scalia's criticism that Mr. Waxman's argument regarding selective enforcement of its nudity prohibition is "not a very powerful argument" given the number of broadcasters sanctioned "over 85 years." In addition to all of this, Justice Breyer made it relatively clear in his questioning that he was troubled by the FCC's actions in these cases but was looking for a way NOT to overrule Pacifica. At one point, Justice Breyer even asks Mr. Waxman: "Does this case in front of us really call for the earthshaking decision that you all have argued for in the - - in the briefs? [overturning Pacifica]" (emphasis mine)

Based on this analysis, it appears as if Roberts, Alito, Scalia are in no hurry to overturn Pacifica. Kennedy and Breyer are a little harder to predict, but I wouldn't bet on them overturning Pacifica, either. With regard to Alito, this is certainly no surprise, for he voted in favor of government restrictions on speech in the "funeral protest" case of Snyder v. Phelps and the "crush video" case of U.S. v. Stevens, and thus indicated his support for regulation of offensive speech. But Chief Judge Roberts has previously voted against government interference in the marketplace of idea in cases like Citizens United v. FEC, U.S. v. Stevens, and Snyder v. Phelps. Furthermore, Justice Scalia wrote for the Court in the "violent video games" case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n, which might be labelled a "new media" First Amendment case decided by the Roberts Court: not only did the Court there strike down California's attempts to prohibit the sale of "violent video games" to minors, but it also flatly rejected the argument that any "medium-specific" characteristics of the games, such as their interactive or immersive nature, justified softening First Amendment prohibitions on content-based regulation. Justice Scalia even wrote that although the First Amendment exists "to protect discourse on public matters," full First Amendment protection extends to entertainment media since "we have long recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try." How can the discrepancy between these cases and the Justices' likely approach to FCC v. Fox be reconciled? I can explain, but it will take me a lot longer than this blog post to do so.

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Not a Free Press Court

The New York Times recently published the results of a study showing that the Roberts Court "is hearing fewer First Amendment cases and is ruling in favor of free speech at a lower rate than any of the courts led by the three previous chief justices." The conclusion that the Roberts Court is not a "free speech" court is provocative because it runs contrary to a prevailing scholarly impression, based no doubt on cases like Citizens United, Snyder v. Phelps, and U.S. v. Stevens, that the Roberts Court "is exceptionally supportive of free speech."

Although that impression may prevail with regard to speech cases (but see Erwin Chemerinsky's article, Not a Free Speech Court), media law scholars certainly have a different impression with regard to press cases. Although the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a very important media case, FCC v. Fox Television Stations, the impression among media law scholars is that the Court in the last decade or so has not been taking "press" cases at the same rate it did in, say, the early 1990s or before. Given that the last ten years has been a period of tremendous change and upheaval for the mass media, the dearth of Supreme Court "press" cases during this time (if such dearth exists) is particularly striking, The New York Times article prompted me to see if I could provide some quick and dirty evidence for the existence of the dearth.

To do so, I examined the 2011 edition of a leading Mass Media Law casebook with which I'm intimately familiar to see how many Supreme Court cases decided in 2000 or later had been added to the book, either as principal cases or merely as note cases. My assumption was that any major press case, and likely even any tangential press case, decided by the Supreme Court in the last 10-12 years would find its way into the book in one form or another. Here's what I found, for what it is worth. Since 2000, the following four Supreme Court cases were added to the media law canon as principal cases: Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001); Doe v. Reed (2010); National Archives and Records Admin. .v Favish (2004); and Playboy Ent. Group, Inc. v. U.S. (2000). Note that only one of these cases was added after 2005, though these principal cases are likely to be joined in this year's supplement by the forthcoming FCC v. Fox Television Stations (expected 2012) and by Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n (2011); and perhaps by Reichle v. Howard (expected 2012) and the Stolen Valor Act case (expected 2012). With regard to note cases, some of which have only attenuated relevance to media actors, the following Supreme Court cases were added to the casebook since 2000: Ashcroft v. ACLU I (2002); Ashcroft v. ACLU II (2004) ; Boumediene v. Bush (2008); Citizens United v. FEC (2010); Dept. of Interior v. Klamath Water Users Protective Ass'n (2001); Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003); Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006); Hamdan v. Rumsefled (2006); Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004); McConnell v. FEC (2003); M.K.B. v. Warden (2004); New York Times v. Tasini (2001); Presley v. Georgia (2010); Rasul v. Bush (2004); Reno v. Condon (2000); Snyder v. Phelps (2011); U.S. v. Stevens (2010); Tory v. Cochran (2005); and U.S. v. Williams (2008). What does one make of this data? Standing alone, not much. First, the data is useless unless one trusts the subjective judgments of the casebook authors as to the significance or relevance of the selected Supreme Court cases to the media. Moreover, without a way to compare the number of "major" press cases decided in the last 10 years to the number decided before, it is hard to say for sure that the Supreme Court is deciding fewer press cases than it did in the past. Even if one could say this for sure, the decline in the number of Supreme Court cases involving the institutional press is no doubt partly attributable to the fact that the institutional press has fewer economic resources to devote to litigation in today's highly competitive media environment. Despite that, it does seem there is some basis--at least enough to spur further research--for concluding that the Supreme Court today is not addressing many press cases. For my own part, assembling the small list of potentially relevant Supreme Court press cases decided since 2005 makes me want to dig into the individual cases to discover what role the Roberts Court envisions for the institutional press. As I will detail in a future blog post, the Roberts Court gave more than a glimpse of that role in dicta in the Citizens United case, though whether the arguments it made there have broader significance for the press remains to be seen.

 

Kahneman Profile/Review

If you are at all interested in behavioral law and economics, you will be interested in Michael Lewis's profile of Daniel Kahneman, which includes a review of his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Incendiary Speech and Social Media: An Essay

A draft of my essay, Incendiary Speech and Social Media, is now available on ssrn.  The abstract is below:

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker, even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An examination of both incidents reveals flaws in existing First Amendment doctrines. In particular, this examination raises questions about whether underlying assumptions made by current doctrine concerning how audiences respond to incitement, threats, or fighting words are confounded by the new reality social media create.

Occupying Public Forums

"When an individual seek[s] to take advantage of an effective, convenient means of communication, the Constitution cannot permit what are often in reality relatively trifling objections to stand in his way."  Geoffrey Stone wrote this sentence more than a quarter century ago, and yet it has resonance today. The question, of course, is what objections are "trifling"? 

In Oakland protesters are returning to the amphitheater in front of City Hall today after the police used force and violence to evict them yesterday. The City attempted to justify the forcible removal, tear gas and all, as necessary to preserve public order in what appears to be a public forum.  The Supreme Court has held (in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence) that the right of citizens to use public forums for protests does not entail the right to sleep overnight in them, even if the sleeping is designed to send a message. For my own part, I believe that the Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence as a whole gives undue deference to government interests in controlling government property.  Regardless, established precedent suggests that the City of Oakland did not violate the First Amendment rights of the protestors by demanding that their overnight occupation of its public forum cease.  [Whether it violated other rights of the protestors by the use of excessive force is another issue entirely.]

But can the City demand that the daytime occupation cease because the protest has gone on too long?  The City might argue that the prolonged daytime occupation interferes with the flow of traffic to and from City Hall, that it interferes with the rights of other citizens to use the public forum, that the property itself is being degraded by wear and tear, that providing the necessary police presence at the forum is unnecessarily burdensome, or so forth.  Without knowing the physical layout of the forum, I find it hard to evaluate the factual plausibility of some of these arguments.  But how about the constitutional plausibility? The City's arguments for restricting forum access appear to be content neutral.  Are they nonetheless, in the words of Geoffrey Stone, "trifling objections" insufficient to overcome the First Amendment rights of the protesters to speak, assemble, and petition?   The Supreme Court  has upheld content-neutral restrictions within public forums that were justified based on government interests in aesthetics, preventing traffic interruption, or curtailing excessive wear and tear on public property, but the cases upholding regulations based on those interests were factually distinguishable from the situations presented by the "OCCUPY" protests.

Furthermore, whether we find asserted interests such as those listed above to be substantial or significant depends to a large extent on how much deference we give to the judgment of the public officials asserting them.  Just because a public official asserts a threat to public order doesn't mean such a threat exists.  Justice Thurgood Marshall once noted that public officials "have strong incentives to overregulate [public forums] even in the absence of an intent to censor particular views."  Protests are inherently inconvenient, messy, and even costly for public officials to manage.  They are also essential to the health of our democracy.

Ten AALS Interview Tips

I'm going to give some obvious advice below.  I don't mind because (a) it is sometimes helpful to be reminded of the obvious; and (b) the advice below isn't necessarily obvious to everyone, especially to those who aren't fortunate enough to be coached about the conference by their law schools. So here are some tips for those of you interviewing at the AALS conference this week.

1. Spend some time researching the law school with whom you're interviewing before the conference. If you know the names of the Appointments Committee members, figure out what their areas of expertise are. Research about the school will enable you to show that you will "fit" there, and research about the committee will enable you to judge the types of questions committee members will ask or the range of answers they're soliciting.

2. Don't ramble unduly when answering questions.  Interview time is precious, and you want to wring maximum value out of every moment. Your interviewers probably have four or five questions they ask every candidate, and you want to make sure you answer all of them. By the same token, you should have in mind two or three things you want to convey about yourself in every interview.  Make sure you use your time wisely to convey them.

3. Don't assume every interviewer is an expert in your field. Make sure you can explain your research in a way a non-specialist can understand it.

4. Don't sprawl in the interview chair, but don't perch right on the edge, either.  You want to look engaged rather than relaxed or anxious.

5. The interview team may offer you food or drink. Do not accept. Eating or drinking during the interview will be unduly awkward. You may, however, accept a bottle of water for later.

6. Be prepared to discuss in depth anything you've published. By the same token, be prepared to discuss your teaching philosophy, your ideal course package, your desire to live in a college town or urban area (as needed), and your future plans for research.

7. Don't be afraid to show some passion. I want to hire people who love research and teaching and who will commit their lives to improving the legal profession one student at a time and the law (even if only a small niche) one article at a time.  It may sound hokey, but I prefer to hire people for whom being a law professor is a calling.  [More selfishly on my part, I prefer candidates with passion because a twenty minute interview can seem like an eternity when the candidate has a flat affect or is low energy, and besides, I can't remember those candidates later.]

8. Don't tell the interviewers that you want to go into law teaching because you're tired of law practice or you think law teaching will be a lot easier than law practice. 

9. Emphasize how your practice experience will benefit students and benefit your research. For bonus points, show that you understand how the practice of law has changed in the past few years, and that you've contemplated how law professors should respond to these changes.

10. Make sure you shake the hand of every interviewer at the outset and make eye contact.  This feat can be difficult to pull off if the interview team is large, but it is important.

Bonus Tip:  When the interview team asks if you have any questions, don't ask simply: how does your school support faculty research?  You can ask the same thing in a (slightly) more creative way.  For example, you can ask what opportunities the school gives untenured faculty members to workshop papers, and whether there are any formal mechanisms in place that encourage or assist untenured faculty members to present their papers at conferences outside the law school. If you know the school has an Associate Dean for Faculty Development/Research, you can ask about his/her role in supporting the research endeavors of untenured faculty members.  You also might try asking:  What makes your law school different than other schools? What is the biggest challenge facing your school? What (if anything) is special about your student body?  Try to use the question not just to gather information but to show something important about yourself.

 Best of luck!

Citations: A Small Rant

If a sentence in an academic legal paper states, "Many scholars argue X," that sentence ordinarily should have a citation, and that citation should list more than one scholar! The only exception occurs when the sentence is the topic sentence for a textual discussion of the "many scholars" with appropriate citations included.

If a sentence in an academic legal paper states, "Professor X argues that the sky is blue," the sentence ordinarily should have a citation to the work of Professor X, rather than to the work of Professor Y discussing Professor X.  

That is all, for the time being.  Now I shall return to reviewing scholarship.

 

 

CV Advice: Should One Include Hobbies or Family Info?

I've reviewed what seems like a million CVs since last May, but occasionally one still has the power to surprise.   I was struck by one this morning that had an especially extensive list of "hobbies." It made me curious to hear the thoughts of other profs as to whether one should or should not include such things on one's CV. 

On my own CV, I've taken a conservative approach and haven't included hobbies or family information on the theory that some stuffy traditionalist out there might take offense or be dismissive. [I would probably only wear a dark suit to interviews for the same reason.] As a recruiter, however, I often enjoy getting some insight into a person through the hobbies they choose to include, and I find that the hobbies occasionally  provide a conversation starter, though I prefer to start with more substantive questions at the faculty recruitment conference in D.C.

Regardless, I think one should probably omit hobbies if they are too mundane (e.g., travelling or reading--who in academia doesn't like to read or travel??) or too exotic (e.g., UFO hunting or making pipe cleaner animals). That doesn't mean, however, that I'd exclude a candidate for including them.  Okay, maybe the pipe cleaner animals might make me think twice . . .

 

 

 

 

Academic Writing: Don't Despair (More Than You Must)

If writing has ever brought you to the brink of despair, you owe it to yourself to read this article on Shame in Academic Writing. ["Brink," who am I kidding?]

ICYMI: Ten (okay, Nineteen) Tips for New Law Professors

I wrote this a while ago and offer it again in case it may be of use.

1.  Begin a little more strictly than you mean to go on.  If you start out strict and stern, you have room to lighten up. If you start out lax, you will pay a real price if you need to impose order later on.

2.  If you put a policy in the syllabus, stick to it even if you think you might have been wrong.  I learned this the hard way.  The first time I taught Professional Responsibility, I stated in the syllabus and in class that the exam would be a two-hour exam.  After I wrote it, I decided it was a bit too hard and I would be "nice" and give them an extra hour to complete it.  I had a young woman in my office 30 minute before the exam so angry I thought she would spit on me. I told her she was welcome to finish in two hours instead of three, but that didn't placate her. I finally told her she'd have to take it up with the associate dean, and I'll be damned if she didn't march down there and do just that.  Thankfully, he backed me up, but I never again made a major policy shift midstream.  She wasn't the only disgruntled student that day, either.

 3. Put everything you can think of in the syllabus, even things that should go without saying.  For example, if you are teaching a seminar, you should consider a policy stating that plagiarism is a ground for failing the course, and you should have an extended explanation in the syllabus explaining what plagiarism is.  You might think that everyone accepted to law school already knows what plagiarism is, but you would be wrong.  More importantly, by explaining what plagiarism is in the syllabus, you deprive the student of the ARGUMENT that s/he didn't know s/he was committing plagiarism.  Another example of something you might want to put in the syllabus is a statement that it is rude and disruptive to come late to class, to come and go during class, or to leave class early without notifying the professor beforehand.  Frankly, I'm not sure I realized how distracting these habits are before I started teaching, and many of your students won't, either.

 4. "Don't be moody." 

This is a piece of advice I received early on from a relatively new law teacher, and it has always stuck in my head. The person who gave me the advice was male, and he evidently had gotten burned  by violating it.  What the advice boils down to, I think, is that students desparately need you to be predictable. It is comforting to them when they know roughly what to expect each day. 

5. Students decide very, very quickly whether you're on their side or not. If they decide you are, they will forgive a multitude of mistakes. If they decide you're not, nothing you do will be right.  I've been teaching for 19 years, and I only had one class that hated me.  They decided early on that I was mean, and everything I did provided confirmation.  They even hated how I started the class and what I wore. (I'd given birth the month before the class started, and my wardrobe was limited). Frankly, I grew to dislike most of them, too.  However, in telling this story, I'm violating the next tip in my list.

6. Be careful about generalizing how "the class" feels.  A communications researcher would probably insist that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "class." (See Ien Ang).  Instead, a "class" is a collection of individuals with disparate needs and interests and judgments about the classroom experience.  That said, it is easy to assume that outspoken students represent the feelings of the entire group.  It so happens that what I think of as "the class that hated me" (discussed above) included two especially delightful students, who took one of the most fun Media Law classes I ever taught. I still keep in touch with them even though they graduated more than a decade ago.

7. Watch out for group dynamics.  Let's say you have a student who is engaging in disruptive behavior. You may be tempted to call the student out for his or her behavior in front of the whole class, but this is usually a bad idea.  Even if other students started out being annoyed at the disruptive student, they may turn on you if you come down too harshly on the student or make him lose face. What should you do instead? I use what I call "class regulation by raised eyebrow."  For example, if a student is late, I may visibly lose my train of thought and stare at him with a completely blank expression on my face for a few seconds--just long enough to be socially awkward.  That does the trick 99 percent of the time.  If you try informal means of "discipline" and they don't work, however, the next step is to call the student into your office. The student won't lose face, and you won't run the risk of having the entire class turn against you for being "mean."

8. Try not to project insecurity. In other words, fake it until you make it.  Although you may be tempted to reveal to the class that you are brand new or are learning the material for the first time, you certainly don't have to and some would argue you shouldn't.  Remember that the students are lucky to have a teacher who is energetic and curious and enthusiastic and can reach them at their level.  Also remember that as little as you think you know, you still can read a case far better than even your brightest student.  So project confidence, but . . . [see next rule.]

9. When you make mistakes, fix them.  When I first taught Torts, I slept with the Prosser & Keeton hornbook by my bedside.  I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking "what if they ask me X?" I would then flip through Prosser & Keeton, read it, perhaps even take notes, and then go back to sleep.  I realize now that every first-time teacher makes mistakes; it is just a question of how you handle them.  Sometimes you will just have to say, "I don't know. Let me research that and get back to you tomorrow." [But make sure you have the answer when you promised it.]   One classic dodge is to say:  "Hold that question. We'll get to that later in the class (or tomorrow or next week)." [Make sure you research the answer and come back to it when you said you would.]  If you realize you didn't explain something well or your explanation was misleading, one way to handle it is to say at the start of next class:  "I'd like to begin by clarifying X that we were discussing yesterday." [Then give your 5-10 minute summary/totally correct explanation.]  Occasionally, you will realize that you said something completely wrong and you will just have to apologize and fix it. As consolation, remember that you are modelling for them how to handle mistakes, and it may be one of the most valuable lessons you can teach future lawyers.  Law is a complicated business, and we all make mistakes from time to time no matter how hard we try or how smart we are.

10.  Trade-offs are inevitable.  More depth or more coverage? Encourage participation and intellectual curiosity, or hew to an organizational scheme?  Stick to your syllabus, or spend more time on the things the class seems interested in or doesn't understand readily? There are lots of other trade-offs of this sort that you'll have to make and then re-make when you realize you've tilted the balance too far toward one value at the expense of another.

11. Make ideas "sticky." Try to come up with ways to make the material you teach memorable.  Silly is sticky.  Graphics (pictures, drawings on the board) are sticky. Funny is sticky. Music is sticky. My Trusts and Estates professor even danced on the table to reinforce a principle, and I remember it (the dancing) twenty years later.  The principle had something to do with whether separate property acquired after the marriage becomes community property or not.  Okay, so the idea wasn't that sticky, but my point still holds.

12. Use the board more than you think you need to. It helps keep the class structured, and it helps the visual learners in the class.   Conversely, use Power Point less than you think you need to.   Power Point is good for pictures and videos, and it can be used to examine closely the text of a rule or to convey highly detailed and technical material through lecture.  Do NOT put giant blocks of text on Power Point and then simply read to the class from the slides. EVER.   

13. It's not about you; it's about the students. Try to keep their needs foremost, instead of your own desire for ego gratification or anything else.  

14. Keep a degree of formal distance between you and your students.  You can treat them like future colleagues, but you cannot be friends with students until they have left your class.  Your role requires you to sit in judgment of your students when you grade them, and that role can be compromised if you don't maintain formal distance.

15. Never use the same exam twice!!  Violate this rule at your extreme peril.

16. Ask colleagues for advice, but remember you don't have to take all the advice you receive.

17. You will teach a class best the third time you teach it.

18. If you are teaching a large class and don't feel that voice projection is one of your gifts, consider wearing a microphone. This tip was shared by my anonymous source. I've never had this problem, but I've heard plenty of complaints from students about being unable to hear some of my colleagues. It is impossible to be an effective teacher if the students cannot hear you.

19. Consider wearing a suit. Even if you don't plan to wear it forever, it may help as a crutch for faking it until you make it and can help you maintain some formal distance from the students. This tip also came from my anonymous source, but I fully concur. I don't wear a suit every single day now, but I believe in signalling I take the endeavor seriously by dressing professionally.