Keynote: Students, Social Media, and the First Amendment

Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/27/2011
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Mary-Rose Papandrea, an associate professor in the Boston College School of Law, will discuss the new challenges the digital age poses to the First Amendment rights of students and their teachers at public high schools and universities. The Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions in the last few years that are highly protective of First Amendment rights. Among other things, violent video games can be sold to minors, a religious group can say hateful things outside of a funeral, and corporations must be free to make unlimited independent expenditures during political campaigns. But when it comes to students and government employees, the Court has taken a much more limited view of the First Amendment. Professor Papandrea will argue that the Court’s decisions in this area are misguided. A graduate of Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School, Papandrea clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and then spent several years as a litigator at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., where she specialized in First Amendment and media defense litigation. She joined the Boston College faculty in 2004. For more about Papandrea, visit http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/fac-staff/deans-faculty/papandream.html.

To view video of the event click here or view below:

First Amendment Day 2011 Keynote: Mary Rose Papandrea from Center for Media Law and Policy on Vimeo.