Archive | First Amendment

Media Law Faculty Participate in Friday Center Constitution & Culture Series

By on April 11, 2016 in First Amendment

Two UNC media law faculty members will speak about free speech on college campuses as part of a Friday Center series titled, “What’s the Big Idea? Constitution in Crisis: The Law & Culture of the United States Constitution.” The event will take place at 7 p.m. on April 28 at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill.

The speakers will be Dr. Cathy Packer, co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy and the W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professor in the UNC School of Media and Journalism, and William P. Marshall, the Kenan Professor of Law at UNC.

They will discuss legal and cultural aspects of free speech on college campuses.  Packer will discuss the nature of free speech on UNC’s campus today, including how students at UNC and elsewhere think about free expression.  Marshall will address how the First Amendment applies to hate speech, trigger warnings, and bullying and harassment.

Click here or more information about the series. Tickets are $10 or free with a student ID, and are available here.

 

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Media law student selected to attend “Free Speech on Campus” conference

By on March 23, 2016 in First Amendment, Journalism

UChanda MarloweNC media law student Chanda Marlowe has been selected to attend a one-day conference on “Free Speech on Campus” in Washington, D.C., on April 2, 2016. Forty students were selected. The conference, sponsored by the Newseum Institute and the Knight Foundation, will provide an opportunity for students to discuss the challenges to free expression on college campuses related to conversations about race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual identity.

Chanda is in her third-year of UNC’s dual-degree program, working toward degrees in both law and mass communication. Her primary research interest is the free speech and privacy rights of students.

The goal of the conference is to gather a diverse group of students to explore free expression issues in a meeting consistent with the First Amendment’s provision for a “marketplace of ideas” within society. It’s the first step in a joint initiative exploring contemporary free expression issues on college campuses.

Later this year, the Newseum will host a “Free Expression Fair” in Washington, D.C., where students will demonstrate projects that promote free expression on campus. The Newseum and Knight Foundation ultimately plan to support students in developing an interactive guide to free speech on campus. College students who are interested in free expression issues on campus should be on the lookout for more opportunities to participate in the Newseum’s upcoming events this year.

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UNC media law student publishes in Communication Law and Policy

By on January 31, 2016 in First Amendment, Internet

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 12.18.42 PMUNC media law student Brooks Fuller recently had an article published in Communication Law and Policy. The article is “The Angry Pamphleteer: True Threats, Political Speech, and Applying Watts v. United States in the Age of Twitter.”

In light of the rise of “caustic” political speech on new media, the article examines modes of analysis that lower courts use when distinguishing political speech from true threats. The article finds that the primary analysis used by lower courts is a criteria-based analysis. It argues that this type of analysis risks unduly restricting political speech when applied to new media such as Twitter.  The article says, in part, “Identifying protected political speech requires careful balancing of the myriad speech interests raised when an individual chooses to vent political frustrations cathartically on a public medium such as Twitter. Careful contextual balancing avoids restricting the analytical focus to rote criteria.”

This is the citation for the article: P. Brooks Fuller, The Angry Pamphleteer: True Threats, Political Speech, and Applying Watts v. United States in the Age of Twitter, 21 Comm. L. & Pol’y 87 (2016).

Brooks is a third year media law PhD student.

Congratulations, Brooks!

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Required Drone Registration Coming

By on November 16, 2015 in First Amendment, Journalism

Required Drone Registration

Drone owners will be required to register their aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) soon. The FAA’s drone registration task force is expected to finalize its recommendations for drone registration guidelines by Friday, November 20, 2015.

The FAA announced the creation of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Registration Task Force on October 29, and said its goal was to establish recommended guidelines for drone registration. During the meetings, members discussed “how an operator might prove a UAS is registered, how the aircraft would be marked, and how to use the registration process to encourage or require UAS operators to become educated on basic safety rules,” according to a news update on the FAA’s website.

The task force’s last meeting occurred on November 5 and they will finalize their recommendations for FAA Administrator Michael Huerta to review by November 20.

Drone safety rules are increasingly disregarded and officials have trouble tracking down rule-breakers under the current system. Pilots have reported more than 650 sightings of drones from the start of the year to August 9, despite it being illegal and dangerous to fly drones by planes or helicopters.

For more on this subject, check out these articles:

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First Amendment Day Events

By on September 20, 2015 in First Amendment

FirstAmendmentDay

Carolina’s seventh-annual First Amendment Day celebration will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015. You can view the full schedule of events here. 

Organized by the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, this year’s festivities will include a banned-book reading by Chancellor Carol Folt; a First Amendment trivia contest; and a keynote address by Danielle Keats Citron, a legal scholar who has written extensively about hate crimes in cyberspace — especially those targeting women. There also will be a panel discussion at which UNC student journalists will discuss their problems covering UNC athletics. Steve Kirschner, the senior associate athletic director for communications at UNC, will be on the panel to respond. At a second panel discussion, students and others will discuss the symbols of the South that have created a firestorm of opinion about their meaning and their impact on students. The panelists will explore the law regarding these controversial Southern symbols and the activism surrounding symbols of the South.

Generous funding for the day’s events is provided by Time Warner Cable.

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