2025 First Amendment Day

By on October 2, 2025 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will celebrate its sixteenth annual First Amendment Day on Wednesday, October 8, 2025.  This campus-wide, daylong series of events is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. As always, First Amendment Day is observed during National Banned Books Week.

Join us for CLE credits (Campus Life Experience), food, and thought-provoking discussions.

Here are some highlights:

Bring your students and your questions. You won’t find a smarter group of folks talking about these critical issues!

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New Article on Popular Sovereignty and a Right to Know About the Government

By on September 12, 2025 in First Amendment, Transparency

My recent article on Popular Sovereignty and a Right to Know About the Government just came out in the Arizona Law Review. In the article I argue that a right to know is not only implied by the First Amendment but is fundamental to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and is rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty. The Framers’ commitment to self-government requires that citizens have access to information about their government if they are to exercise their sovereign authority over the government. Recognizing a right to know as a constitutional imperative, rooted in the people’s sovereign authority, establishes a durable foundation for limited government.  Here is the full abstract:

Imagine that a future U.S. President, upset about negative press coverage and plummeting approval ratings, issues an executive order instructing all federal agencies to henceforth provide no public access to executive branch records and meetings. Imagine further that the President’s party controls both chambers of Congress, which rescinds all statutory disclosure obligations imposed on the executive branch, including the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Government in the Sunshine Act, and Presidential Records Act. Is the public’s ability to understand the actions of government solely a matter for their elected representatives to decide? Disturbingly, many courts and scholars seem to think so.

If the government attempts to keep its citizens in the dark, or even actively misleads them, how can this not strike at the very heart of the Constitution? I argue in this Article that a right to know about the government is fundamental to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. While past scholarship has largely grounded the right to know in the First Amendment, this Article advances a more foundational claim: the Framers’ unwavering commitment to popular sovereignty demands that the people have a right to know about their government. Recognizing a right to know as a constitutional imperative, rooted in the people’s sovereign authority, establishes a durable foundation for limited government—one that ensures that citizens can hold their leaders accountable and fully exercise their role in self-government.

Implementing a right to know about the government will present many challenges. Fortunately, we can draw guidance from the Supreme Court’s cases applying a public right of access to the courts, and we have decades of experience with open government statutes such as FOIA and the Sunshine Act. Building on this foundation, I lay out three core principles that should guide the development of a right to know about the government. First, a right to know should be limited in scope and extend only so far as is necessary to fulfill the needs of democratic self-government. Second, even when a right to know applies, it should yield when countervailing interests are sufficiently weighty. Third, the government must have leeway in designing access policies and procedures that account for the practical realities of providing public access.

You can download the article from SSRN.

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2024 Cleary Writing Competition Winner Announced

By on May 14, 2025 in Center for Media Law and Policy

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is pleased to announce the first-place winner of the annual James R. Cleary Prize for the best student-published scholarly articles on media law and policy. The award comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

Anjali Purohit

This year’s winner is Anjali Purohit. She is entering her third year at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she will serve as an Articles Editor for the North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology during the 2025–2026 academic year. She received her undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University, where she double-majored in Sociology with a concentration in crime and criminal justice, and Spanish. Following graduation, Anjali worked for two years at litigation firms in Philadelphia, gaining valuable experience in legal research, discovery, and trial preparation.

Her article, “Love at First Swipe: How Dating Apps Compromise User Privacy and Data Protection,” examines regulatory gaps in U.S. privacy law and the risks associated with modern data collection practices. The piece highlights how dating apps collect and share sensitive personal information, often through vague privacy policies and without meaningful user consent. It also proposes a system where strong privacy settings are enabled by default, and users can customize them to create a personalized profile that applies seamlessly across multiple platforms.

This summer, Anjali is interning with the North Carolina Department of Justice in the Health Services Section. She hopes to pursue a legal career that combines her interests in technology, consumer protection, and public service. In her free time, Anjali enjoys playing piano, exploring local coffee shops, and watching college basketball.

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New article: “Digital intermediaries and transparency reports as strategic communications”

By on March 4, 2025 in Internet, Transparency

ReidRingelA new study authored by Amanda Reid and Evan Ringel examines how “transparency reports” have become an institutionalized practice among digital intermediaries. This work frames platforms’ transparency reports as corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures, and it argues they represent an emerging institutional practice shaped by isomorphic pressures (organizations becoming more similar by mimicking each other).  Moreover, the article notes that while CSR research exists in other sectors, there’s a gap in studying CSR in the tech sector.  This research makes two main theoretical contributions.  First, the empirical evidence shows how this practice has spread across companies and across jurisdictions around the world.  And second, it offers a two-fold explanation for why different companies do this: (1) Big Tech companies use them as legitimacy-seeking strategic communications, and (2) SMEs (small and midsize enterprises) copy Big Tech’s practices through “mimetic isomorphism.”

Amanda Reid & Evan Ringel, Digital Intermediaries & Transparency Reports as Strategic Communications, 41 The Information Society 91-109 (2025) doi: 10.1080/01972243.2025.2453529.

See also Amanda Reid, Evan Ringel & Shanetta M. Pendleton, Transparency Reports as CSR Reports: Motives, Stakeholders, and Strategies, 20 Social Responsibility Journal 81-107 (2024), doi: 10.1108/SRJ-03-2023-0134; Amanda Reid, Shanetta M. Pendleton & Lightning E.H. JM Czabovsky, Big Tech Transparency Reports & CSR: Longitudinal Content Analysis of News Coverage, 13 The Journal of Social Media in Society 122-154 (2024), https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1447/693

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The James R. Cleary Prize for Student Media Law and Policy Research in 2024

By on January 29, 2025 in Center for Media Law and Policy

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is now accepting submissions for the James R. Cleary Prize for student media law and policy research published in 2024. The annual award competition, which highlights the best student-authored scholarly articles on media law and policy-related topics, honors the legacy of James R. Cleary, an attorney who practiced for 56 years in Huntsville, Ala.  He was particularly interested in the communications field and media law issues.  Cleary’s daughter, Johanna Cleary, is a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

The prize competition is open to all college and university students. Up to three winners will be selected, with a first prize of $1,000, a second prize of $500, and a third prize of $250. The prizes will be awarded to the authors of published papers that most creatively and convincingly propose solutions to significant problems in the field of media law and policy.  We define this subject matter broadly, including copyright, trademark, social media regulation, and First Amendment speech and press issues. All methodologies are welcome.

The deadline for submission is April 30, 2025.

Rules

  1. The author of the submitted publication must have been enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate degree-granting program in the United States at the time the article was accepted for publication. This includes, but is not limited to, students enrolled in M.A. and Ph.D. programs, law school (including J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. candidates), and other professional schools (including M.B.A. candidates).
  2. The submitted paper must have been published in a law review or peer-reviewed journal during the 2024 calendar year.
  3. Each student may submit only one entry.
  4. Jointly authored papers are eligible, provided all authors meet the eligibility requirements for the competition. If a winning paper has more than one author, the prize will be split equally among the co-authors. No work with a faculty co-author will be considered.
  5. Each entry must be the original work of the listed author(s). The author(s) must perform all of the key tasks of identifying the topic, researching it, analyzing it, formulating positions and arguments, and writing and revising the paper.
  6. Papers will be evaluated based on a number of factors, including thoroughness of research and analysis, relevance to the competition topic, relevance to current legal and/ or public policy debates, originality of thought, and clarity of expression.
  7. The prize will be monetary. Winners will be required to submit a completed W-9, affidavit of eligibility, tax acknowledgment, and liability release for tax purposes as a condition of receiving the cash prize.
  8. In the unlikely event that entries are of insufficient quality to merit an award, the Center for Media Law and Policy reserves the right not to award some or all of the prizes.

Submission Process

  • All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on April 30, 2025.
  • Entries must be sent via email to medialaw[at]unc.edu with the following in the subject line: “James R. Cleary Prize Submission: [Name of Author]”
  • Papers should be submitted in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
  • Entries MUST include a signed cover sheet that may be downloaded from the Center for Media Law Policy’s website here.

A review committee comprised of faculty and affiliates from the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will review the submissions and determine the winning paper(s). The decisions of the committee are final. Winners will be notified and final results will appear on the Center’s website in late spring. Due to the large number of expected entries, the Center cannot contact all non-winning entrants.

For more information, please visit our Cleary Competition page.

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