School Jurisdiction over Online Speech

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Gold Waldman
Keyword(s):  
School Personnel ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Student Speech ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Current Reality

In today’s digital age, the line between on-campus and off-campus speech has become murky. Speech initially expressed on a student’s home computer, tablet, or smartphone can instantly be accessed anywhere, including at school. But the United States Supreme Court’s student speech cases, which largely predate the digital age, do not grapple with this current reality. This chapter explores lower courts’ attempts to find a new dividing line, beyond the physical schoolhouse gate, for schools’ jurisdiction over student speech. So far, the emerging consensus is that the test should be whether the speech is likely to cause a material disruption at school. That standard, in turn, can implicate several subsidiary questions: whether the speech is arguably threatening; whether the student speaker was punished with suspension or only a minor sanction; whether the speech targets a fellow student or a teacher/administrator; and whether the speech conveys a substantive viewpoint. This chapter analyzes how courts grapple with each of those issues, and then shifts the lens to explore what happens when school personnel, rather than students, are the ones speaking online. It concludes that the Supreme Court will soon weigh in to provide more guidance on these complex issues, building on the lower court consensus that is already developing.

The United States Supreme Court: Definitions of Obscenity

1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
Marc Schnall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Current Test ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Average Person ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Definition Of

This article summarizes the activity of the United States Supreme Court in formulating and applying definitions of what constitutes obscenity. For almost ninety years, American courts applied a test of obscenity established by a British court in 1868. In 1957, after lower courts in the United States had expanded the British definition, the Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, defined as obscene such material which, "to the average person, apply ing contemporary community standards," appealed to prurient interests and lacked redeeming social value. Between 1957 and 1966, the Court added several dimensions to its definition of obscenity. The current test of obscenity was framed in 1966 in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which reworded the Roth definition and included a third standard—namely, that the material must also be "patently offensive." This article examines not only the Supreme Court's actual definitions of obscenity but also the trends in these definitions and the Court's continual efforts to define and redefine obscenity.

scholarly journals Let's (Not) Make This Work! Why Stare Decisis Workability Should be a Sword but Not a Shield

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Lynn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Stare Decisis ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
History Of

A factor of the United States Supreme Court’s stare decisis test, workability differentiates precedential rules that have proven easy for lower courts to apply in a consistent and fair manner from those that have not. This note addresses the question of whether workability is a legitimate reason for retaining a given interpretation of a statute. The Note begins by providing an illustration of what this Note will sometimes refer to as the “preservative use” of workability. The Note then lays out the history of workability as a consideration of stare decisis and describes how the factor has changed in recent decades. In so doing, its focus is on workability in the context of statutory interpretation. In order to explain the background and development of the factor, however, it is necessary to discuss specific cases in which the Supreme Court has applied workability in the context of constitutional interpretation. The two contexts must be differentiated for purposes of this Note because the thesis of this Note—i.e., that preserving an incorrect interpretation of a statute because of its relative workability violates separation of powers—has no parallel when a court interprets a constitution because in that case there is no inherent infringement on legislative power. This Note then explains why the change toward using workability to preserve erroneous precedent is not required logically, contravenes the basic purposes of stare decisis, and is constitutionally invalid as a violation of separation of powers. Finally, this Note proposes a new way to articulate the stare decisis test that does not discard workability as a consideration but precludes the preservative use criticized by this Note.

scholarly journals The Curious Incident of the Supreme Court in Myriad Genetics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Burk
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Myriad Genetics ◽  
The Relationship

Often what is not said is as significant as what is said. In its recent Myriad Genetics decision, the United States Supreme Court is curiously silent about the relationship between its holding in that case and the holding in its immediately previous patent subject matter case, Mayo v. Prometheus. This reticence is all the more puzzling given that the Court initially remanded Myriad to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of the Mayo holding. The Court's silence regarding Mayo leaves uncertain the relationship between the "products of nature" doctrine that serves as the basis for the Myriad decision, and the "laws of nature" doctrine that has been the basis of nearly all of its other subject matter cases. In this paper I assemble the clues in the laws of nature cases to suggest what the Court might have said or might still say regarding products of nature.

Child Pornography

2015 ◽  
pp. 55-60
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Child Pornography ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Student Speech ◽  
The Supreme Court

This chapter discusses child pornography speech which the United States Supreme Court first categorically excluded from First Amendment protection in New York v. Ferber (1982). The goal of the chapter is to provide an overview of the child-pornography jurisprudence. The chapter also highlights a case applying the Supreme Court precedent on child pornography to student speech. The chapter concludes that, due to its unprotected nature, students censored for child pornography speech have no First Amendment recourse.

Assessing the Current Jurisprudence

2015 ◽  
pp. 304-351
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Student Speech ◽  
School Officials ◽  
Current State ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter assesses the current state of the off-campus student-speech jurisprudence. It discusses the lower courts' application of the United States Supreme Court's student-speech tests to off-campus student speech. The discussion reveals that there is no uniformity in this application. It further reveals that the lower courts do not uniformly embrace school-censorship authority over off-campus speech. While a majority of courts have been willing to extend school-censorship authority beyond the school campus, a few courts remain resistant to this extension. The chapter also presents data on the judicial trends in the off-campus student-speech jurisprudence. This data reveals that most courts use the material and substantial disruption test when reviewing the constitutionality of school censorship of off-campus student speech. On the other hand, no court has applied the Hazelwood test to off-campus speech. The data also shows that most off-campus speech cases involve speech directed at or against school officials rather than students. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to provide insight into the current unsettled off-campus student-speech jurisprudence.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Presidential Proclamation Restricting Entry of Individuals from Covered Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Security Interest ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Preliminary Injunction

On June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's most recent iteration of restrictions on entry to the United States by nationals from certain foreign countries. Following several rewrites of this travel ban, ensuing legal challenges, and lower court injunctions, the Court, in a five-to-four decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reversed the latest ruling of a lower court that had granted a partial preliminary injunction against the ban. Although acknowledging that there was considerable evidence tying the travel ban to bias against Muslims, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs were nonetheless unlikely to succeed either in their statutory claim that Trump lacked the authority to impose this ban or in their constitutional claim that the ban violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court accordingly reversed the lower court's injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling, based on the Trump administration's asserted national security interest, leaves in place travel restrictions imposed on nationals of seven countries—Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—only two of which are not Muslim-majority countries.

The United States Supreme Court’s case selection: A primer for the South African Constitutional Court in hearing matters of general public importance

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-174
Author(s):  
Paul Nkoane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
South African ◽  
General Public ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
The South ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
The Supreme Court

The jurisdiction of the South African Constitutional Court has been extended for the court to administer ‘matters of general public importance’ in addition to administering constitutional matters. There is no South African court that accepted appeals on the grounds that the matter raised an arguable point of law of general public importance. This novelty in the South African law requires an inspection of other jurisdictions to determine which matters the Constitutional Court should accept for appeals. In this respect, the article inspects the Supreme Court of the United States case docket to determine the kinds of cases the court accepts for appeals.

School-Sponsored Speech

2015 ◽  
pp. 97-107
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Student Speech ◽  
Speech Clause

This chapter examines the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988) case – the United States Supreme Court's third review of students' speech rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It discusses the test created in the case for analyzing when schools can regulate students' speech. This test, referred to as the Hazelwood test (also known as the Kuhlmeier test) authorizes schools to censor school-sponsored student speech. The chapter discusses the Supreme Court's approach to student speech in the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988) case. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to analyze the case in order to determine if it authorizes schools to censor students' speech while they are outside the schoolhouse gate.

Lewd, Vulgar, Plainly-Offensive, and Obscene Speech

2015 ◽  
pp. 84-96
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
School District ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Student Speech ◽  
Free Speech Rights ◽  
Speech Clause

This chapter focuses on the Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser (1986) case – the United States Supreme Court's second review of students' speech rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It discusses the test created in the case for determining when schools can regulate students' speech. This test, referred to as the Bethel test or the Fraser test authorizes schools to censor students' speech if the speech is vulgar, lewd, plainly offensive or obscene. The chapter also discusses the Supreme Court's decision on the scope of students' free speech rights. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to analyze the Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser case in order to determine if it empowers schools to censor off-campus student speech.

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