scholarly journals REGULATING EXPRESSION AND EQUALITY IN COLLEGIATE ESPORTS

Author(s):  
Dan Burk ◽  
Betsy Rosenblatt

Competitive professional computer gaming or “eSports” has grown rapidly over the past decade, and has extended into collegiate play, where educational institutions have begun sponsoring eSports teams, leagues, and events. However, the expansion of eSports has been accompanied by concerns regarding the online gaming culture from which eSports proceeds. Copious research establishes that women are routinely subjected to gender-based harassment in computer games and game-related activity. In the context of American collegiate eSports, this implicates the law of educational equality known as “Title IX.” Institutions subject to Title IX are required to maintain a learning environment in which educational opportunities are not impeded by sexual harassment, which will be required of eSports as it has long been required for physical sports. Yet, unlike sports played in physical space, computer games are necessarily mediated by software, which has consistently been held to constitute protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In this paper we examine the First Amendment constraints on the regulation of eSport computer games under Title IX. We argue that to the extent that choices among gaming content may be dictated by the constraints of Title IX, care must be exercised to accommodate both the statutory requirements of educational opportunity and the constitutional requirements for expressive freedom.

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
Juhani Rudanko

This article focuses on face-threatening attacks on the Madison Administration during the War of 1812. The discussion is framed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, with the language of the Amendment protecting freedom of speech, and also by the Sedition Act of 1798, which, if it had been made permanent, would have seriously curtailed freedom of speech. The War of 1812 was intensely unpopular among members of the Federalist Party, and their newspapers did not shy away from criticising it. This article investigates writings published in the Boston Gazette and the Connecticut Mirror during the war. It is shown that the criticism took different forms, ranging from accusing President Madison of “untruths” to painting a picture of what was claimed to be the unmitigated hopelessness of his position, both nationally and internationally, and that the criticism also included harsh personal attacks on his character and motives. It is suggested that some of the attacks may be characterised as exhibiting aggravated impoliteness. The article also considers President Madison’s attitude in the face of the attacks.


Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Harold J. Berman

When the word "law" is juxtaposed with the word "religion," an American lawyer today is apt to think immediately of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution with its double protection against any governmental interference in "the free exercise" of religion on the one hand and against any governmental "establishment" of religion on the other. From the standpoint of contemporary American constitutional law, religion has become the personal and private affair of individual citizens or groups of citizens. Indeed, in recent decades our courts, in interpreting the "free exercise" clause, have gone far toward immunizing individual and group activities from governmental control, whether federal or state, whenever they are considered by the persons engaging in them to be of a religious character; and at the same time, under the "establishment" clause the courts have struck down most forms even of indirect governmental support of religion, whether federal or state.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 214-217
Author(s):  
Charles Marowitz

On 13 October 2012, Lenny Bruce, had he not accidentally overdosed on narcotics (or committed suicide – the jury is still out on that one), would be eighty-seven years old. It is, of course, a thoroughly incredible notion – like an octogenarian Mozart, a super annuated Janis Joplin, or James Dean signing up for a senior citizen pension. Poètes maudits, doomed rock icons, and self-destructive superstars are supposed to die young. Their myth demands it, and we wouldn't have it any other way.Bruce at forty-one, perched on a toilet bowl with a spike in his right arm and his last typed words (‘conspiracy to interfere with the Fourth Amendment const—’) in the barrel of his still humming electric typewriter, died characteristically. He was always associated with toilet humour and throughout the last decade of his life ex hausted himself trying to demonstrate that the United States Constitution protected the free speech for which one court after another mercilessly prosecuted him. (The Fourth Amendment, incidentally, protects citizens from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ and, along with the state's First Amendment violations, was as much responsible for his downfall as the cocaine and morphine.)


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 142-175
Author(s):  
Anthony Davidson Gray

This article suggests that the Australian High Court might usefully utilize more of the First Amendment jurisprudence than it has done so to date. After a succinct summary of the Australian implied freedom and First Amendment case law, it documents cases in which the Australian High Court has either utilised, or not utilised, First Amendment case law. It suggests specific instances in which the Australian case law might utilize some of the American doctrine, and responds to suggestions that the American case law is not applicable to the Australian constitutional context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-258
Author(s):  
P. Brooks Fuller

Under settled First Amendment doctrine, true threats and incitement to violence fall clearly outside the protection of the United States Constitution. However, the line between violent speech and protected political hyperbole is exceedingly blurry, especially in high-conflict protest environments. This study complements doctrinal analysis with an ethnographic field study of abortion clinic protests in the Southern United States to test assumptions about speech, harm, and political discourse. It recommends that courts modify the analytical frameworks for true threats and incitement to better capture the layers of social and historical context that create social and rhetorical meaning amid political conflict.


1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 949-958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Martin ◽  
K. Preston Oade ◽  
Ted D. Nirenberg

Federal law prohibits brewers from disclosing information about the alcohol content of malt beverages on product labels or in advertising. In 1987, the Adolph Coors Company filed suit against the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, arguing that this law is an invalid suppression of speech violating the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Coors won the case in U.S. District Court and the defendants have appealed to the United States Court of Appeals. A hearing and decision on the appeal is pending. This article summarizes the current federal law, describes the Coors case challenging the law, and discusses legal and practical issues concerning alcohol content labeling and advertising for malt beverages.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Alim

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is an essential part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, obstructing the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering peoples assembling rights in a peaceful manner or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental remedy of grievances. The guarantees of this Bill of Rights were subject to the limitation imposed by the free speech and press provisions of the First Amendment to the US Constitution as interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court and other courts. The United States and India are the largest democratic country and almost have similar free speech provisions in their Constitutions. This Article is intended to present the free speech provisions of the American and Indian Constitution as a basic fundamental right of human being. It is also to be examined that what is the role of Supreme Court in interpreting the freedom of speech and expression provisions. The study also tries to incorporate the comparison between the looms of both countries as far as freedom of speech is disturbed.


Author(s):  
Maryam Ahranjani

The very first amendment to the United States Constitution protects the freedom of speech. While the Supreme Court held in 1969 that students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” since then the Court has limited students' freedom of speech, stopping short of considering the boundaries of off-campus, online speech. Lower court holdings vary, meaning that a student engaging in certain online speech may not be punished at all in one state but would face harsh criminal punishments in another. The lack of a uniform standard leads to dangerously inconsistent punishments and poses the ultimate threat to constitutional knowledge and citizenship exercise: chilling of speech. Recent interest in technology-related cases and the presence of a new justice may reverse the Court's prior unwillingness to address this issue. In the meantime, this chapter argues that school districts should erect a virtual schoolhouse gate by implementing a uniform standard.


2020 ◽  
Vol III (I) ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Rida Saeed

A researcher wants to study the role of media of Pakistan in freedom of speech of Lahore district. Each individual has some inborn basic rights, which he and she enjoys no matter, where, he and she lives or what his and her material or social status is, the ability to freedom speech and expression is one of those rights. As said by Newseum, in 1997 that "Freedom of speech is guaranteed, and protected by the first amendment, of the United-States constitution". Connotations, of the freedom of speech have a varied, in different eras of history. There are parts of bills of rights in 1st amendment forbids national, government from restricting freedom of expression, in this article the author looks into the phenomenon of 'Freedom of Speech' within Lahore.


Author(s):  
David T. A. Wesley

Established U.S. law has long held that computer code is a language, like any other language, and is therefore subject to same free speech protections afforded other forms of speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Computer code also protects free speech through cryptography that enables protected communication between two or more parties. This article will consider the legal history of computer code as free speech and how it can be used to promote other forms of free speech through cryptography and secure communications. It will further argue that the deep web and dark web are direct results of these precedents, and while they can be abused by cybercriminals and malicious state actors, they are also indispensable in promoting free speech and human rights.


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