The use of social media may be contributing to violations of copyright law and can create legal challenges for school districts trying to balance ease of communication and First Amendment freedom of speech rights against compliance with federal regulations. In this case, a district is threatened with a lawsuit for copyright violation when one of…

Online activities increasingly represent a common part of the student experience. Along with seeking to engage students in positive ways in relation to their online activities, colleges and universities must also deal with instances of when students' online expression potentially violates campus conduct standards. This article provides a review of…

A collection of 12 articles, this yearbook focuses on freedom of speech and censorship. The topics covered include (1) common law tort and contract erosion of the at will rule, (2) the Supreme Court and the First Amendment in 1983-1984, (3) a phenomenological analysis of the First Amendment and the issue of obscenity, (4) John Milton's attack on…

The establishment of First Amendment protection for statements of opinion has extended the category of protected expression, but judicially created tests for distinguishing fact from opinion provide limited guidance for judges and place little constraint on judicial interpretation of language. In writing the Supreme Court's majority opinion in…

A collection of nine articles, this yearbook focuses on freedom of speech and censorship. The topics covered include (1) judicial invention in First Amendment governmental regulation cases, (2) the impact of the Moral Majority on book censorship; (3) Justice William Brennan's championship of the First Amendment, (4) the legal tactics that public…

News media representatives foresee a growing use of remote-sensing satellites to gather data, including data that could be used to check government claims about military and other activities occurring anywhere on the planet. The satellite technology is developing rapidly, and several nations and private corporations are involved in separate…

This paper provides a comparative snapshot of the current state of the law in the US and UK with respect to potential liability of university and college students for use (and misuse) of social networking sites. It reviews the limited case law on this topic, highlights the differences in the two nations' laws of defamation and the various possible…

The ultimate test of the speech-action dichotomy, as it relates to symbolic speech to be considered by the courts, may be the fasting of prison inmates who use hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their confinement or to make political statements. While hunger strikes have been utilized by prisoners for years as a means of protest, it was…

Argues that First Amendment rights are not possible without the grant of public access to information provided by the doctrine of fair use. Notes that, with digitalization and electronic transfer, many corporate intellectual-property lawyers are pressuring for tightening public access. Argues that educators must understand that the existence of…

This section of the proceedings is comprised of 11 papers dealing with the relationship between media and the law. Papers include: "Equal before the Law: Three Media Myths of the American Legal System" (Henry Itkin); "The Role of Senator Albert Gore, Jr. in Satellite/Cable Legislation" (Michael B. Doyle); "The Law of…

The Law section of the Proceedings contains the following 10 papers: "The Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994: Does Congress Have the Constitutional Authority to Override State FOI Laws by Regulating Access to State Driver's Licenses?" (Joey Senat); "The Truth Hurts: Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress as a Cause of…

Do school dress codes written with the specific purpose of limiting individual dress preferences, including dress associated with gangs, infringe on speech freedoms granted by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Although the Supreme Court has extended its protection of political speech to nonverbal acts of communication, it has…

The Law section of the Proceedings contains the following 13 papers: "Link Law: The Evolving Law of Internet Hyperlinks" (Mark Sableman); "Bits, Bytes and the Right to Know: How the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Holds the Key to Public Access to a Wealth of Useful Government Databases" (Martin E. Halstuk);…

In 1985 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that a Costa Rican statute requiring journalists to be licensed violates the American Convention on Human Rights and, by extension, all human rights conventions. Though press freedom advocates hailed it as a major triumph for freedom of expression, the court's ruling was only advisory and has…

Topics like employment discrimination, personal jurisdiction, first amendment and copyright, are commonly taught in many legal environment and business law courses. Law faculty often seek to find new and interesting vehicles for helping their students to better understand and critically analyze these traditional legal concepts. Today's college…