This document records testimony from a hearing before the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development of the Committee on Education and the Workforce on protecting free speech on college campuses. Opening statements were provided by: (1) Honorable Burgess Owens, Chairman, Subcommittee on Higher Education and the Workforce…

The freedom of conscience and belief can be defined as the freedom of people in what they wish to believe without the compulsion of political power and other people by means of laws and other means. The belief of religion that can be accepted as the natural extension of the freedom of conscience and belief is to be free in doing the requirements…

The Constitution empowers Congress to protect the rights of authors. There is disagreement, however, over whether Congress may grant authors a limited monopoly on their works or may regulate authorship by permitting reasonable public access to creative works. The traditional view of expansive pre-publication rights for authors is supported by…

This paper from a session of the Council of Educational Facilities Planners addresses the topic of access to educational facilities by the public. It explains that many organizations and individuals request access to public educational facilities; while boards and administrators generally want to make them available for public use, problems…

This discussion summarizes the general principles that may be applied in determining the limits of free expression and proposes new criteria based on libertarian values. Among the general principles summarized are the bad-tendency test, the clear-and-present-danger test, the balancing test, the incitement test, and the hypothetical absolute test.…

This document is one of a series of papers by leading scholars presented at the State University of New York's annual program of educational policy seminars. The paper reviews recent judicial attempts to interpret the U.S. Constitution's first amendment's establishment clause in areas that have had a significant impact on educational policy…

The concept of institutional academic freedom is discussed. Attention is directed to how the concept confounds the distinct values and standards traditionally used in analysis of cases involving individual rights in higher education, and legal and practical problems it raises for the maintenance of traditional concepts of academic freedom. The…

Questions concerning the relative protection afforded by the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the law of libel, and protection for the editorial process are the focus of this paper. The first section summarizes arguments for First Amendment press protection, focusing on the question of whether…

Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court has ruled on obscenity cases in seven instances since his appointment. His rulings reveal that he regards obscenity as a nuisance rather than as a danger threatening to undermine the nation's morality, that he supports a nationwide standard to adjudicate obscenity cases, and that he…

A university president urges development of a doctrine of "academic deference" to protect academic freedom and discourages overuse of constitutional litigation in higher education-related disputes. Academic deference is encouraged in censorship of former government employees returning to academe, restrictions on international scholarly…

Senator Orrin Hatch argues that affirmative action is illegal, immoral, and won't work. (IRT)

A libel suit for which the ruling hung on determination of the plaintiffs as public or private figures is described in this paper. First, the paper describes the case, in which an Oregon newspaper reported that an antique dealer and the local bank president had systematically swindled a citizen out of several hundred thousand dollars, and for…

The suggestion that Warren Burger's appointment to the Supreme Court was Richard Nixon's revenge upon the press is supported by some of Burger's judicial decisions and attitudes toward the press outside the courtroom, but not all of his decisions were against the news media. Burger's decision not to allow court clerks to speak to reporters, and…

Judicial activism raises the question whether the people, through their elected representatives, should make decisions about social policy issues or whether these decisions will be made by appointed members of the federal judiciary. Through a series of judicial decisions, many basic social problems have become nationalized. Yet the U.S.…

Although noting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been a valuable ally of journalists, this paper suggests that recent efforts of the SEC in prosecuting the case of R. Foster Winans, Jr., a former writer for the "Wall Street Journal," may be unconstitutional. Following an introduction to the First Amendment issues…