Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

Platforms and the Fall of the Fourth Estate: Looking Beyond the First Amendment to Protect Watchdog Journalism

Abstract: Journalists see the First Amendment as an amulet, and with good reason. It has long protected the Fourth Estate—an independent institutional press—in its exercise of editorial discretion to check government power. This protection helped the Fourth Estate flourish in the second half of the twentieth century and ably perform its constitutional watchdog role. But in the last two decades, the media ecology has changed. The Fourth Estate has been subsumed by a Networked Press in which journalists are joined by engineers, algorithms, audience, and other human and non-human actors in creating and distributing news. The Networked Press’s most powerful members are platforms. These platforms—companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter—shun the media label even as they function as information gatekeepers and news editors. Their norms and values, including personalization and speed, stymie watchdog reporting. The Networked Press regime significantly threatens watchdog journalism, speech that is at the core of the press’s constitutional role. Yet, limited by the state action doctrine, the First Amendment cannot shield this speech from a threat by private actors like platforms. Today, the First Amendment is insufficient to protect a free press that can serve as a check on government tyranny. This article argues that we must look beyond the First Amendment to protect watchdog journalism from the corrosive power of platforms. It describes the limits of the First Amendment and precisely how platforms threaten watchdog journalism. It also proposes a menu of extra-constitutional options for bolstering this essential brand of speech.

Delaware's Disclosure: Moving the Line of Federal-State Corporate Regulation

Abstract: Delaware's century-long success in attracting corporations to use its law has provoked a recurring series of inquiries seeking to explain how one of our smallest and least populous states dominates such an important part of our national economy. The larger potential challenge to Delaware's hegemony is the continued shrinking of the space for any state corporate law as the federal government elects to encompass more and more of all fields of American law. This article develops how judicial requirements as to disclosure have become a way for Delaware to push into the part of corporate governance that has been most visibly the federal government's domain. By case law particularly visible since 2007, Delaware courts have expanded the reach of Delaware law in corporate governance via disclosure even in an age of growing federal regulation. This development shows that disclosure to protect the exercise of shareholder governance rights cannot be effectively separated from legal protection that substantively protects shareholder's ability to act within that space, protection usually provided by fiduciary duty provided by Unocal, Revlon and other such well known Delaware cases. Absent a broader federalization of corporate law, only Delaware can provide protection of both disclosure and the shareholders' substantive rights, giving Delaware a continuing advantage as a lawgiver in resolving corporate governance disputes. Additionally, this article addresses challenges made to Delaware law as indeterminate, providing a structural overview that suggests judicial review of director action can best be seen within a space running between judicial deference on one side and intrusive judicial review on the other. The article provides a schematic presentation of how various Delaware cases seen as indeterminate easily fit within such a structure.

Is Military Justice Sentencing on the March? Should It Be? And If So, Where Should It Head? Court-Martial Sentencing Process, Practice, and Issues

Abstract: This article starts with a sketch of the military justice system to orient readers. Understanding that structure, the article then describes the sentencing process for special and general courts-martial. The article follows by identifying two core military sentencing questions: First, should commanders have authority to grant clemency? Second, should the military justice system adopt sentencing guidelines? With respect to each topic presented, the article does not attempt to answer the questions nor offer prescriptions. Rather, it seeks to identify the principal fault lines around which debate should, or will likely, fall. The article next presents ‘‘nutshell’’ introductions to additional sentencing matters that may warrant review as applied in the military context, including the handling of collateral matters, and the relationship between age and culpability. However, for the reasons stated, these issues are not presented in detail here.

The Very Idea of a First Amendment Right Against Compelled Subsidization

Abstract: On March 24, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Veneman v. Livestock Marketing Associations, Docket No. 03-1164, which presents the question of whether mandatory assessments on beef producers used to fund generic beef advertising violate the First Amendment rights of dissenting industry members. The Court undoubtedly decided to hear the case to resolve the sharply diverging reasoning in its two earlier decisions on industry-association advertising, Glickman v. Wileman Brothers and Elliot, 521 U.S. 457 (1997), and United States v. United Foods, 533 U.S. 405 (2001). This article discusses the compelled subsidization doctrine, which holds that there is a First Amendment right not to subsidize the speech of others. The Supreme Court has considered the First Amendment rights of dissenters in the context of mandatory union dues, bar association payments, state university student fees, and industry-association advertising. This article argues that the Court has failed in these cases to formulate a clear, universally applicable test for deciding when the right against compelled subsidization is violated, and that this failure results from the lack of a coherent account of what First Amendment interests are at stake in compelled subsidization. It also recommends an alternative account of wherein the right lies, which is the danger of covert state subsidization of one side or another in public debate on contentious political or ideological issues. From this account follows a new general test: The compelled subsidization of the speech of others violates the First Amendment just when the funds collected are used to promote the message of an identifiable viewpoint or interest in debate on a controversial political or ideological issue. In addition to making specific recommendations on how Veneman should be decided, the article briefly describes the connections between the compelled subsidization doctrine and the Court's recent rulings on campaign finance regulation, particularly McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, 124 S. Ct. 619 (2003). Not only do both lines of cases raise the question of whether money is ever speech, but both also turn on the extent to which the First Amendment protects not only individual expressive rights, but the integrity of public political debate.

Art Threats and First Amendment Disruption

Abstract: The novel problem of art threats, typified by threatening rap lyrics, has destabilized our First Amendment regime. We traditionally relied on industry gatekeepers like music labels or museum curators to determine what counts as art. However, with the advent of the Internet, amateur artists can share their aesthetic output with a public audience, bypassing the threshold quality control work of the Art World. This has forced U.S. courts to acknowledge foundational questions about what kind of art is covered by the First Amendment. In brief, it covers good art. In this paper I offer a synthetic conception of the First Amendment that contextualizes this aesthetic gatekeeper problem within a freedom of speech doctrine that has been forced to distinguish art from threat. I echo the claims of law and rap scholars that the amateur attempt at rap should be interpreted within a permissive standard for political speech, but I remind this scholarly network that our category of art speech still connotes a threshold level of quality. Young artists need help with self-editing; they do not need to be punished. But this does not mean the amateur attempt at art should be reified as good art in our constitutional law doctrine. I thus consider some pragmatic solutions for how either civil society or the state can mirror the essential quality control work done by prior Art World actors. My thinking is informed by a noble understanding of rap as well as the cultural assumptions that explain the boundaries of our First Amendment.