Search

This systematic review of more than 300 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) articles on media law since 1924 documents what a vital scholarly outlet the journal has been and continues to be for research on freedom of the press and speech. While defamation law remains a popular topic, journalism and mass communication scholars have expanded their focus to a wider range of media law issues, including privacy, copyright, student speech, journalistic privilege, free press v. fair trial, advertising, and issues involving other media. JMCQ has been refreshingly open to international and comparative law, moving away from a U.S.-centric approach to media freedom. The review highlights a decline in the number of media law articles published in recent years, possibly due to competition from alternative journals, manuscript length limitations, and the APA-style requirement. Nevertheless, media law scholarship remains essential, offering invaluable insights into the evolving legal landscape of media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate between the majority and the dissenting justices in the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission refocused attention on one particularly intense dispute in First Amendment law that has been simmering among the Justices over the past quarter-century: corporate speech doctrine. Although the Court extended First Amendment protection to corporate political media spending in relation to referenda in 1978, subsequent cases have permitted regulation of such spending in order to prevent corruption of democratic processes in candidate elections. The Supreme Court's most recent case on corporate speech highlighted the potential for the Court to shift its jurisprudence back toward a laissez-faire doctrine that would more greatly advantage corporate participants in the marketplace of ideas and signaled the continuing relevance of scholarly and judicial debate on the subject. Dissenting justices have argued repeatedly that there is no basis in principle or in law why business corporations should be denied full First Amendment rights. This monograph argues that such a position contradicts a significant body of relevant case law, but more broadly how the reasoning that forms the constitutional basis for regulation of corporate political spending can compellingly be expressed through the procedural tenets of Alexander Meiklejohn's town-meeting model of the First Amendment. The monograph draws upon those tenets to advance a highly principled theory for considering corporate speech jurisprudence in a manner that most truly advances freedom of the political marketplace and democratic debate.

In this article author talks about articles by Adam Winkler including detailed the way the Court in those post-Bellotti cases on corporate political media spending had moved beyond a quid pro quo understanding of corruption.

As the most influential theory in modern First Amendment law turns 100, this study integrates in a unified format centric to marketplace of ideas theory an assessment of developments with the potential to reconstruct broad media marketplaces into an array of cocoons, silos and bubbles of fabricated reality. That assessment provides the basis to argue that the most fundamental threat to marketplace-of-ideas theory lies in whether an effective framework can be developed for responding to particular uses of socially networked algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a new type of polymer electrolyte material for Li ion transport based on a polymerizable lyotropic liquid crystal that forms a type-II bicontinuous cubic ([Q.sub.II]) phase is reported. Preliminary variable-temperature ion conductivity and NMR DOSY studies showed that liquidlike diffusion is present in the [Q.sub.II] nanochannels and that good ion conductivity and PC mobility are retained down to 35 degree [Celsius].

In its most recent major commercial-speech case, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court implied that commercial speech could thenceforth be considered nothing more than a protected viewpoint - rather than a component of contractual offerings between seller and buyer. The opinion has been called "incoherent" and "a Pandora's Box of First Amendment challenges." This study finds the efforts of lower courts to address a rapidly growing body of Sorrell-grounded claims have only begun to bring the nature of the ruling's impact on commercial-speech doctrine into focus. While it is not yet possible to reconcile the array of approaches and emphases asserted by various lower courts, the stark disagreement between two panels of appellate judges in the Ninth Circuit may represent an opportunity for the Supreme Court to provide clarification. Despite the ongoing debate among lower courts, a number of laws have been struck down that, but for Sorrell, would have remained on the books today. As this article documents, Sorrell's reach has already extended the doctrine breathtakingly far beyond the more limited understanding of what not so long ago comprised the outer boundaries of commercial speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares his reflections on the ethical concerns of scholarly periodicals, including the "Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly" (JMCQ) journal, with regards to authorship transparency, research integrity and academic credit. Topics discussed include the increase in the number of JMCQ authors per research article, the disclosure of co-author contributions, and the implications of JMCQ joining the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Midway through the first decade of the Citizens United age of campaign-finance regulation and its role in altering any number of legal, political, economic, and social realities over time, this article considers the historical roots of those dramatic changes through historian Carl Becker's theory of the past that tries to identify "history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history." That analytic approach is utilized to assess the interplay among critical elements involved in the way a late twentieth-century justice on the United States Supreme Court may have come to apprehend the societal role of corporate political media spending and effect that understanding so as to transform such spending into protected First Amendment speech, "imaginatively" recreating history "as an artificial extension of his personal experience.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a qualitative framing analysis to the first three seasons of the television series Friday Night Lights, focusing particularly on its incorporation of heavy drinking into narrative representations of the player whose character is most consistently central to the game of football as fictionally mediated in small-town Texas over the course of those three seasons. The analysis suggests that over the course of that period Friday Night Lights embeds nuanced social meanings in its framing of alcohol use by that player and other characters so as to associate it with multiple potential outcomes. Yet among those outcomes, the most dominant framing works to, in effect, reverse a progression through which media representations historically evolved from a heroic model toward an antihero model, with heavy drinking central to that narrative process of meaning-making in such messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important concepts of modern commercial speech related to advertising, characterized as the "Powellian balance," resulted in a compromise between those who thought commercial expression should receive little or no First Amendment protection and those who argued that it receive the same expansive protection accorded to political expression. The private papers of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. reveal the remarkable degree to which he maintained a deep commitment to balancing competing interests in shaping the commercial speech doctrine. The central argument of this monograph is that Powell's "middle way" can be employed to best promote today's vital and complex societal interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the late seventies behind-the-scenes battle led by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., that forged a five-justice majority for a narrow Supreme Court holding in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti to bring corporate political media spending within the protections of the First Amendment. It shows that justices on the Court then recognized the holding as a considerably greater alteration of established law than another five-justice majority would maintain in 2010—when it expanded the influence of corporate money on democratic processes and the marketplace of ideas far beyond that seventies precedent. Justices William H. Rehnquist and Byron R. White remained so dissatisfied with the result in Bellotti that each authored harsh dissents declaring the majority holding to be completely at odds with settled law, and both remained on the Court long enough to have the opportunity to help form majorities in a series of subsequent cases that served to substantially narrow its holding. Nevertheless, Bellotti established a firm enough footing in the case law to allow the majority at the Court in 2010 to extend its reach far beyond what was established in 1978. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 vote, handed down Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a sweeping ruling providing more protection for corporate political media spending as First Amendment 'speech' than ever before. This article demonstrates that Citizens United nullified a century of democratic will by representing First Amendment protection for such spending to be part of nature rather than a legal construct. If Cass Sunstein's influential assessment is correct that the lesson of Lochner v. New York is the judicial error inherent in imposing such artificial baselines to measure the constitutionality of government regulation, then Citizens United can be understood to repeat that error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The test for determining the “functional equivalency of express advocacy” established by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 could well signal a propitious turning point for the corporate free-speech movement—efforts to develop First Amendment protection for corporate political media spending. The test creates the potential to undermine the doctrine the Supreme Court of the United States constructed in support of more than a century of legislative judgment seeking to wall off the corrupting force of such spending from candidate elections. This article assesses that potential through analysis of Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., in which the Chief Justice established that test. His test attracted sharp criticism from so many other justices that the case may offer less than clear guidance for lower courts on its rationale. But the fact that there can be no confusion as to its holding would seem to offer reason for optimism to corporate interests in similar cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs) are amphiphilic molecules that have the ability to self-organize into highly ordered yet fluid, phase-segregated assemblies in the presence of an added polar liquid such as water. The resulting ordered assemblies, called LLC phases, have specific nanometer-scale geometries with periodic hydrophilic and hydrophobic features ranging in structure from bilayer lamellae to extended and inter-connected channel systems. Because of their highly uniform, porous nanoscale structures, LLC phases and LLC-based materials have been proposed for use in a number of materials applications. However, only during the last two decades have LLC materials with functional properties and demonstrated applications of LLC systems been realized. This work provides an overview of functional LLC materials and the areas of application where they have made an impact. As new functional properties and capabilities are realized in LLC materials, it is almost certain that they will play more prevalent roles in nanoscience and nanotechnology in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy of First Amendment scholar Margaret Blanchard deeply informs this article. During the latter years of her distinguished career, problems arising from regulations imposed by institutional review boards on scholars working in her field were among her deepest concerns. In her own writing and in public comments recorded by others, Blanchard articulated those concerns passionately and repeatedly. This article considers how IRB regulations on journalistic research methods might fare if subjected to the judicial scrutiny of a First Amendment challenge. Through analysis of relevant case law, the article considers critical elements likely to be at issue. Regardless whether the plaintiff in such a challenge could in fact prevail—given the possibility that case law on conditions imposed in return for government funding could be held to apply to the regulations in question—the analysis suggests that such regulations are at odds with American free-speech traditions and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States on corporate speech regulation has evolved to distinguish markedly what once appeared a more expansive precedent in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. This article considers the manner in which a doctrine of corporate speech regulation has been fashioned in the case law that derives from the special nature of the corporate form and justifies regulation of corporate political spending in candidate elections in order to address the potential for real or apparent corruption of democratic processes. That line of jurisprudence was most recently extended in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, the Court's landmark ruling on campaign-finance regulation handed down at the end of 2003. As it had done on multiple occasions since early in the twentieth century, the Court accepted legislative judgment that corporate treasuries represent a threat of corruption when deployed directly in candidate elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In deciding not to rule in Nike, Inc. v. Kasky, the Supreme Court of the United States passed up an ideal opportunity to answer an urgent question that derives from two legacies of New York Times v. Sullivan: When speech implicates both the commercial speech doctrine and the political speech doctrine, how should that speech be assessed in terms of First Amendment protection? This analysis focuses upon the essential principles emphasized in Sullivan's landmark assessment of the societal value in protecting some false speech in the discussion of public issues. Concerns over the Nike case's implications for corporate expression must be weighed against the societal interest in preventing false commercial speech from being immunized by attaching it to a public issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the 1970s, Mobil Oil made The New York Times oped page the focus of a groundbreaking advocacy strategy to promote interests that went far beyond its immediate business objectives. This study considers that influential campaign in terms of its significance for intellectual history, particularly Mobil's efforts to reframe understanding of the marketplace of ideas in First Amendment theory and practice. Although other corporations produced advocacy messages in the seventies, none spoke so regularly on so many issues of public policy as Mobil did during that period. This research documents the way rhetoric was employed in Mobil's Times editorial-advocacy campaign to frame the corporate role in democratic processes as identical to that of the individual citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the application of the principles of Adam Smith as an ethical basis for the regulation of corporate speech. Details of the works of Smith; Protection of corporate free speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; Discussion of the debate over corporate speech.