firstamendment

Recent court decisions transform legal tools for protecting free speech into an instrument for the suppression of the public’s speech and access rights By James Chadwick Recent decisions by two California Courts of Appeal have turned California’s anti-SLAPP law into a legal Frankenstein’s monster. In doing so, they have turned a law designed to protect the public’s exercise of free speech and petition rights into a tool for government suppression of those rights. The decisions

Using Trade Agreements As a Tool to Further Rights of Free Speech By Luke Eric Peterson Embassy: As the curtain fell on the Beijing Olympic Games, a U.S.-based coalition is striving to keep the spotlight squarely focused on China. The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) is urging the U.S. government to launch a formal complaint against China at the Geneva-based World Trade Organization, alleging that the country’s heavy-handed Internet censorship violates world trading rules. The

CFAC files suit in affirmative action case to defend researcher’s academic freedom and oppose State Bar’s claim that it is above the law of access By Peter Scheer Richard Sander, a highly regarded UCLA law professor and statistician, is conducting research with important implications for higher education. To complete the research, which has been the subject of many scholarly articles and intense academic interest, he needs access to a California government database. So why has

CFAC, scholars sue CA State Bar for access to records on affirmative action A debate about the effects of affirmative action in higher education has moved from the classroom to the courtroom following the filing today of a lawsuit against the State Bar of California to force it to disclose years of statistical records on bar exam results. The records are sought for an academic research project that will test the controversial theory that affirmative

Security plans for the Democratic convention in Denver must be changed to make room for dissent By Benjamin Grant Ladner The upcoming Democratic National Convention inspires optimism among many advocates for free-speech and open government; an Obama presidency, should it come to pass, is seen as a welcome opportunity to redraw the balance between government secrecy and accountability. That optimism, however, must be tempered by what stands to go on outside of the convention, in