Featured Articles

Massachusetts Trial Court Dismisses Defamation Claims, Holds There Was "No Continuing Duty to Investigate" News Reports Posted on Defendants' Website

December 30, 2009 18:18

The Volokh Conspiracy recently blogged about a 2008 Massachusetts Superior Court order granting a libel defendants’ motion to dismiss defamation and business defamation claims because the defendant had “no continuing duty to investigate the accuracy” of a news article that was...

Is There A Right To Record the Police?

Elizabeth Spainhour
April 16, 2011 17:02

According to one recent judicial opinion, Ickes v. Borough of Bedford (W.D. Pa. Dec. 3, 2010), "the issue of police officers arresting citizens for recording them in public has recently been brought to the forefront of the cultural Zeitgeist." From the “don’t taze...

Supreme Court Dogfighting Opinion A Boon To Media

April 26, 2010 21:36

The United States Supreme Court's recent decision  in U.S. v. Stevens, which invalidated on First Amendment grounds a federal statute criminalizing the commercial creation, sale, or possession of a "depiction of animal cruelty," has been widely discussed in the media and...

Update to Rhode Island Gag Order

Eric Hoffman
July 30, 2009 14:47

In an update to the curious case we highlighted Tuesday, Judge Forte has entered an order dismissing the “gag order” placed on Michelle Langlois after Tracey Martin, the petitioner who sought the gag order, voluntarily dismissed her petition. Judge Forte removed the ban in advance of a...

Rhode Island Court Bars Woman From Publishing Details About Open Court Proceeding

Eric Hoffman
July 28, 2009 23:14

As we recently discussed, prior restraints on speech and the press have been deemed “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights” by the United States Supreme Court and bear a “heavy presumption” against their constitutionality. A recent...

North Carolina Court Dismisses Plaintiffs' Appeal in Libel Action against "The Game"

Charles Coble
October 28, 2009 02:18

A decision last week from the North Carolina Court of Appeals illustrates an important principle concerning the nature of appellate review in defamation actions -- that non-final orders are ordinarily not subject to immediate appeal by the plaintiff.  The case of Nguyen v. Taylor involved...

Newsroom Legal Fights Go On, Even in Bad Economy

February 27, 2010 20:48

The New York Times ran an interesting report on how the bad economy has impacted newspapers' decisions on whether to litigate public record and access issues.  The bottom line, according to the Times -- while smaller, regional news organizations are scaling back their legal efforts, large...

Judge Rules NCAA Documents Are Public Records

Eric David
August 27, 2009 04:30

In a closely watched case, a Leon County, Florida trial court judge held last week that records concerning an NCAA investigation into possible academic cheating by athletes at Florida State University were public records subject to disclosure.  A coalition of media organizations had filed suit...

Bill to Allow Cameras in the U.S. Supreme Court Clears Senate Judiciary Committee

April 30, 2010 13:55

A bill that would generally allow electronic media coverage of U.S. Supreme Court proceedings passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 29.  The bill, S. 446, provides: The Supreme Court shall permit television coverage of all open sessions of the Court unless the Court decides, by a...

Exercising the Right to Record the Police May Lead to Obstruction Charges

Elizabeth Spainhour
June 05, 2011 17:36

We previously wrote here and here about cases involving wiretapping prosecutions as a result of recording police activities.  In addition to running afoul of wiretapping statutes, citizens or journalists who videotape or record the police have also been arrested for violating state...