{"title":"Ruiz v. Hull: A Legal and Rhetorical Examination of “English-Only” Legislation","authors":"M. Cavanagh","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888316","url":null,"abstract":"The law in appellate opinions represents a conversation between appellate courts and their readers that impacts all of us in nearly every facet of our lives. The language in these opinions creates the legal relationships that shape our interactions with the government, and, more intimately, with each other. An examination of the language presented in these opinions can reveal the way language impacts our legal and social environment. The Supreme Court of Arizona, in Ruiz v. Hull, struck down as unconstitutional an amendment to the Arizona Constitution that required all state and local government business in Arizona to be conducted only in English. This paper examines the relationships created by this opinion, the keywords and phrases presented, and the reasoning held out as valid in order to develop a picture of the legal culture that emerges as a result.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888316","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Critical Miss: Video Games, Violence, and Ineffective Legislation","authors":"Richard Dillio","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.950496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.950496","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the use of social scientific research and the role it played in determining the constitutionality of various video game laws that aimed to restrict the access of minors. Several major cases are examined, with particular attention paid to the courts’ responses to the type, amount, and validity of the social science research presented by various state legislatures as support for the game restrictions. These restrictions are usually centered on assertions that video game violence is harmful to children, as it can increase aggression and antisocial behavior. The paper concludes that the usage of social scientific research by legislatures to censor video games has been unpersuasive and a failure in almost every attempt. Possible causes for this failure are examined.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.950496","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60483032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When “Like”-Minded People Click: Facebook Interaction Conventions, the Meaning of “Speech” Online, and Bland v. Roberts","authors":"Susan H. Sarapin, P. Morris","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.962557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.962557","url":null,"abstract":"In Bland v. Roberts, a public-sector employee sued because he was fired for clicking the Facebook “Like” button on the campaign Website of his employer’s re-election rival. The judge dismissed the free-speech claim stating that “Liking” Web content is not “sufficient” speech to warrant constitutional protection. Employing relevance theory, we explored whether Facebook users’ attitudes and practice indicate the expectation of free-speech protection. Data collected included participants’ “Liking” habits and attitudes about whether “Liking” communicates a message. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed on the meaning of a “Like,” and 81.6% of respondents believed that “Liking” something is communicating a message.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.962557","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60483065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sowing Wild Oats: Online Anonymous Commercial Speech, Corporate Takeovers, and A New Commercial Speech Doctrine","authors":"M. Cavanagh, Tulika M. Varma","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.950494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.950494","url":null,"abstract":"The interpretation of commercial speech and determining the appropriate level of First Amendment free expression protection have always been problematic. This interpretation is made all the more difficult when such speech is offered anonymously or pseudonymously. The case of pseudonymous online comments on Yahoo’s financial bulletin by Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey brings to the fore the ambiguity between free speech and commercial speech. Using Mackey’s online comments as a fulcrum for analysis, we discuss the current state of commercial speech and examine some appropriate responses to potentially false or self-serving commercial speech. More specifically, we provide a brief overview of First Amendment jurisprudence addressing anonymous speech and commercial speech, and then argue that a variation on the New York Times v. Sullivan standard should be used in commercial speech cases—requiring First Amendment free-speech protection only for commercial speech that addresses “important public issues.”","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.950494","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60483029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Famine of Words: Changing the Rules of Expression in the Food Debates","authors":"S. Grey","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888857","url":null,"abstract":"The First Amendment implications of recent debates and legislation involving the politics of food and consumption are examined, with emphasis on the evolving role of the science of nutrition and health and its relationship to free speech. This analysis traces the appropriation of the rhetoric of personal expression and sovereignty by corporate interests to fend off critical views of the corporate food system and regulations aimed at promoting public health. To this end, the paper considers Food Disparagement or “Veggie Libel” Laws, the Oprah Winfrey beef lawsuit and the current litigation involving “pink slime,” and debates over nutritional supplements. In each matter, free speech is a contested site, with scientific expertise either appropriated or undermined by interests in protecting or building profits, while the ideals of speech or science as means for fostering democratic practices among an informed populate are discounted.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888857","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Petition Clause and Food Advocacy","authors":"Michael S. Bruner, Laura K. Hahn, Nicola Sheldon","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888861","url":null,"abstract":"The right to petition is a rhetorically interesting but understudied portion of the First Amendment. Scholars and the lay public usually focus on freedom of speech as the key aspect of the First Amendment. While freedom of speech (expression) is an important topic, we argue that the right to petition also is a rich topic in communication studies, as it is linked to social advocacy and is an inherently interactive activity with potentially significant policy implications. This essay offers a definition of petition, touches on historical exemplars of petition, and presents a nine-part model of petition that is applied to California Proposition 37. The authors also discuss the unintended consequences of petition and emerging forms of petition, such as online petitions. In linking the Petition Clause to the growing field of Food Studies, the essay breaks some new ground and also promotes the conversation between the First Amendment scholars (and other communication scholars) and scholars from many fields.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888861","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Big Ag Gags the Freedom of Expression","authors":"Joshua Frye","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888859","url":null,"abstract":"In the course of the past three years a wave of bills attempting to restrict freedom of expression has surged in statehouses across the United States. These bills reflect a political strategy within the agriculture industry to stifle public participation in industrial meat production regulation and oversight. This essay analyzes this ag gag legislation as a political strategy using communication theory. Specifically, the analysis compares the language and intent in the first set of ag gag legislation (circa early 1990s) with the most recent set (circa 2011-2013) and argues that the more recent ag gag legislation hinges on repressing the freedom of expression. The analysis finds message framing, pre-empting the public screen, and discursive closure, are utilized to prevent negative publicity and reinforce the boundary between private and public with problematic implications for democratic practices.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888859","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Food and Communication: An Overview","authors":"Barry Brummett","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888855","url":null,"abstract":"A growing and significant field of research in Communication has been connected to food. Branching off from the study of food in other disciplines such as Sociology or Anthropology, food scholars in Communication have asked questions about food as a site, practice, and medium of communication. The public talks about food constantly; magazine shelves and television channels are full of such discourse. Food is used as a signifying practice; people declare their social, cultural, and class allegiances in what they eat. Food is a part of everyday life and thus entangled in the communication strategies of everyday life. What we might think of as a First Wave of studies in food and communication mainly took a rhetorical focus, asking how food and talk about food served persuasive purposes. Methods were critical and analytical. Papers and panels at scholarly conferences have since followed a largely rhetorical focus. Popular culture beyond the academy is full of critiques of what political candidates eat. The four essays in this special issue take a different approach, considering legal issues connected to First Amendment issues in the context of communication about food. Their methods are more on the archival side, combined with legal analysis. I applaud this new direction, and in my remarks here I want to connect this new direction to the more rhetorical tradition of food studies in Communication. Almost any kind of human experience will have a wide range of dimensions to it. I think it might be useful to think of these dimensions, in addition to whatever else they are, as lying “closer to the ground” as everyday experience, or on a much higher level of abstraction, or somewhere between. We may see the stars in the sky, for instance, but stars are usually not much a part of the everyday experience of most people, whereas the scientific discipline of Astronomy deals with stars at a much higher level of abstraction, and quite successfully, too. So our experience of stars shifts up or down on a ladder of abstraction. I think that food is a dimension of human experience that is remarkable for its range of dimensions, from the everyday to the more abstract. Food is also remarkable for the degree of integration and connection among those dimensions. It is an existential, primitive means of survival, an aesthetic experience that can become high art, a resource of national security, a major economic engine, a kind of political","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888855","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909–1916","authors":"Jason Del Gandio","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888862","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888862","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commercial Free Speech Trumps the Politics of Food Labeling: The Legacy of rbST-Free Milk Mandate and Prohibition Cases for Genetic Engineering Disclosure Laws","authors":"G. Keel","doi":"10.1080/21689725.2014.888860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21689725.2014.888860","url":null,"abstract":"Commercial speech rights have expanded under federal court decisions dating back to the 1970s. This paper examines application of commercial free speech precedents to two contemporary dairy labeling cases, where states required or prevented labeling of products derived from cows treated with genetically-modified hormones. Decisions in both cases strengthened commercial speech freedom regarding food products and processes and limited state regulatory power, though the outcomes for anti-genetic engineering interest groups were divergent. The courts struck down Vermont’s labeling mandate as unconstitutional compulsory speech and found consumer “right to know” an inadequate state interest. In striking down Ohio’s labeling prohibition, the courts protected voluntary speech to label dairy products as “rbST-free” as long as labels were not false or misleading. The author projects the likely negative impact of these court rulings on the constitutionality of genetically-modified food labeling mandates proposed in many states and considers future directions of genetically-engineered food labeling regulation in competitive and politically-contested environments.","PeriodicalId":37756,"journal":{"name":"First Amendment Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21689725.2014.888860","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60482344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}