First Amendment Rights and Responsibilities
LAW 680 Section 61
Kevin F. O'Neill
There is one required text for this course: STONE, SEIDMAN, SUNSTEIN, TUSHNET & KARLAN, THE FIRST AMENDMENT (4th ed. 2012) (Wolters Kluwer). There is no recommended text; instead, I will be giving you two resources that I have written specifically for this course — a Speech Clause Overview and a Course Outline. Those documents will be posted on my course web page by the beginning of the semester.
I will employ a "problem" approach in teaching this course. In the classroom, we will apply First Amendment case law to hypothetical fact patterns that I have fashioned. I have written more than 75 such problems. They will be posted on my course web page by the start of the semester.
I will spend the first two or three class sessions giving you an introduction to the history and black letter law of the Speech Clause of the First Amendment. For those class sessions, please read STONE SEIDMAN, pages 3 to 18. Once those introductory class sessions are over, we'll turn to our first body of Speech Clause case law — expression that induces others to break the law. In case you'd like to get started on those readings, they span pages 19 to 75 of STONE SEIDMAN, but please skip Zana (note 4, pp. 67-68) and Holder (note 7, pp. 70-73).
I look forward to seeing you at our first class session — on Tuesday, January 12, at 6:00 p.m. in Room 201.