LAW 607 - First Amendment Seminar

Course Type: Upper Writing Requirement
Credits: 2

Conditions: Not open to students who have taken Contemporary Problems in Law and Journalism
Description: This course will focus on the emergence and development of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech, press, and religion clauses. A guiding principle of the course is that the First Amendment is best understood through a chronological approach which traces: (a) historical precedents to the enactment of the First Amendment; (b) the original intent of the First Amendment; (c) the sedition prosecutions of the Adams administration; (d) the forgotten years of the speech, press, and religion clauses throughout the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries; (e) the dramatic impact of the World War I espionage cases on speech rights; (f) the development of First Amendment case law, spurred on by 14th Amendment incorporation, from the 1920s through the 1950s; (g), the explosion of First Amendment case law effectuated by the Warren and Burger Courts; and (h) the current understanding of the speech, press, and religion clauses.