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HARVEY SILVERGLATE
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Freedom Watch
Freedom Watch
Freedom Watch
Sophisticated First Amendment scholars, lawyers, and media commentators, all of whom are strongly free-speech/free-press supporters, were critical of Coakley for allegedly engaging in a legal bluff — the veiled threat of possible prosecution under the state's child-porn statute — to convince Portnoy to remove the offending and exploitative image from his site.
Law-abiding citizens
Rarely has a Boston jury had to suffer as much ridicule as the 12 citizens who acquitted former Boston firefighter Albert Arroyo of pension fraud.
Another year of crushing free spirits at our colleges and universities
Law school is not known for being fun, so some professors spice instruction with far-fetched hypotheticals. To some students at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware, one longtime criminal-law prof's hypos went too far.
Vague Justice?
Sal DiMasi is no saint, but that doesn't mean he's a criminal. His behavior makes us grimace, but it simply doesn't amount to a state or federal felony.
Freedom Watch
The sentencing memorandum filed by Boston federal prosecutors last week, seeking between 33 and 41 months of incarceration for convicted former Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, is no ordinary document.
Freedom watch
Racial profiling meets war on terror: The highest federal court in New England has said it’s okay for government officials single out dark-skinned people for searches, as long as they can concoct some cover rationale, ginned up with vague allusions to terrorism.
Can I get a witness
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts made a pronouncement last week that, to rational citizens, should be obvious: it's a bad idea for the state to be complicit in a scheme to pay criminal trial witnesses for their testimony — and for those witnesses to receive a bonus if the defendant is convicted.
Freedom Watch
I've been following the latest Russian spy saga with great interest, partly because of the local color and partly because of my prior experience with the FBI.
Harvard and Yale once again lead the way . . . for academic censorship
Harvard and Yale universities felt the sting of the global economic collapse firsthand in 2009, as the endowments of these stalwart New England Ivy League members dropped by nearly a third. The schools didn’t fare much better in the free marketplace of ideas, either.
Freedom watch
A case of high-school bullying in South Hadley ended in tragedy this past January when the alleged victim, a freshman girl, committed suicide. Now, ramped up by the outrage over the case, Massachusetts legislators are in danger of enacting a politically correct law that could have devastating effects on our free speech.
Freedom Watch
Last Thursday's Supreme Court opinion striking down corporate campaign advertising restrictions might as well have been divorce papers in the rocky marriage between the political left and the First Amendment.
RSVPeeved Dept.
It should come as no surprise to readers of “Freedom Watch” that yet another instance of political, intellectual, and academic censorship has sprung up at Harvard, the self-touted pinnacle of higher education.
Doesn't Matter If You're Black or White Dept.
The weeks-long hubbub over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. by the Cambridge Police Department has centered on race, understandably, for two reasons: 1) the African-American population has suffered inequitably in its relations with law enforcement across this country, and 2) a race story is easier for the media to tell — and to sell.
New England campuses muzzle free speech
In a 1957 Supreme Court decision upholding the free-speech rights of university professors ( Sweezy v. New Hampshire ), Justice Felix Frankfurter quoted prominent South African scholars on the importance of academic freedom.
Freedom Watch
The US Supreme Court's June 18 decision denying prisoners access to DNA testing — a procedure that could reliably prove innocence — adds to the high court's decades-long shameful record on criminal-justice issues.
Stephen Breyer may be the right man at the wrong time
Judge Stephen Breyer, Bill Clinton's latest pick for the Supreme Court, has attracted support so broad that it spans ideological and political differences.
Freedom Watch
Minutes after President Barack Obama announced that he was nominating appellate judge Sonia Sotomayor for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, battle lines were drawn on the pre-scripted questions of "post-racial" America.
Freedom Watch
"Standing up to your political enemies is easy, fun, and often profitable," writes Barney Frank, on the lead jacket blurb for Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, and the ACLU.
Watchdog Fein
From Caligula to Bush...er Obama: Bruce Fein watches them all.
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