This article examines conflicts that have unfolded over the past 75 years regarding the separation of church and state in American public education. Through discussion of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses as articulated in the First Amendment to the "US Constitution," as well as influential court cases that have set legal…

Discusses within a historical context First Amendment freedoms, censorship, and the rights of Americans to visual and literary creativity. (HTH)

Contending that potential conflict between copyright and free speech inevitable if present provisions of the copyright bill providing copyright for television are enacted, the author suggests an alternative approach based on analysis of English and American background, copyright and the law of unfair competition, and policies of the copyright…

Images of heretics burning at the stake or of traitors being drawn, hanged, and quartered for disloyalty to the king seem well removed from twenty-first century America. Yet the laws that defined these offenses--which included heresy and blasphemy, sedition and treason--were at the heart of some of the most significant debates defining the shape…

The first words of the first of the rights guaranteed to Americans in the Bill of Rights are, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Despite the obvious general intent of these words, doubts remain about specific applications of the law. The permissible relationship…

The historic development of the cable phenomenon is traced through industry rhetoric that promised a multitude of services and "voices" in exchange for benign regulations. The current rhetoric of the "wired nation's" latest entrant into the broadband information delivery business--the telcos--also is examined in order to assess…