An external evaluation documented what occurred in an inaugural summer camp to teach high school students how to preserve religious freedom by learning about and acting on the history and current state of church-state separation and other first amendment issues. Camp designers hoped to promote religious diversity values and civic engagement in…

Two 1973 Supreme Court rulings, "Miller v. California" and "Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton," consider the problem of obscenity in light of the First Amendment. Chief Justice Burger's stand, which represented that of a five-man majority, was based on the presumption that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment because…

This collection of representative speeches delivered by public officials and other prominent persons contains addresses to both large and small organizations, given both on ceremonial occasions and on less formal occasions. The collection contains school commencement addresses, addresses to government bodies, speeches to international…

Discussion of music censorship provides a chronology of banned music from 1850 to the present. Highlights include reasons for music censorship, including lyrics that concern politics, sex, drugs, or death; rewriting song lyrics; radio air play versus sales; warning labels; First Amendment principles; and suggestions to defuse censorship in…

Fashioning public policies restricting children's access to entertainment glamorizing violence, sex, drugs, and vulgarity is a complex task. The recently introduced Media Marketing Accountability Act would empower the federal government to regulate advertising of entertainment products to youth. Suggests that this power is undesirable compared to…

Public broadcasting in the United States frequently draws criticism from conservatives who accuse it of pursuing an agenda promoting environmentalism, gay rights, affirmative action, reproductive choice, and other liberal causes, and of being hostile to conservative interests such as defense, the pro-life effort, and the promotion of Christian…

The first half of this volume presents an introductory essay defining the First Amendment and the legal aspects of censorship, and offers an annotated list of books that have been banned at various times throughout history. The annotations, arranged according to the birth dates of the authors, include a chronological account of the censorship…

Children should have the same First Amendment rights as adults except when it can be empirically shown that the children in question differ from minimally normal adults in relevant intellectual competencies and would, as a result, be likely to suffer harm if accorded full First Amendment liberties. In this paper, specific principles derived from…

The Supreme Court's controversial "community standards" ruling in "Miller v. California" (1973) states that for materials to be judged obscene, they no longer need to be "utterly without redeeming social value," but must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, and that the question of…

Discusses a court case involving a student's use of puns in an assembly speech, Shakespeare's use of puns, the relationship between banning offensive words and the censorship of ideas, and the difficulty with placing a ban on the expression of "indecent" puns and double entendre and of deciding what is "appropriate." (EL)

Intended to act as a general introduction for high school and college students, this book presents an annotated bibliography of books, periodical articles, legal materials, and other documents dealing with the subject of intellectual freedom and censorship. The book is divided into five parts: (1) "The Theoretical Foundations of Censorship…

Discusses steps taken by the Idaho Library Association to defeat an antigay ballot initiative by means of a coordinated, statewide public relations campaign. The ballot, known as Proposition One, would have violated First Amendment rights and caused library materials to be censored to determine whether they addressed homosexuality. (Author/JKP)

Americans traditionally have looked to the public schools to play a role in transmitting society's values to students, and on various occasions the U.S. Supreme Court has emphasized the role of the nation's schools in inculcating basic values. For many years Maine has had a statute mandating the teaching of virtue and morality and another that…

Articles of The Bill of Rights, although comprising the fundamental principles of American society, are often opposed by many people on varying grounds. For example, many people support physical abuses by law enforcement officials, even though they might violate constitutional rights. The First Amendment, simple in original wording, has resulted…

Addresses the First Amendment issues raised by the Hazelwood decision, which ruled that administrators serve as publishers of the student press. Recent decisions have shown that the courts will apply Hazelwood to post-secondary schools. These decisions reflect an ideology which supports the inculcation of society's values on college students. (RJM)