First Amendment

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Essay
Tiktok Bans: A Takings Clause Blunder?
Bridget Gilchrist
Bridget Gilchrist is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2025.

She thanks Henry Gilchrist, Timothy Burke, Kimberly Burke, and Alexis Berg for their support, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team for all their hard work.

This Case Note explores the possibility that, in a world where TikTok is banned or heavily regulated, individual TikTok users could sue states under a Takings Clause theory. Any such cases would have to wrestle with two core questions (1) whether the account holders hold an actionable property interest in their accounts; and (2) if so, whether permanently and totally depriving users of access to their accounts constitutes a taking.

Online
Essay
Religious Coercion and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District
Jason T. Hanselman
Jason T. Hanselman is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2024.

He thanks the University of Chicago Law Review Online team for its thoughtful commentary and is grateful for Kayla Parker, to whom he dedicates any and all persuasive arguments in this Case Note.

The First Amendment prohibits the state from “establish[ing]” a religion, and it is uncontroversial that this prohibition extends to so-called religious coercion.

Online
Essay
Offended-Observer Standing’s Last Stand: Kennedy as the Final Nail in a Flawed Doctrine’s Coffin
Stephen Vukovits
Stephen Vukovits is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2024.

He thanks Matthew Makowski, Anson Fung, Virginia Robinson, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team.

This past term, the Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) formally overturned the notorious Lemon test that had governed Establishment Clause jurisprudence for more than a half-century.

Online
Essay
Lawful but Awful? Control over Legal Speech by Platforms, Governments, and Internet Users
Daphne Keller
Daphne Keller directs the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. Until 2015, she was Google’s Associate General Counsel.

She thanks Max Levy for his work on this Essay.

In his quixotic bid to buy and reform Twitter, Elon Musk swiftly arrived at the same place nearly every tech mogul does: he doesn’t want censorship, but he does want to be able to suppress some legal speech.

Online
Essay
Uproot or Upgrade? Revisiting Section 230 Immunity in the Digital Age
Michael Daly Hawkins
Michael Daly Hawkins is a Senior Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Western Legal History, a publication of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society (NJCHS).
Matthew J. Stanford
Matthew J. Stanford is an attorney and a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law, where he received his J.D. in 2017.

We thank the University of Chicago Law Review Online editorial team for their careful and thoughtful edits. The views expressed in this article, as well as any mistakes, are the authors’ alone.

The internet has drastically altered our notion of the press.

Online
Essay
Clarifying and Reframing the “Ministerial Exception”
Tyler B. Lindley
B.S. 2018, Brigham Young University; J.D. Candidate 2021, The University of Chicago Law School.

For helpful feedback and discussion, I thank Geoffrey Stone, Douglas Baird, Rob Barthelmess, Jonathan Acevedo, Addison Bennett, Parag Dharmavarapu, and The University of Chicago Law Review. I would also like to thank my wife, Katrina Lindley, for her indispensable discussion and support.

This term, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear and consider Kristin Biel’s case.

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Essay
Easterbrook on Academic Freedom
Aziz Huq
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Thanks to Martha Nussbaum, Geoffrey Stone, and Lior Strahilevitz for helpful comments. All errors are mine.