Newseum Institute: First Amendment Report Card – Winter 2017/18 (In the News)

February 7, 2018   •  By IFS Staff
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Newseum Institute: First Amendment Report Card – Winter 2017/18

The composite grade point average for the five freedoms of the First Amendment slightly increased to from 2.25 to 2.29 – still a modest C+ – in the fourth installment of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Report Card…

The Winter 2018 report card is based on the opinions of the same panel of 15 First Amendment experts – academics, lawyers, journalists and activists from across the political spectrum –  who contributed their insights to the Spring 2017,  Summer 2017 and Fall 2017 report cards.

We asked our panelists to start with their grades from the previous quarter’s report card and alter or confirm them based on changes in legislation, executive orders, judicial decisions, and indicators of public opinion that have occurred since the last report card…

Following his statement in the last report card that “the courts continue to treat assembly as a second-class right,” Bradley Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, noted this quarter that “Harvard is expelling students who join off-campus organizations of which the university doesn’t approve. That is private action, of course,” Smith notes, “but it pretty much sums up society’s current disregard for this important right.”

IFS Staff

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