The First Amendment & the Fourth Estate: The Law of Mass Media provides text, court opinions & other materials. Topics include an introduction to freedom of expression & the American legal system, defamation, privacy, liability for emotional & physical harm, obscenity, confidentiality, & press coverage of the administration of justice. Also included are copyright & trademark, national security, advertising regulation, & ownership. The book provides an introduction to broadcasting & broadcast programming, & cable & other new communication technologies. This edition includes edited court opinions of more than 25 principal cases & treatment of many more cases in note form.

"The rise of the press led to the development of an independent institution: the Fourth Estate, central to pluralist democratic processes. In the digital age, the internet and related information and communication technologies are enabling a network power shift - empowering a Fifth Estate. Networked individuals are becoming an independent and highly distributed force for accountability in politics and society. By connecting diverse strands of decades of research with a wide range of case studies, this book explains how this emerging Fifth Estate has been empowered by the ability of ordinary people to search, originate, network, collaborate, and leak information in ways that enhance their informational and communicative power. The Fifth Estate compliments the existing distribution of power in pluralistic societies. It is not a substitute for other estates and more established bases of institutional authority, such as the press and governments, which the Fifth Estate can hold more accountable. However, threats to freedom of expression and privacy online could undermine the promise of the Fifth Estate power shift. To meet this challenge, the book concludes by discussing approaches to the governance and security of the internet and social media that that take advantage of the empowerment of networked individuals and help ensure the vitality the internet can bring to pluralistic processes in democratic politics and across all sectors of society"--

This new casebook rests on a straightforward premise: The First Amendment can be viewed as history, as policy, and as theory, but from a lawyer's perspective, it is above all law-albeit a special kind of law. One thing that is special is that the governing texts have receded into the background. The law is the cases, and the cases are the law. Close analysis of precedent is therefore the principal tool of argumentation and adjudication. The purpose of this casebook is to help students to learn the law in a way that will enable them to use it in the service of clients. Several features of the book promote this goal. The cases are edited with a relatively light hand. Notes and questions provide guidance in working with the opinions. The structure of the book- closely tracking the structure that the Supreme Court has imposed- helps to reinforce learning. Non-case materials (including drafts and memoranda from the Justices' private papers) are used to shed light on what was established by existing precedents and how a new decision changes (or does not change) the law. By giving primacy to the Justices' won words and the Court's own doctrinal structure, the book offers maximum flexibility for teachers to place their own imprint on the course. The accompanying Teacher's Manual offers extensive guidance for taking advantage of the breadth-and depth-of coverage offered by the casebook. The authors have included three different sample syllabi. The running commentary fully analyzes the cases and suggests possible directions for class discussion. The authors also provide answers to the questions that appear in the notes and identify the origins and sources for the Problems.