Description

The legal concept paper addresses a specific aspect of media law related to freedom of speech or freedom of the press. In the paper, you will need to review a total of six court cases about a topic of your choice, detailing the issue’s unique challenges and and/or opportunities, and how the topic/issue has changed over time. The paper should be double-spaced and 6-8 pages long or about 1,600-2,000 words (excluding references). Follow APA style for all citations. Please note that this is *not* a first amendment paper. In other words, freedom of religion and freedom to petition grievances are off the table. Your legal concept paper must be about a freedom of speech or freedom of the press issue.

You need to discuss six court cases. These must be different cases than the ones covered in class. Three of the cases must be cited directly from the actual court decisions. The easiest way to find these is to : 1) go to Google Scholar, 2) select “Case Law,” and 3) enter in search terms you think might be relevant.
The other three court cases can come from other credible outlets (not Wikipedia). For instance, if you go to the First Amendment Center website, you can click on Speech or Press and locate relevant court cases for a wide range of topics (other places to check out: Student Press Law Center, SCOTUS blog, and USCourts.gov). Or, you can just google “banned books court cases” (if you were doing a paper on banning books), and look through the results pages for relevant, credible sources that discuss court cases. You can always reverse it too—find articles that mention court cases and go to Google Scholar to find the actual decisions
Please note that you need to use court cases for this assignment — emphasis on “court.” The cases MUST have gone to trial. For instance, celebrities sue for defamation all the time, but it doesn’t mean the case will end up in court. Again, the cases need to have gone to court.

Paper structure
Introduction: Start off with a compelling introduction related to your topic—maybe a current event, something in the news, etc. Avoid the overly broad (“Freedom of speech is so so so important, and not having freedom of speech is bad”), and please don’t feel the need to write out the First Amendment. I’m familiar with it.
Main body: The core of your paper should focus on the six court cases related to your issue of choice, aim to spend 1-2 paragraphs per case, describing the case’s background, the findings, and how it would inform later cases on the topic. This is the meat of the paper, so make sure to spend the most time looking at these court cases and deciding what is important. Make connections between the court cases to establish a pattern in the courts. The goal here is to show how the law has evolved, how one case decision led to another, taking time to point out exceptions. You may want to organize your cases in chronological order from oldest to newest to more easily track legal changes over time.
Conclusion: Finally, wrap up your paper by summing up where we are now with the law (what should people be aware of), and where you think the law is going. Then talk about how it would impact you or your professional field. If there’s not an obvious connection, discuss how you think it might affect the country or what future research on the topic might want to address.