The LaRouche criminal trials in the mid-1980s stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and members of his movement. They were charged with conspiring to commit fraud and soliciting loans they had no intention of repaying. LaRouche and his supporters disputed the charges, claiming the trials were politically motivated.
Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court invalidating the use of the First Amendment as a defense for reporters summoned to testify before a grand jury. The case was argued February 23, 1972 and decided June 29 of the same year. The reporters lost their case by a vote of 5–4. This case is cited for the rule that in federal courts, a reporter may not generally avoid testifying in a criminal grand jury, and is one of a limited number of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has considered the use of reporters' privilege.
Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which public interest in learning about a historical figure's impressions of a historic event was held not to be sufficient to show fair use of material otherwise protected by copyright. Defendant, The Nation, had summarized and quoted substantially from A Time to Heal, President Gerald Ford's forthcoming memoir of his decision to pardon former president Richard Nixon. When Harper & Row, who held the rights to A Time to Heal, brought suit, The Nation asserted that its use of the book was protected under the doctrine of fair use, because of the great public interest in a historical figure's account of a historic incident. The Court rejected this argument holding that the right of first publication was important enough to find in favor of Harper.
United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), is a landmark legal case in 1953 that saw the formal recognition of the state secrets privilege, a judicially recognized extension of presidential power.
Irwin Allen Schiff was an American libertarian and tax resistance advocate known for writing and promoting literature in which he argued that the income tax in the United States is illegal and unconstitutional. Judges in several civil and criminal cases ruled in favor of the federal government and against Schiff. As a result of these judicial rulings Schiff was in a hospital prison serving a sentence of 162 months at the time of his death at the age of 87. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that Schiff died on October 16, 2015.
David Bryan Sentelle is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Jon Ormond Newman is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Reporter's privilege in the United States, is a "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources." It may be described in the US as the qualified (limited) First Amendment or statutory right many jurisdictions have given to journalists in protecting their confidential sources from discovery.
In re Madden, 151 F.3d 125, is a decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that established the Madden test, a test used to determine whether an individual is a journalist with standing to claim journalist's privilege.
The Speech or Debate Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution. The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress "shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."
Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, 185 F.3d 337 was United States federal court case on the constitutionality of a policy requiring teachers to read aloud a disclaimer whenever they taught about evolution.
Robert Clive Jones is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. He served as the Chief United States District Judge from 2011 to 2014.
Daniel Anthony Manion is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit whose chambers are in South Bend, Indiana.
Greenberg v. National Geographic was a copyright lawsuit regarding image use and republication rights of National Geographic Society to their magazine in electronic form.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.
Arar v. Ashcroft, 585 F.3d 559, was a lawsuit brought by Maher Arar against the United States and various U.S. officials pursuant to the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), and the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed Arar's complaint due to lack of personal jurisdiction and national security and foreign policy considerations. This ruling was ultimately upheld by a divided en banc panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of constitutional arguments asserting that the imposition, assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates the United States Constitution. These kinds of arguments, though related to, are distinguished from statutory and administrative arguments, which presuppose the constitutionality of the income tax, as well as from general conspiracy arguments, which are based upon the proposition that the three branches of the federal government are involved together in a deliberate, on-going campaign of deception for the purpose of defrauding individuals or entities of their wealth or profits. Although constitutional challenges to U.S. tax laws are frequently directed towards the validity and effect of the Sixteenth Amendment, assertions that the income tax violates various other provisions of the Constitution have been made as well.
Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414 (1988), was an important decision by the United States Supreme Court on paid petition circulation. Colorado was one of several states with a process for citizens to propose initiatives for the ballot, which if passed became law. One of the requirements was to get the signatures of a significant number of registered Colorado electors. Colorado prohibited initiative sponsors from paying for the circulation of these petitions. The state argued this was necessary to "protect[...] the integrity of the initiative."
Able v. United States, 88 F.3d 1280, 155 F.3d 628, is a case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that upheld the Don't ask, don't tell law against various constitutional challenges. Both Able I and Able II overruled district court decisions striking down "Don't ask, don't tell" as unconstitutional.
Salinger v. Random House, Inc., 811 F.2d 90 is a United States case on the application of copyright law to unpublished works. In a case about author J. D. Salinger's unpublished letters, the Second Circuit held that the right of an author to control the way in which their work was first published took priority over the right of others to publish extracts or close paraphrases of the work under "fair use". In the case of unpublished letters, the decision was seen as favoring the individual's right to privacy over the public right to information. However, in response to concerns about the implications of this case on scholarship, Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1992 to explicitly allow for fair use in copying unpublished works, adding to 17 U.S.C. 107 the line, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."
