Books published by publisher Lfb Scholarly Pub Llc

Cook analyzes the relationship between Supreme Court decisions and public opinion concerning First Amendment religious liberties. Overall, the Court has issued opinions consistent with public opinion in a majority of its decisions dealing with the First Amendment's religion clauses, with a level of congruence of almost seventy percent when a clear public opinion expression is present. She also provides a new perspective for understanding the long and contentious debate about prayer in public school by identifying an area of agreement between the Court and public opinion that has not received much attention.

Since Florida Star v. B.J.F. was published in 1989, state high court and federal circuit court of appeals rulings have most often found that free expression interests trump privacy. Some rulings, however, have recognized that fundamental democratic values undergird free expression rights as well as rights to privacy. Coyle argues that courts and communicators should attempt to reconcile future clashes among the right to publish and rights to privacy in manners that consider interests on both sides of the conflict. She suggests several steps that courts and communicators should take to continue limiting successful invasion of privacy claims to extreme cases.