Thursday September 8 in class response to First Amendment scenario

Reminder: quiz tomorrow. You need to be able to write out from memorization the First Amendment and respond to the reading terms from the material given out on Tuesday. See Tuesday's blog, if you lost your hard copy. DUE BY THE CLOSE OF CLASS

1. Open up a word document.
2. Create a MLA heading: in a single row on the left hand side of the paper put your name, my name (Mrs. Parker), First Amendment scenario, 8 September 2011
3. Double space
4. Times New Roman or Ariel font
5. Minimum 250 words.
6. Grading: content, style, organization, grammar, spelling, punctuation
7. When you are finished, please e-mail the document as an attachment.
Please respond to one of the following scenarios, basing your discussion upon the reading material of the last two days.
1. A popular public art project in recent years has been the placement of poetry posters on public transportation for people to read while commuting. Imagine a project to place these posters in busses and subways with the content of the Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" that presumably would be offensive to some religious sensibilities. What arguments would support exhibition of the posters on the bus? Should a government agency provide funding for the poster? Why or why not?

2. If a consumer reporter said falsely that a restaurant served her food with cockroaches in it, the restaurant could maintain a lawsuit for defamation. If a food critic wrote a review that, in the opinion of the critic, the restaurant's food tasted dreadful, the restaurant could not maintain a lawsuit for defamation. Yet, if the critic is a respected food critic in the city, that opinion could cause as much (if not more) economic harm to the restaurant than the erroneous news report of the consumer reporter. Does the distinction between "falsehood" and "opinion" result in fair results for the restaurant? Is the rationale for allowing defamation lawsuits as a restriction on speech justifiable?