News

Defense lawyers’ revised strategy may moot subpoena for Medill student journalists’ records

The showdown over state prosecutors' demands for the news-gathering materials of Northwestern University student journalists may be resolved without confronting the core issue of the students' entitlement to protection under the Illinois reporter shield law.Lawyers for Anthony McKinney, whose conviction in the 1978 shooting death of a Chicago security guard was the subject of the student journalists' investigation, have decided not to rely on three witnesses whose testimony is central to prosecutors' subpoena to the Medill Innocence Project.The Project is part of Northwestern's journalism school, and students enrolled in Prof.

Is discrimination against gays and atheists protected speech?

Sometimes the First Amendment just makes your head hurt.Such is the case, at least for some, in a student speech/discrimination case currently before the Supreme Court that the parties argue pits some of the important guarantees of the First Amendment against the important societal goal of prohibiting discrimination based solely on who a person is or what he believes.In a nutshell, the case involves a Christian student group at Hastings Law School in San Francisco denied “official student group” status because of its refusal to comply with the public law school’s policy that forbids discrimination on various grounds, including religion and sexual orientation.