BECKLEY NEWSPAPERS CORP. v. HANKS

Whether an injunction, stemming from a defamation and privacy judgment, that ordered the petitioner never again to display a sign or speak about respondent Johnnie Cochran (favorably or otherwise) in a public place violates the petitioners First Amendment rights.

Whether, consistent with the First Amendment, a public figure can recover libel damages from the publisher of an article that attributes altered quotations to the public figure.

Whether the First Amendment prevents a state from imposing a sales tax on only selected segments of the media.

Whether the First Amendment requires a separate "opinion" privilege that restricts the application of state libel laws.

Whether a Florida statute prohibiting grand jury witnesses from disclosing his own testimoy after the grand jury's term has ended violates the First Amendment.

Whether First Amendment principles of academic freedom require a judicial finding of a specific need before peer review materials relating to discrimination charges are disclosed to the EEOC

Can a public figure recover damages for emotional distress because of an offensive parody?

Whether a qualified First Amendment right of access to criminal proceedings applied to preliminary hearings as conducted in California

Can a court, in the context of a summary judgment request, award summary judgment in a libel action if the moving party had no evidence that a reasonable jury might disbelieve its opponent's claim?

Whether a newspaper involved in civil litigation has a First Amendment right to disseminate, in advance of trial, information gained through the pretrial discovery process.

Was Consumer Union's article written with "actual malice," thereby placing it outside the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections?

Whether a "use tax" on the cost of paper and ink products consumed in the production of periodic publications violates the guaranted of the freedom of the press in the First Amendment.

Whether the right of the public and press to attend criminal trials is guaranteed under the United States Constitution.

Whether the news media have a constitutional right of access to a county jail, over and above that of other persons, to interview inmates and make sound recordings, films, and photographs for publication and broadcasting.

Whether a police search of a student newspaper, conducted pursuant to a warrant, violated the First Amendment when the information sought pertained to criminal investigations.

Whether a Virginia statute criminalizing the publication of truthful information about judicial review proceedings violated the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantee.

Whether the DC District Court should release to a broadcast company for broadcasting and sale to the public. tapes admitted into evidence at the trial of President Nixon's former advisers.

Did a state trial judge, presiding over a widely publicized murder trial, violate the First Amendment when he entered an order which, as modified by the Nebraska Supreme Court, restrained petitioner newspaper, broadcasters, journalists, news media associations, and national newswire services from publishing or broadcasting accounts of confessions or admissions made by the accused to law enforcement officers or third parties, except members of the press, and other facts "strongly implicative" of the accused

Did the Georgia law violate the freedom of the press as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments?

Whether a Florida statute that afforded a right to reply to personal attacks on political candidates by newspapers violated the First Amendment.

To what extent does a publisher (monthly newsletter) have a constitutional privilege against liability for defamation of a private citizen?

Whether a California prison regulation barring media interviews with specific individual inmates infringed on the First Amendments' guarantees of speech and of the press.

Whether a federal prison policy prohibiting newspaper interviews of individually designated inmates of federal prisons abridges the First Amendment's freedom of the press.

Whether RICO's forfeiture provisions constituted a prior restraint on speech and were overbroad thereby violating the First Amendment.

Whether reporters can refuse to disclose sources to state grand juries.

Whether the New York Times and the Washington Post could be enjoined from publishing excerpts from a classified Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in the Indochina War. More broadly, whether the First Amendment protects the publication of "classified information."

Whether a teacher's dismissal by the Board of Education for publishing a letter in a newspaper critical of the Board's allocation of funds violated his freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

Are public figures subject to the actual malice standard for libel as articulated in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)?

Whether a newspaper column asking a series of questions that could be read as defamatory is protected by the First Amendment, as articulated by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).

Whether the freedom of speech provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect a criminal suspect who makes a false statement about a police officer without "actual malice."

To what extent does the First Amendment protections for speech and press limit a state's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct?

Whether the distribution of a racist leaflet, in violation of a state criminal libel statute, was protected under the First Amendment.

Whether a citation for contempt of court could, consistent with the First Amendment, be upheld against a Corpus Christi newspaper which published critical news and commentary about a pending court case, even if that information was not entirely true.

Whether a citation for contempt of court against an editor of the Miami Herald for publishing two editorials critical of the court and its judges violated the First Amendment's free press guarantee.

Whether a Minnesota statute that allowed "abatement"—an injunction against future publication—of printed material deemed to be a public nuisance constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Whether a post office regulation compelling newspapers to disclose the names and addresses of all editors and stockholders as well as circulation information, and to mark all paid material "advertisement" violates the First Amendment's free press guarantees.