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Friday, January 30, 2009

Courts - Rhode Island federal judge sprinkles opinion with links to songs

The headline to the story reported by Katie Mulvaney in the Providence Rhode Island Journal is "Judge rules R.I. law restricting billboards unconstitutional." But what interested the ILB was not the crux of the ruling, but the judge's approach. From the story:

PROVIDENCE — In a decision sprinkled with music references, and including links to YouTube, a federal judge has ruled unconstitutional a state law that restricts the content of billboards near highways.

U.S. District Judge William E. Smith on Wednesday upheld Anthony Joseph Vono’s right to keep a billboard on top of a building at 101 Poe St., off northbound Route 95 near the Route 195 split. Smith found that state law violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by affording greater protection to commercial speech over political speech. * * *

State law and regulations prohibit new billboards close to highways with certain exceptions — including an exception for signs “advertising activities conducted on the property upon which they are located.” * * *

The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on Vono’s behalf, arguing that it is unconstitutional to base restrictions on whether the billboard is promoting on-premises or off-premises activities. * * *

Asked about references in his ruling to and Web links to songs such as the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” and Five Man Electrical Band’s “Signs,” Judge Smith explained that he wanted to make the decision more interesting to read and perhaps more accessible to the under-30, computer-oriented generation.

“The novelty of citations to YouTube and the idea that you could access music as you plod through the opinion hopefully makes a kind of dry subject a little more fun and interesting,” he wrote in an e-mail. “It seems to me that judges should look for ways to get people interested in important subjects like the First Amendment, to get them talking about it. Hopefully this will accomplish that goal in a small way.”

Here, thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing, is the 37-page opinion in Vono v. Lewis.

See, from pp. 2-3 of the opinion, an example involving footnotes 3 and 4.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 30, 2009 02:10 PM
Posted to Courts in general