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I. INTRODUCTION II. THE CASE: FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION V. FOX III. FOUR MODELS OF JUDICIAL DECISION MAKING A. The Legal Model B. The Attitudinal Model C. The Strategic Model D. [...], After the broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, during which the lead singer from U2 uttered an expletive on national television, the FCC revisited its prior policy on the use of expletives on the airwaves and declared, for the first time, that 'fleeting expletives' are offensive according to community standards and are therefore finable. In a lawsuit filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Fox Television Stations, Inc. along with a number of other broadcasters argued that the FCC's new policy was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Second Circuit agreed that the policy was arbitrary and capricious. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that the FCC's new policy did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act, but did not address the First Amendment issue. This Note begins by arguing that the First Amendment issue will eventually resurface before the Court, at which point the Court will have to finally resolve the question whether the FCC's new policy violates the First Amendment. This Note then attempts to predict how the Court will come out on the First Amendment question by analyzing various models of judicial decision making and applying them to the facts of the case. Based on a contention that the attitudinal model dominates judicial decision making, this Note concludes that the outcome will ultimately depend on who occupies the seats on the bench. This Note then evaluates the attitudes of the current justices, including Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and attempts to draw inferences based on their prior judicial records, as well as other signs of their attitudes and ideologies. Finally, this Note concludes that a future challenge to the FCC's new policy on First Amendment grounds will be resolved in favor of the broadcasters and will pave the way for a new era in broadcast regulation.

JUDGE SENTELLE: I've been alerted that we may start. There will be just a very little introduction, so you'll know you're in the right place. This is the Telecom panel. [...]

I. INTRODUCTION II. CONTENT REGULATION AND CALLS FOR EXPANSION A. Pressure to Extend Broadcast Indecency Regulation to Cable and DBS. B. Current Content Regulation C. The Commission's Longstanding Refusal to [...]

I. INTRODUCTION II. INDECENCY DETERMINATION PROCEDURES A. How the FCC Determines Indecency B. The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act C. The Complaint Process II. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPLAINTS A. Method B. [...]

I. INTRODUCTION II. LICENSE RENEWALS III. LOCAL OWNERSHIP IV. NATIONAL OWNERSHIP V. IMPACT AND OUTLOOK I. INTRODUCTION While the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ("1996 Act") focused largely on updating common [...]

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is in the middle of a series of decisions that could fundamentally change the shape of Canada's media system. But given the nature [...]

On June 25th Guinea's media regulation body, Conseil nationale de communication, which is run by Martine Condé, a loyalist of the president's Rassemblement du peuple de Guinée, temporarily suspended all [...]

Sodolski: Perseverance Will Carry the Day The telephone industry's efforts to participate in the cable business may be picking up new momentum. The White House is interested in telco entry [...]

For two days and one night in late November, the FCC's Joe DiScipio drove around the Denver area in an unmarked government-issue car looking at radio and television towers. His [...]

The FCC has received a reprieve from its July 31 deadline for ideas on reallocating spectrum for 'third-generation' wireless technology and may ask Congress to relax the Sept. 2002 auction [...]

Federal law bans the broadcasting of "any ... indecent ... language" [18 U. S. C. § 1464], which includes references to sexual or excretory activity or organs. Having first defined [...]