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Anti-protest legislation is billed as applying only in the extreme circumstances of mass-movements and large scale civil disobedience. Mass protest exceptionalism provides justification for passage of anti-protest laws in states otherwise hesitant to expand public order criminal regulation. Examples include a Virginia bill that heightens penalties for a "failure to disperse following a law officer's order"; a Tennessee law directing criminal penalties for "blocking traffic"; a bill in New York criminalizing "incitement to riot by nonresidents." These laws might be better described as antiprotest expansions of public order legislation. While existing critiques of these laws emphasize the chilling effects on free speech, this analysis masks the threat of such legislation in the everyday lives of already targeted people and communities. In actuality, the application of anti-protest legislation is not limited to "exceptional" circumstances, increasing everyday surveillance and public order regulation for Black, Latinx, and other targeted communities. The consequences of anti-protest legislation on highly surveilled communities are alarming. This Article examines the construction of mass protest law exceptionalism and advocates for using resistance frameworks, such as joyful protest, to better understand the burdens and consequences borne by communities. This analysis incorporates text of recent mass anti-protest legislation, proponents' arguments in media, and debate in legislative sessions. This framing exposes the lack of exceptionalism, surfaces the thin line between mass protest and everyday public order regulation in targeted communities, and demonstrates the high stakes of ignoring this blurred line when considering mass anti-protest criminal laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protesting is supposed to be revered in our democracy, considered “as American as apple pie” in our nation’s mythology. But the actual experiences of the 2020 racial justice protesters showed that this supposed reverence for political dissent and protest is more akin to American folklore than reality on the streets. The images from those streets depicted police officers clad in riot gear and armed with shields, batons, and “less than” lethal weapons aggressively arresting protesters, often en masse. In the first week of the George Floyd protests, police arrested roughly 10,000 people, and approximately 78 percent of those arrests were for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses or criminal violations. Moreover, troubling figures regarding the racial breakdown of protest-related arrests, along with anecdotes from activists, suggest that just as with routine policing, the experiences of Black and white people differ during protests—even when they protest side by side—with police potentially targeting Black activists for arrest. This Article exposes how police officers’ easy access to a wide arsenal of criminal charges serves to trample on expressive freedoms and explains how a new and clearer understanding of the Fourth Amendment’s application to expressive conduct should curb the police’s seemingly unbounded power to arrest protesters. In Part I of this Article, I revisit and review the roots and rationale of the Expressive Fourth Amendment doctrine, which posits that there is an expressive component to Fourth Amendment protection. In Part II, I discuss the criminal statutes that police often use to make arrests during protests and then focus more narrowly on the arrests in New York City in the early days of the George Floyd demonstrations, including the racial makeup of arrestees. In Part III, I explain how the presiding understanding of the Fourth Amendment places minimal limits on a police officer’s ability to arrest,regardless of an individual’s engagement in expressive political conduct. Thereafter, I describe how the Expressive Fourth Amendment should apply to arrests and serve to curtail an officer’s ability to engage in warrantless arrests of protesters for nonviolent misdemeanors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the elevated threat of protests during sensitive periods affect state repression in a high-capacity authoritarian regime? Drawing on a dataset of over 3,100 protests in three Chinese megacities, this study provides three key findings: first, the frequency of protests before and during national-level focal events and subsequent to national-level disruptive events is depressed, suggesting preemptive repression is taking place. Second, the likelihood of responsive repression is marginally reduced before and during local-level focal events and slightly elevated after national-level disruptive events. Third, contention is intensified when local political elites meet. Sensitive periods do not bring contention to a standstill and costly bursts of responsive repression were not observed. Stability maintenance during times of increased regime-vulnerability was thus less rigid than often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protesters in China may face two types of targets. One is the target of blame that is deemed responsible for causing their grievances, whereas the other is believed to be obligated to solve their grievances. Upward targeting occurs when citizens whose grievances are connected to lower-level authorities approach higher-level authorities for solutions. Based on a collection of over 12,000 instances of collective protest in China from 2000 to 2018, this study finds that some groups—such as small groups, veterans, and petitioners—are more likely to resort to upward targeting than others. However, collective actions directed at central authorities are more likely to be suppressed. Blame attribution and the difficulties in coordinating large-scale upward-targeting actions have combined to manifest protest patterns in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the memorandum of justification under the Presidentship of Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi for the waiver of human rights–based restrictions on U.S. military funding to Egypt. Topics discussed include information on the increased restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right of peaceful assembly; discussions on the regional trajectory that saw numerous countries ravaged by armed conflict and consolidation of authoritarian rule; and the information on the increased torture and police brutality in Egypt.

Two cases currently before the High Court of Australia -- Clubb v Edwards and Preston v Avery -- raise the validity of state laws that seek to prohibit certain communication and protest outside abortion clinics. The laws are justified on the basis that they protect the 'safety', 'dignity', 'well-being' and 'privacy' of those seeking abortion services. The cases therefore pose the question of how these values are accommodated within the Australian system of representative and responsible government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the principles of the projected message cases and the basic free speech issues they pose. Topics discussed include explanation on property right theory and its limited value for the projected message cases, scenarios in which non-consensual message projection via light can occur, and information on basic free speech values and their limited usefulness for the projected message cases.

Australian state Parliaments have recently enacted legislation responding to direct action protests in which protesters have disrupted forestry and mining activities by blocking roads, building tree houses, and locking themselves to machinery and structures. The High Court of Australia, in Brown v Tasmania [2017] HCA 43 considered a challenge to one of these Acts, the Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Act 2014 (Tas), and determined that its primary provisions were invalid in their application to forestry land for being in breach of the constitutional freedom of political communication. This analysis piece examines Brown v Tasmania by reference to two features of its context: the direct action protests that prompted the Tasmanian Parliament to enact this legislation and the documentary activism that occurred on the facts of Brown v Tasmania. It highlights that broad and uncertain protest laws risk being characterised as insufficiently adapted to the protection of political communication in Australian constitutional law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Australian High Court's challenge to Tasmania's Workplaces Protection from Protesters Act of 2014 in the case Brown v Tasmania. Topics discussed include importance of place for protest, the court case Brown v. Tasmania in which Bob Brown and Jessica Hoyt were arrested and charged under the Protesters Act for their onsite political protest against the proposed logging of the Lapoinya Forest, and the constitutional freedom of political communication.

Judgment in the long-awaited SJC10 case was handed down on 24 January 2018. This case marks a victory for the collective bane on civil society -- that of the criminalisation of a convener of a protest for the failure to provide notice. It goes a long way to opening the space for more serious engagement on the legitimacy of the Regulation of Gatherings Act 1993 and its possible reformulation to give effect to section 17 of the Constitution -- the right to peaceful and unarmed assembly. This appeal to the high court was brought by the SJC on very limited grounds, focusing only on the requirement to provide notice -- a strategy that has paid off, as the contested section of the Regulation of Gatherings Act was declared unconstitutional. This case note dissects some of the key arguments raised by the SJC and by the state, and analyses the court's reasoning in reaching this finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of statutory and common law powers that can be utilised to manage and control public protest gives the police a wide range of options to in any given scenario and requires a careful balance to be struck between the maintenance of order and facilitation of convention rights. This paper discusses a novel use of the criminal law of conspiracy and considers the potential benefits of this approach and the ramifications for the protection of convention rights. It is submitted that the controversial use of the criminal law against Chinese dissidents in the UK was perhaps a result of the law of unintended consequences arising from the development of a body of law that has been piecemeal and reactive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental destruction and climate change are driving new waves of environmental activism. In response, governments in several Australian states have enacted legislation designed to penalise and silence political protest. This article analyses Tasmania's anti-protest laws and considers how the United Nations and scholars have reacted to them. We argue that protest suppression laws such as these reflect a neoliberal rationality which conceptualises society in market terms. This mode of thinking perceives protest as market interference rather than civic participation. Accordingly, antiprotest laws seek to secure the rights and interests of corporations to unimpeded market access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New South Wales has recently joined several other Australian states in enacting anti-protest laws. Although environmental protests (particularly those against mining) have been the political and economic driving force behind the drafting of the laws in each state, the NSW law explicitly targets this issue. This article explores the political context of the new laws and what the law does. It then critiques the government's claim that the laws concern safety rather than targeting protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors argue that the American police practice of arresting protesters and other residents for municipal ordinance and state civil law violations, which is also known as civil arrest, is unconstitutional and unlawful under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Police shooting-related protests in places such as St. Louis County, Missouri in the twenty-first century are examined, along with peaceful assembly-related civil infractions and America's search and seizure laws.

Since 1996, police departments around the country have been receiving, for free, military weaponry and resources through the Department of Defense 1033 Program. Although ostensibly designed to help fight the Wars on Drugs and Terror, police departments have instead consistently acquired and used these weapons for purposes at odds with Congress's original intent. These uses represent a violation of the Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act, which are both designed to keep the military away from local law enforcement and civilian protestors, in particular. This Note analyzes the historical, constitutional, and statutory issues with the 1033 Program, particularly in the context of civil protest. It then proposes a legislative solution to address these problems by bringing the Program into conformity with the Posse Comitatus Act. These solutions include that: (1) law enforcement only be permitted to use its military-sourced weapons for counter-drug and counter-weapons of mass destruction purposes; (2) law enforcement be required to seek Department of Defense permission before using these weapons against civilian protestors; and (3) local jurisdictions be required to pay for the weapons received through the 1033 Program. These solutions would help maintain the vital division between the military and law enforcement and provide muchneeded protection for the constitutionally guaranteed right of the people to protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of indigenous peoples-related internationalism in connection with what the author refers to as local activism, violence, and other illegal forms of protest as of 2016. Indigenous sovereignty and state-run criminal justice systems are examined, along with Sámi activist and fugitive Niillas Somby's opposition to the Norwegian government’s Alta-Kautokeino Hydroelectric Project, his ability to maintain his freedom, and the activist Sámi Action Group.

The article discusses legal aspects of public safety and public order according to German police laws, with a special focus on areas of conflict or ambiguity between public and civil law and between public interest and individual rights. The author highlights the concept of danger as important in the determination of the proper legal remedies. Several sample cases are mentioned, including the rights of abortion opponents protesting outside of private medical facilities, the rights of right-wing extremists to rent private venues for political meetings, and bans on potentially dangerous private sports and leisure activities.

In this article, the authors reflect the failures faced while organizing a friendly campus in the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. They discuss various instances of public demonstrations on social issues and its consequences faced and the threats given by the university administration against these public instances. They further cite the failures of the universities in organizing a friendly campus.

This article analyses the history of the prohibition of protests around Parliament under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This prohibited any demonstrations of one or more persons within one square kilometre of the Houses of Parliament unless permission had been obtained in writing from the police in advance. This measure both formed part of a pattern of the then Labour Government to restrict protest and increase police powers, and was symbolically important in restricting protest that was directed at politicians at a time when politicians have been very unpopular. The Government of Tony Blair had been embarrassed by a one-man protest by peace campaigner, Brian Haw. In response to sustained defiance, Mr. Blair's successor as Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs pledged to remove the restrictions, but this was not acted on by Parliament until September 2011. This article argues that the original restrictions were unnecessary, and that the much narrower successor provisions could be improved by being drafted more specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Varstvoslovje: Journal of Criminal Justice & Security is the property of University of Maribor, Faculty of Criminal Justice & Security and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An analysis of the article no. 200 of the Criminal Code of Puerto Rico approved in 2012 is presented, with a focus on its potential use for the criminalization of public demonstrations. It is the author's view that the discussed article not only limits the right to protest, but also the freedom of expression.

The article discusses the rules and communicative culture of Occupy Wall Street which is a protest movement against various social issues and was started in 2011 in New York City. It informs that the protest introduces the idea of legalism and the public sphere in the U.S. It also includes several tentative hypotheses which explain the existence of legalism at Occupy Wall Street.

The article discusses a court case pertaining to gatherings of people on airport property in which a constitutional complaint was lodged against the security workers of the Frankfurt, Germany airport for removing demonstrators in August of 2006. The author offers information on the German legal code which apply to groups gathered on publicly-owned property, examines the legal basis upon which the protesters were removed, and describes the civil rights requirements of the chosen legal solution.

Extreme speech forms pose acute questions for liberal democracies. Abstract, non-absolute constitutional commitments to freedom of speech/expression are required to be interpreted against countervailing values such as equality, privacy and social harmony. On this side of the Atlantic, the rich body of First Amendment analysis generated by the US jurists is frequently dismissed as an outlier among the group. The emphasis there upon individual freedom and distrust of state power is said to miss the collective dimension of human existence and the rightful role of the state in promoting caring, empathetic communities. In what follows, tensions between the United States and UK/European attitudes towards the limits of constitutional protection for speech are analysed through the lens of the US Supreme Court's ruling in Snyder v Phelps. I argue that, despite the undoubted nastiness of the speaker's words and intentions in that case, the more censorious European response to such abuse is underpinned by a troubling attempt to enforce a degree of homogeneity upon political discourse. The state's aim in so coercing may appear benign. However we should not lose sight of the fact that, so empowered, temporary political majorities may impose a range of speech restrictions that ultimately diminish personal autonomy under the guise of advancing the common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rule of law has always been cherished as one of the key institutions central to the successful transformation of Hong Kong from ‘a barren rock’ into a global city. The colonial administration's respect for the principles of the rule of law, however, has been tested by sporadic political turbulence during the 150 years of British rule. Due process of law and other key principles of English laws have been compromised by political expediency when the colonizers felt threatened by challenges from various sources. The 1967 Riots was one of those difficult times. Despite the facade of public support for firmness against disturbances enjoyed by the colonial government, the exercise of some of these emergency powers, particularly the powers to detain and deport, remained highly controversial. With normalization of the Anglo-Chinese relationship in mind, the confrontation prisoners constituted a stumbling block for renewing the friendship with Beijing. The various attempts made by London at pressurizing the Hong Kong government for early release of these prisoners attest to the prevalence of political expediency over the respect for the rule of law under colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the constitutionality of Missouri's funeral-protest statutes under the First Amendment oh the U.S. Constitution. It discusses the U.S. Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit case of Phelps-Roper v. Koster exploring the funeral-protest laws under the First Amendment provisions. It offers suggestions to the Missouri legislature regarding draft and enactment of the funeral-protest statute.

Copyright of African Studies Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As one of the fundamental rights and freedoms, the right to public assembly is guaranteed by a range of international legal documents and national constitutions. In this paper an analysis is given of the comparative ways this law is regulated in three countries (France, the United States of America, and the Republic of Croatia. The basic issues for analysis in this sense are: the connection between the law and public assembly and peaceful protest with freedom of expression; the problem of the space designated for holding public assemblies: and the constitutional possibilities for its limitation regarding prohibition, prevention and suspension. The normative proposition of work is contained in the thesis that comparative experiences (at least at the level of the general category of analysis) is directly relevant also for the evaluation of Croatian constitutional and legal organisation of rights to public assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past ten years, Indonesia has seen an interesting trend in political action on the part of labour. Once risky activity, street protests have been decriminalised and become a common sight in many parts of the country, especially in urban areas. Industrial workers take to the streets in large numbers to challenge the state and business interests perceived as hostile to their material and political interests. Interestingly, scholars have largely neglected this phenomenon and instead focused on labour's failure to develop as a meaningful political force. This paper assesses the significance of labour protests and the light they throw on the development of a certain mode of engagement with the post-authoritarian state. It is suggested that the proliferation of protests among workers may sow the seeds of a 'movement society.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses major decisions made in the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court) of Puerto Rico for cases that relate to Constitutional Law. The author focuses on the cases of Lozada Tirado v. Tirado Flecha, relating to the right to reject medical treatment, Moreno Orama v. De la Torre, relating to student protests, and Domínguez Castro v. ELA, relating to the firing of public employees.

In 2008, the Italian Government issued a decree according to which obstructions or protests in the vicinity of landfills or incinerators became a penal felony. This was the outcome of a long process that began fifteen years before when regional waste treatment facilities became unable to cope with the waste accumulated in the region of Campania. This article studies the history of this conflict in order to identify a range of values and concerns about nature, health and democracy. It asserts that the decision-making process adopted by subsequent Italian governments, alongside repressive laws, oversimplified a complex crisis and obscured different emergent perspectives and values. Ultimately, denying the will of a large part of the population caused increased social unrest. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Scholars have argued that since the 1960s, protest policing in Western democracies has moved toward emphasizing cooperative relationships with challenging groups. This evolution is referred to as the negotiated management model of protest control. Much of the literature that informs this perspective is based on either analyses of a limited subset of demonstrations or from national-level observation. Few studies have examined whether negotiated management practices hold at city levels. This research examines city-level protest policing using 1,152 demonstrations occurring between 1998 and 2004 in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, Canada. Bayesian logistic regression models are estimated using arrests as the response variable. The main findings suggest that only protestor pre-mobilization and the police use of force are uniformly related to arrests: that there is considerable variation across cities: and that the larger pattern of results is not consistent with negotiated management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study regarding New York City policies governing bicycling as a form of political protest. The author examines the possible harassment of cyclists in New York City and expresses concern over increasing regulation of group bike rides following the arrest of protesting bicyclists at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Legal issues hindering the advancement of alternative mobilities are also addressed.

The jurisdictional review, a control carried out by an organ independent in relation to the legislative, seems definitively won for the constitutionalist world. In the absence of expresses dispositions that regulate the control of constitutionality, the judiciary decided that this right belong to him in a very naturally way, as an issue of the separation of power and of the function that he fills. Because he was controlling the acts of the Parliament, the judge won a strong position in relation to the legislative power. This situation could not be accepted by a powerful legislative. While presenting itself as mandatory of the sovereignty of the people, it claims for him the right to control his own acts. However, in the case of Romania such a manifestation demonstration intervened only in Communist period. After we have presented in a first part the conditions in which the constitutional review is passed to the political, the second part of the article will present how this control is exert by an organ dependent to the Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the decisions of the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) regarding picketing by labor groups, including the legal reasoning behind the decisions, which are skewed heavily toward employers and against unions. The decisions are divided into five chronological groupings defined by how collective bargaining and picketing were regulated; dividing lines include the Trade Union Act of 1959, the Labour Code of 1973, and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. An appendix lists the picketing cases before the BCCA from 1908 to 2007.

The article offers information on the legal issues relative to abortion protesting in the U.S. It explores the right to privacy as well as the right to free speech of people that concerns the issue. It discusses the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 (FACE) which was enacted by the U.S. Congress to regulate anti-abortion protests. It presents an analysis of the consistency of FACE with the U.S. Constitution First Amendment and the Commerce Clause. It examines relative federal common law and state legislation by citing various cases that are relevant to abortion protesting. It also discusses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and the Hobbs Act that regulates the actions of anti-abortion protesters.

The article discusses two British Court of Appeal decisions relating to an individual's fitness to plead and the prohibition on protest. In a murder case, the court did not accept the appellant's medical condition so impaired his ability to communicate with his legal advisers or understand proceedings. It was held in the second case that the interference upon the appellant's right to protest was neither weak nor insubstantial.

The article discusses Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, known as Operation Cast Lead. The author explains that the severity of Israel's attack on the Palestinians within the Gaza Strip caused widespread popular protests. The author states that the Israeli media and state security portrayed these demonstrations as hostile. The work of the Higher Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel is detailed. Subjects of the article also include demonstrations in the city of Haifa in Israel, relief efforts for the Palestinians in Gaza, and the prevention of demonstrations through police force.

The article discusses a court case wherein the defendant's right to protest and to demonstrate on a public pavement was upheld by the English Divisional Court in 2002. His demonstration gave rise to a legislation whose constitutionality had been questioned. According to the author, the bill appears to be a "hybrid" bill and yet the Parliamentary procedure for "hybrid" bills has not been used. The nature of "hybrid" legislation is defined and the Parliamentary procedure for enacting it is discussed.

The author reports on the ways in which citizens in China protest against actions taken by the government. The various ways in which officials react to different types of demonstrations by its citizens are mentioned, for example the practice of urban residents using the law to address disputes. The author states that conflict resolution also differs depending on the type of dispute occurring. According to the article, most people in China act in the extremes regarding their disputes with the government by either remaining silent or taking part in illegal activities to demonstrate against the situation at hand.