Professor of Business Law John Winn, JD, LLM, recently published an article, “Weaponizing the First Amendment: Best Practices for City Managers and Prosecutors,” in the Spring edition of the North Carolina State Bar Journal.
The article addresses so-called “First Amendment Auditing,” a type of social activism that assesses community responses to constitutionally protected video recordings in public spaces.
According to Dr. Winn, self-identified “independent journalists” film inside post offices, police parking lots, Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) waiting rooms or other public spaces to provoke police overreach and to generate revenue on social media uploads.
When undertrained or unsuspecting police take the bait, demanding identification or press credentials, auditors respond by goading police into unlawful detentions, arrests, or using unnecessary force. This inevitably leads to civil rights lawsuits in federal courts.”
John Winn, JD, LLM, Professor of Business Law, School of Business
Winn’s article has garnered significant attention from law firms involved in municipal insurance and defense. One such firm, Smith Rogers & Aldridge, PLLC, incorporated Winn’s article into future education and client advisement with dozens of police and sheriff’s offices across North Carolina.
Faculty scholarship within the Business School is part of its AACSB International commitment to ensure intellectual contributions contain exemplars of basic, applied and pedagogical research that make a positive societal impact, consistent with the school’s mission.
The Bar Journal is read by all 27,000 licensed attorneys, judges, law faculty, and college students throughout North Carolina.
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