Marjorie Heins

Visiting Lecturer

Education

JD, Harvard Law School, 1978 (magna cum laude)
BA, Cornell University, 1967

Research

Marjorie Heins is currently working on a book about loyalty oaths, past and present, including the California public employees’ oath and the Supreme Court’s treatment of oath requirements in the 1950s and 1960s.

Work

Marjorie Heins is the founding director of the Free Expression Policy Project (www.fepproject.org). From 1991-98, she directed the American Civil Liberties Union’s Arts Censorship Project, where she was co-counsel in several major First Amendment cases, including Reno v. ACLU (invalidating a law that criminalized “indecent” communications on the Internet). She has been a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and at the Open Society Institute. In 1991-92, she was chief of the Civil Rights Division at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. She has taught at Boston College Law School, Florida State University Law School, and Tufts University, and from 1989-91 was editor-in-chief of the Massachusetts Law Review.

Publications

Books:

Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hill & Wang, 2001; second edition, Rutgers U. Press, 2007)

Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America’s Censorship Wars (The New Press, 1993; second edition, 1998)

Cutting the Mustard: Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence (Faber & Faber, 1988)

Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de la Raza (Ramparts Press, 1972).

Selected articles and book chapters:

“A Landmark Case Over the Censorship of Films,” in Censorship (K. Burns, ed.) (History of Issues Series, Thomson-Gale, 2007).

“What is the Fuss About Janet Jackson’s Breast?” in Quest: Reading the World and Arguing for Change (K. Stallings, ed.) (Prentice-Hall, 2007).

“Foreword: Reclaiming the First Amendment – Constitutional Theories of Media Reform,” 35 Hofstra Law Review 917 (2007)

“Sex and the Law: A Tale of Shifting Boundaries,” in Pornography: Film and Culture (P. Lehman, ed.) (Rutgers U. Press, 2006).

Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report (Brennan Center/Free Expression Policy Project, 2006).

“Media Effects” (adapted from Not in Front of the Children), in Censoring Culture (S. Mintcheva & R. Atkins, eds.) (The New Press, 2006).

Foreword to Lynn Sutton, Access Denied: How Internet Filters Impact Student Learning (Cambria, 2006).

“The ‘Miracle’ of Burstyn v. Wilson,” in Defending the First (J. Russomanno, ed.) (Laurence Erlbaum, 2005).

Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control (Brennan Center/Free Expression Policy Project, 2005).

“Do We Need Censorship to Protect Youth?” 2005 Michigan State Law Review 795.

“Will Fair Use Survive the Digital Age?” in Free Culture & the Digital Library (Emory University, 2005).

“On Protecting Children – From Censorship: A Reply to Amitai Etzioni,” 79 Chicago-Kent Law Review 229 (2004).

“Media Violence Fact Sheet,” in Contemporary Issues Companion: Censorship (K. Burns, ed.) (Thomson-Gale, 2004).

Free Expression in Arts Funding: A Public Policy Report (Free Expression Policy Project, 2003).

“The NEA, Arts Funding, and the Culture Wars,” in The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts (National Arts Journalism Program, Columbia University, 2003).

“The Progress of Science and Useful Arts”: Why Copyright Today Threatens Intellectual Freedom (Free Expression Policy Project, 2003).

Introduction and Brief of 33 Media Scholars in Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis, 31 Hofstra Law Review 419 (2002).

Media Literacy: An Alternative to Censorship (co-author) (Free Expression Policy Project, 2002).