First Amendment and the Executive Power in the U.S. Part II

Join Professor Grossi's virtual Master Class (Part II):

This class focuses on the specific mechanisms through which executive power regulates and suppresses expression without resorting to formal bans. Building on the conceptual framework introduced in the first class, this session examines how retaliation, conditional funding, and bureaucratic coercion operate as tools of speech control. Students analyze how executive orders and administrative policies can target disfavored viewpoints under the guise of neutrality or efficiency, and how the withdrawal of funding, exclusion from federal programs, or adverse personnel actions can chill speech across universities, research institutions, contractors, and other quasi-public actors. The class explores the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and retaliation jurisprudence, highlighting the difficulty of distinguishing voluntary compliance from coercion in contexts where access to public resources is essential for institutional survival. Particular attention is paid to chilling effects and self-censorship as structural outcomes of executive governance, underscoring how expressive suppression can occur even in the absence of direct legal penalties.