Associate Dean Amar Authors Commentary for New York Times

Vikram Amar, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law, has published an entry in "Room for Debate," a feature of the New York Times website.  The essay appears as one of a group of articles on the topic of occupational licensing laws and the First Amendment under the heading of "When Do Doctors have the Right to Speak?" Other participants in the online forum included Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, and Robert Post, Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

"Most occupational licensing laws - at least those involving professions that have traditionally been subject to significant regulation - should not trigger rigorous review under the First Amendment, even if these laws regulate on the basis of the content of the speaker," Amar writes. The First Amendment's free-speech guarantees do not protect doctors who give unsound medical advice from malpractice liability, he notes.

Vikram Amar, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law with the UC Davis School of Law, is a national authority in the fields of constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and remedies. His biweekly column for Justia.com, a leading provider of online legal information, centers on his expertise in constitutional law.