Recognizing his advocacy of first amendment rights, the National Press Club named Robert M. O'Neil, Law School professor and former University president, the first in a series of "first amendment fellows."
The NPC decided in a board meeting in Washington, D.C., Monday night to honor individuals who have worked to educate people about their rights of expression.
NPC President Jack Cushman said over the next year the club plans to select 12 first amendment fellows. Each fellow will write an op-ed piece about the first amendment that will be distributed by the NPC. O'Neil is the first and only fellow chosen so far.
"It was gratifying to know that the NPC is interested and concerned with issues of free expression," O'Neil said. "I was happy to be their lead-off person."
O'Neil also is the director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free Expression. O'Neil has been the director of the center since it was started in 1990. He served as University president from 1985-1990.
The center is a non-partisan organization that promotes awareness of the rights guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution, including freedom of speech and the press.
In O'Neil's op-ed piece, he called attention to "ominous trends" of increasing limits of free expression in the courts. He cited a federal appeals case in which the court ruled that Paladin Press, publisher of Hit-Man Manual, may be liable for crimes committed by readers of the book. O'Neil called this "alarming" because "federal and state courts had consistently held in the past that such a burden could never be imposed on one who issued a book or a movie or a broadcast."
O'Neil's piece will be available for any publication to print.
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