Schriner-Briggs on Guaranteeing the Press @jschrinerbriggs @ChicagoKentLaw @StJohnsLawRev

Jacob Schriner-Briggs, Chicago-Kent College of Law, is publishing Guaranteeing the Press in volume 98 of the St. John's Law Review (2025). Here is the abstract.

A vibrant press is vital to meaningful self-government. Indeed, the indispensability of investigative journalism to democracy raises the stakes of the news industry’s ongoing collapse. Many of the country’s most prominent outlets are shedding jobs as local operations shutter entirely. The downstream effects of this market contraction frustrate the informed exercise of popular sovereignty. Because journalism is a public good in the economic sense, the state must intervene to provision it. To this end, scholars have generally endorsed one of two legal bases for government action. The first argues that the First Amendment can constitutionalize press-favoring market interventions. The second champions legislative action standing alone. Though both approaches have their conceptual merits, neither properly accounts for the reality of an aggrandized and deregulatory Supreme Court. All told, the Court would almost certainly reject the First Amendment arguments press reformers have made while potentially viewing even straightforward legislative action with hostility. More generally, the outsized role of the Court in our system of constitutional governance, much like the decline of journalism, works a harm to democratic self-determination. This Article connects these heretofore separate issues by arguing that the Guarantee Clause of Article IV offers a more promising constitutional basis for government intervention than the First Amendment. The Guarantee Clause commands the United States to provide each state a “Republican Form of Government.” Because the absence of a vibrant press hamstrings republican government, the Clause’s text contemplates the political concerns raised by journalism’s demise. The Clause also provides a grant of constitutional power that has long been interpreted and applied by Congress rather than the Court. This institutional settlement positions the Clause to not only empower press reformers but to resist the entrenchment of juristocracy. The health of democracy—of our republican form of government—would be well served by both.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.