Law Professor Seeks Clearly Unconstitutional Injunction

I also wanted to note that in his lawsuit against Above The Law, Prof. Jones seeks a clearly unconstitutional remedy: “Enjoining Abovethelaw to remove all articles and posts concerning Professor Jones.”

Even if the Above The Law posts are actionable, and can lead to damages liability — which I’m nearly certain isn’t the case — surely the remedy would be at most damages plus, perhaps, an injunction against continued distribution of the constitutionally unprotected speech. (There’s some controversy about whether such injunctions are allowed, even when they’re limited to specific statements that have been found at trial to be unprotected, but most recent cases that I’ve seen allow them, and there’s Supreme Court authority for that result.)

But here, Prof. Jones is asking the court to order total removal (not just redaction) of all posts concerning Prof. Jones, which would include links to and quotes from newspaper articles — clearly constitutionally protected — and the like. That would be a constitutionally impermissible remedy, even if some of the items in the posts were punishable.

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