Find Lawyers in Arizona, United States for First Amendment Law
Find a Lawyer
The Best Lawyers lawyer directory makes it easy to find the best lawyer for any legal need.
Best Lawyers has spent four decades as the original, trusted source for legal referrals. From nominations to peer reviews, our process is the most thorough evaluation of legal talent in the world.
How can Best Lawyers Help Find a Good Lawyer?
The attorneys listed in the Best Lawyers directory have been nominated and evaluated by their peers. Then they are consistently re-evaluated over time.
Our lists of outstanding lawyers are compiled by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which tens of thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. If the votes for a lawyer are positive enough for recognition by Best Lawyers, that lawyer must maintain those votes in subsequent polls to remain in each edition. Lawyers are not permitted to pay any fee to participate in or be recognized by Best Lawyers.
Recognition by Best Lawyers is widely regarded by both clients and legal professionals as a significant honor, conferred on a lawyer by their peers. For more than four decades, our publications have earned the respect of the profession, the media and the public as the most reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals anywhere.
Practice Area Overview
The specific rights guaranteed by the First Amendment can be summarized in five general and often overlapping categories: (1) freedom of expression; (2) freedom of the press; (3) freedom of association and assembly; (4) freedom to petition; and (5) freedom of religion. Within these categories are specific areas of law that are part of a First Amendment law practice.
Freedom of expression. This category includes both laws that directly restrict and punish speech (e.g., obscenity and indecency, national security disclosures) and also laws that indirectly affect freedom of speech (e.g., copyright fair use, defamation and privacy law, restrictions on time, place, and manner of speech, and expressive conduct). It also includes laws relating to advertising and marketing activities under the commercial speech doctrine.
Freedom of the press. In addition to general freedom of expression issues, this category includes laws that affect the media and its ability to gather and report news ( e.g., access to public records, court proceedings, public meetings, and protection of the newsgathering process). It also includes government regulation of media (e.g., broadcast and cable) and other laws that interfere with the function of the media as an independent critic of government.
Freedoms of association and assembly. This category includes laws affecting the right to organize, the right to hold public demonstrations, and laws regulating the time, place, and manner of these activities (e.g., restrictions on use of public forums, and on membership and activities of dissident organizations.)
Freedom to petition. This category includes laws affecting the right of individuals and organizations to communicate with the government for the purpose of seeking redress of grievances. It often includes activities also protected by freedom of association and assembly.
Freedom of religion. This category includes laws that affect the right to practice one’s religion and laws that attempt to impose government-dictated religious principles on citizens (e.g., school prayer.)
First Amendment lawyers represent individuals and organizations whose First Amendment rights are threatened by application of these various laws.
Our Methodology
Recognition by Best Lawyers is based entirely on peer review. Our methodology is designed to capture, as accurately as possible, the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same geographical area and legal practice area.
The Process
Best Lawyers employs a sophisticated, conscientious, rational, and transparent survey process designed to elicit meaningful and substantive evaluations of the quality of legal services. Our belief has always been that the quality of a peer review survey is directly related to the quality of the voters.