Enrique Armijo
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law | Elon University
Greensboro, NC, UNITED STATES
Enrique Armijo focuses on international media projects - including how new technolgies affect free speech issues.
Spotlight
Biography
Enrique Armijo, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Professor of Law, and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, teaches and researches in the areas of the First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and internet law, and international freedom of expression.
Professor Armijo’s current scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech. His scholarly work has recently appeared in the Boston College Law Review, the Washington and Lee Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the peer-reviewed Communication Law and Policy and Political Science Quarterly, and other journals. His work has been cited by the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and other agencies, and in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He also has provided advice on media and internet law reform to governments, stakeholders and NGOs located around the world, including in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Most recently, he has worked on media and communications reform projects in Myanmar (Burma) for the U.S. Department of State with Annenberg’s Center for Global Communications Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His commentaries on these and other topics have appeared on NPR's On the Media, Voice of America , WUNC-FM, and Bloomberg Law, and in print in the Charlotte Observer, the Raleigh News and Observer, and the Greensboro News and Record, as well as other outlets.
Prior to joining Elon Law, Armijo practiced with Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C., where he advised journalists, news organizations and trade associations on media law-related issues. As an appellate lawyer, Armijo briefed cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and briefed or argued cases in the federal and state courts of appeal. His appellate work included cases concerning broadcast indecency and the First Amendment (FCC v Fox Television Stations, S. Ct. 2011), Guantanamo detainees’ rights to habeas corpus (Boumediene v. Bush, S. Ct. 2008), and foreign sovereign immunity for cultural property (Odyssey Marine Exploration v. Spain, S. Ct. 2012).Before entering private practice, Armijo was a Visiting Scholar at the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. There he worked on international media law projects and comparative research on media ownership regulation in the U.S. and Europe.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Media and Internet Law
Torts
Interaction Between New Technologies and Free Speech
First Amendment
International Freedom of Expression
Constitutional Law
Administrative Law
Media
Publications:
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Videos:
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Education (3)
University of North Carolina: J.D.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: M.A. 2005
University of Florida: B.A.
Links (2)
Media Appearances (7)
Trump calls border a 'crisis of the soul': 3 scholars react to his Oval Office address
The Conversation online
2019-01-09
Professor Enrique Armijo offers insights into President Donald Trump's Jan. 8, 2019, address to the country as part of a panel of experts. Armijo focused on Trump's plans to use an emergency declaration to gain funding for a border wall.
The 2019 NC justice system will be more liberal, from sheriffs to DAs to judges
The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer online
2019-01-03
An in-depth look at the November elections by North Carolina’s two largest newspapers included extensive analysis by an Elon Law scholar who predicts policies and decisions in the years ahead that may be more “defendant-friendly.” Enrique Armijo, associate dean for academic affairs and an associate professor of law, provided his insight for a report in the (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer that sought to explain the future of North Carolina’s justice system based on those results.
Will Trump’s Supreme Court justices show independence from him?
The Conversation online
2018-07-03
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement has sparked much speculation about the court’s future decisions on abortion and gay rights. But what about the retirement’s effects on the future of a possible litigant before the court: President Trump himself? Several possible constitutional crises are brewing over Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference, collusion and obstruction of justice, some of which – such as the president’s power to pardon himself – could raise legal questions that only the Supreme Court can answer.
One problem with Facebook is us
The Raleigh News & Observer online
2018-03-23
In this opinion column, Armijo argues that privacy issues related to Facebook might best be addressed by users being more thoughtful about what they share.
Falsehoods, Sandy Hook and suing Alex Jones
The Conversation online
2018-06-01
Alex Jones, a well-known media personality, falsely claims you were an accomplice in faking the murder of your own child. You sue him. It seems such a case should be easy to win, given the nature of those statements. But defamation law does not provide an equally easy answer. I am a legal scholar who studies the intersection between the First Amendment and online speech. A court battle now being fought illustrates the difficulties in winning such a case, and how current law needs modernizing in order to address the needs of the aggrieved and the ways we talk about public tragedies.
Capital Tonight: Trump vs. The Media
Spectrum News Capital Tonight tv
2017-10-12
An Oct. 12 segment of the statewide politics program Capitol Tonight on Spectrum News featured the insights of Enrique Armijo, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor of law at the Elon University School of Law. Armijo joined host Tim Boyum as well as reporter Callum Borchers of the Washington Post and Joe Cabosky, assistant professor in the UNC School of Journalism, to discuss President Donald Trump recent suggestion that NBC News should not be permitted to continue broadcasting.
Is 'fake news' upending the marketplace of ideas?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution online
2017-08-01
Enrique Armijo, associate professor and academic dean at Elon University School of Law, writes about how "fake news" impacts the marketplace of ideas in this opinion column distributed by the Elon University Writers Syndicate.
Articles (3)
Government-Provided Internet Access, Infrastructures of Free Expression, and the Role of the State
Forthcoming in Mobile Technologies and Access to Knowledge (2018) Ramesh Subramanian & Stefanie Felsberger, eds.
Enrique Armijo
2017 If one’s focus zooms out from the infrastructure and technology involved, Internet access networks are speech spaces. When the government is involved in their development or operation, these spaces are provided either in name or in fact by the State; to use the traditional parlance of First Amendment jurisprudence, these networks are publicly owned property over which citizen expression travels. Due to the pace of change, we run the risk of accepting State-provided digital speech spaces unreservedly as part of our communications infrastructure without asking the fundamental questions of what law applies, what is permissible and what the Constitution bars. Societies must not rush to embrace new technology and, in the process, leave behind all of the longstanding protections from government interference that are well established in every other context. It would be ironic, indeed tragic, if the 21st century speaker loses the protections that were unquestionably enjoyed by the speaker who was communicating in government-provided speech spaces long before the iPhone was even invented.
The Libertarian First Amendment, the Shifting Apostrophe, and the One-Way Ratchet
The Journal of Things We Like
Enrique Armijo
2017 In Expanding the Periphery and Threatening the Core, Morgan Weiland tells a story of how the First Amendment has slipped its moorings: how the Supreme Court, through its holdings in commercial speech and corporate campaign finance regulation cases, has decoupled the individual's right to expression from the reasons for protecting that right; and how the libertarian turn in First Amendment theory, which devalues any interference with the flow of any information for any reason, has fused together protections for corporate and individual speech in a way that abandons First Amendment first principles. Weiland's article also details the costs of First Amendment agnosticism-in a world where any regulation of speech affronts the informational rights of every listener, the State is powerless to distinguish between kinds of speakers or the quality of speech.
The Ample Alternative Channels Flaw in First Amendment Doctrine
Washington & Lee University Law Review
Enrique Armijo
2016 In reviewing a content-neutral regulation affecting speech, courts ask if the regulation leaves open" ample alternative channels of communication" for the restricted speaker's expression. Substitutability is the underlying rationale. If the message could have been expressed in some other legal way, the ample alternative channels requirement is met. The court then deems the restriction's harm to the speaker's expressive right as de minimis and upholds the law. For decades, courts and free speech scholars have assumed the validity of this principle. It has set First Amendment jurisprudence on the wrong course. Permitting a speech restriction because the speaker could have communicated the same message another way distorts the First Amendment.
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