Nancy Costello
Director of the First Amendment Clinic and Free Expression Online Library and Resource Center; Clinical Professor of Law | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Nancy Costello teaches legal writing from an intellectual property law perspective.
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Biography
Professor Costello teaches Research, Writing and Advocacy from an Intellectual Property Law Perspective and teaches student clinicians in the MSU First Amendment Law Clinic. She has also taught Media Law, Copyright Law, and Intellectual Property in the Internet Age. Before joining the law college she practiced in the area of commercial litigation, defamation law, ebusiness law and collections litigation for the law firm of Dickinson Wright PLLC in Detroit. She received her bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law where she served as an editor of the Law Review and president of the Women's Law Caucus.
Before becoming an attorney, Professor Costello worked for 15 years as a journalist writing for the Detroit Free Press, the Associated Press, the Harvard University News Office, and news organizations in Seattle, Massachusetts, Ohio and New Hampshire. As a newspaper reporter she covered the Michigan state Legislature, former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, Dr. Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicides, the assimilation of Southeast Asian refugees, 'Northern Exposure' doctors in the Alaskan outback, and the advent of Gorbachev's 'Perestroika' in the former Soviet Union.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Social Media Speech Law
First Amendment Speech/Press Law (NOT Religion)
First Amendment
Copyright
Student Speech/Press Law
Education (2)
University of Detroit Mercy School of Law: J.D. 1999
Michigan State University: B.A., Journalism 1981
Affiliations (2)
- Michigan Coalition for Open Government
- Free Expression Legal Network
Links (1)
News (3)
What the Vote?: Gen Z and free speech
Michigan Public online
2024-10-22
That’s a concern echoed by Professor Nancy Costello, director of the First Amendment Clinic at Michigan State University. She teaches a media law class at MSU. Costello recalls a specific conversation about Trump getting kicked off social media platforms after the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. She asked her students: “‘What's the argument from Twitter and Facebook's point of view for why they can kick them off?’ People were willing to step up in class and talk about the argument,” said Costello. “And then I asked, ‘Now, what's Trump's argument for why he shouldn't get kicked off?’ I could barely get people to participate in class and give me Trump's argument.”
MSU expert: Free speech and social media cases could shape future of media regulation
Newswise online
2024-06-18
Nancy Costello is a clinical professor of law at MSU’s College of Law, where she serves as the director for the First Amendment Clinic and the McLellan Online Free Speech Library. She provides an overview of the cases and what it could mean for speech and social media.
How 'man on the street' interviews are becoming more intrusive
The State News online
2023-09-13
Nancy Costello, director of the Michigan State University legal advice center First Amendment Clinic, said videos like these can border on defamation. "Defamation is a libel claim," Costello said. "That's not necessarily privacy, so what you're talking about here, someone would bring a false light claim, (which) is an invasion of privacy ... and it's basically a cause of action for portraying someone in an unflattering light ... in words or pictures as something they are not. And it tends to be an easier claim than a libel or defamation claim."
Event Appearances (2)
Grassroots to Global: Expanding Your Clinic’s Impact by Going Online.
2019 | Southern Clinical Conference sponsored by Loyola New Orleans Law School and Tulane University Law School
Exposure to the Bar, Bench and Law that You Love Can Happen as a 1L
2018 | Southeast Regional Legal Writing Conference at Loyola University New Orleans Law School
