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<p>This article draws on the state action doctrine and the case <italic>Marsh v. Alabama</italic> to evaluate a recent proposal to create an unprecedented public-private partnership in the state of Nevada. In <italic>Marsh</italic>, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a private citizen was protected under the U.S. Constitution's First and Fourteenth Amendments in distributing religious literature on the sidewalk of a “company-owned” town. We make the case that both the state policy under consideration and a number of political and economic trend lines indicate that the issue central to <italic>Marsh</italic> remains pressing at the start of our new millennium: what are the circumstances under which concentrated private power amounts to something akin to government authority, thereby implicating the protections of the national Constitution? Our goal in this piece is not to offer an exhaustive or thorough review of the particulars of the “Innovation Zone” bill under consideration, but to consider, in advance, constitutional problems that might arise from granting corporations broad powers traditionally wielded by governments.</p>
</abstract>

This article draws on the state action doctrine and the case Marsh v. Alabama to evaluate a recent proposal to create an unprecedented public-private partnership in the state of Nevada. In Marsh, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a private citizen was protected under the U.S. Constitution's First and Fourteenth Amendments in distributing religious literature on the sidewalk of a “company-owned” town. We make the case that both the state policy under consideration and a number of political and economic trend lines indicate that the issue central to Marsh remains pressing at the start of our new millennium: what are the circumstances under which concentrated private power amounts to something akin to government authority, thereby implicating the protections of the national Constitution? Our goal in this piece is not to offer an exhaustive or thorough review of the particulars of the “Innovation Zone” bill under consideration, but to consider, in advance, constitutional problems that might arise from granting corporations broad powers traditionally wielded by governments.

From the Company Town to the Innovation Zone: Frontiers of Public Policy, the State Action Doctrine, and the First Amendment

British Journal of American Legal Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

This article draws on the state action doctrine and the case Marsh v. Alabama to evaluate a recent proposal to create an unprecedented public-private...

From the Company Town to the Innovation Zone: Frontiers of Public Policy, the State Action Doctrine, and the First Amendment

Published Online: Nov 07, 2021

Page range: 37 - 59

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2021-0006

Keywords
Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Free Exercise of Religion, Free Speech, State Action Doctrine, Supreme Court

© 2022 Bruce Peabody et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

From the Company Town to the Innovation Zone: Frontiers of Public Policy, the State Action Doctrine, and the First Amendment

Published Online: Nov 07, 2021

Page range: 37 - 59

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/bjals-2021-0006

KeywordsConstitutional Law, First Amendment, Free Exercise of Religion, Free Speech, State Action Doctrine, Supreme Court

© 2022 Bruce Peabody et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Free Exercise of Religion, Free Speech, State Action Doctrine, Supreme Court