Celebrate the Constitution of the United States on Thursday, Sept. 17, by attending a timely discussion about economics, constitutional theory and the media entitled “Does the First Amendment Still Matter?” featuring C. Amanda Martin '92, a partner with Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych, PLLC in Raleigh, N.C. and a member of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy’s advisory board. Martin will speak at noon in the rotunda of UNC School of Law. Whether fielding one of the hundreds of calls that flood the North Carolina Press Association’s legal hotline each year or opposing the closing of a courtroom, Martin enjoys combining her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Florida and her law degree from the University of North Carolina.
Martin is a communications lawyer, representing clients in traditional and non-traditional media, as well as non-media clients, with Internet, social media, intellectual property, privacy and other speech-based concerns. A partner at Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych, PLLC, Martin is general counsel to the N.C. Press Association, an organization of approximately 200 N.C. newspapers. For more than 20 years, she routinely has counseled reporters, editors and news directors about avoiding libel suits, gaining access to closed government meetings and records and resisting subpoenas. With the advent of the Internet, Martin expanded her practice to include counseling and representing non-media individuals and organizations with social media issues.
Martin is the co-author of the North Carolina section of the Media Law Resource Center’s annual survey on privacy law, co-author of the North Carolina section of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Open Government Guide, and co-editor of the North Carolina Media Law Handbook, to which she also contributes the chapter on access to public meetings. She is a frequent speaker and panelist at media law forums and workshops and regularly contributes articles to legal, media and other publications. Martin has taught as an adjunct instructor of media law at the UNC School of Law, the UNC School of Media and Journalism and Campbell Law School.
Martin also handles trademark, copyright and other intellectual property matters as well as representing corporations in employment issues.
Martin’s professional activities include serving as a member of the Newsgathering Committee of the Media Law Resource Center, former chairman of the N.C. Bar Association’s Constitutional Rights and Responsibility Section Council and a former director of the Wake County Bar Association and editor of its newsletter.
For the past several years, UNC School of Law has served as host of the campus-wide UNC-Chapel Hill Constitution Day celebration. Each year on September 17, pursuant to a 2004 federal statute, U.S. schools and colleges take time to celebrate and commemorate the day on which the Constitution of the United States was signed. Constitution Day presents an opportunity to reflect upon the deeper meanings of the Constitution and the hopes it embodies for the future of the country and the world.
The event is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
Directions to UNC School of Law and parking information can be found at http://www.law.unc.edu/about/maps/ .
-August 26, 2015