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AbstractUnderlying the American model of political campaign communication are the US Constitutional guarantees of free speech, which secure the rights of citizens to support political candidates of their choosing and express that support in various forms, from bumper stickers to television advertising. Courts have at times struck down measures regulating political advertising, including limits on the amounts of such advertising and the amounts of funds which candidates, parties and individuals may spend on election‐related speeches and advertising as infringements of these rights. With few exceptions, in the USA, government may not limit the number of spots a candidate airs in an election. In Europe, international norms concerning free expression and fair elections appear in a number of legal instruments, including, most recently, the UK's Human Rights Act 1998 and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.This paper compares the role and development of American First Amendment doctrines in limiting restrictions on political advertising in the USA with the development of comparable norms of free expression under the European Convention on Human Rights, European Union treaties and legislation and national laws of the member states and accession countries. In particular, this paper addresses the validity and enforceability of European legal limits on number, timing, placement, quantity and content of political advertisements under applicable human rights rules and similar regulations. The paper concludes that (1) a combination of European legal instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Community Treaty, the European Community's 'Television Without Frontiers' Directives and the Council of Europe's Convention on Transfrontier Television offer protections of a kind and type which broadly track the protections of the USA's First Amendment; that (2) it seems that governmental justifications for restricting these freedoms are more readily accepted in Europe than they might be in courts in the USA; and that (3) certain restrictions on political advertising identified in previous studies as existing throughout Europe will face increased judicial scrutiny and some of them are probably illegal under European Human Rights principles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications

This work generally describes media coverage of postelection litigation in Florida following the 2000 presidential election. Examining some of the ways the broadcast media covered certain legal issues arising from the litigation, the research concentrates on legal issues surrounding the infamous Palm Beach County "butterfly ballot" and equal protection litigation in the federal courts. The data are drawn from content analysis of evening news broadcast of the three major television networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, from November 7 to December 13, 2000, the day following the final decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. The research concludes that the broadcast media substantially overlooked the equal protection issue until the very end of the postelection campaign and thus failed to educate the public on what turned out to be the most decisive and important issue in the Supreme Court's decision to halt the manual recounts in Florida.