Navigation Denise Harle leads FSU Law’s new First Amendment Clinic
Denise Harle describes the program, Florida’s only First Amendment Clinic and one of roughly a dozen such clinics in the country dealing with First Amendment rights, as an initiative to protect and promote freedom of speech, religious liberty, and other key First Amendment rights, through the education process in the law school and through direct legal representation.
Denise Harle, the founding director of Florida State University College of Law’s new First Amendment Clinic, is committed to the idea of “‘liberty of conscience,’ the ability to think and believe – and to live according to your belief, and to speak according to your belief – without fear of unjust government punishment.”
“That is why I think we are able to have this pluralistic nation and a civil democratic society where we can have different opinions and different viewpoints and we can have discourse and debate but, at the end of the day, the government isn’t silencing anyone or coercing anyone,” she says, while glancing at a graphic of the U.S. Supreme Court steps hanging on her wall.
