Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction: The benefits of a multidisciplinary approach in communication law / Amy Reynolds, Brooke Barnett -- I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND APPROACHES -- Charting the future of interdisciplinary scholarship in communication and law / Jeremy Cohen, Timothy Gleason -- Method in our madness: legal methodology in communications law research / Fred H. Cate -- Social science research in judges' first amendment decisions / Anthony L. Fargo -- A new paradigm for legal research / David Pritchard -- The intersection of legal practice and social science on the issue of pretrial publicity / Jon Bruschke -- Pornographic knowledge, the law, and social science / Robert Jensen -- Creating meaning, creating citizens: the U.S. Supreme Court and the control of meaning in the public sphere / David S. Allen -- Information and socioeconomic class in U.S. Constitutional Law / Sandra Braman -- II. MULTIDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES -- Merging legal research and the practices of social science: comparing state access laws / Bill F. Chamberlin ... [et al.] -- Blacks in the news: television, modern racism, and cultural change / Robert M. Entman -- The effects of dehumanizing depictions of race in TV news stories / Glenn Leshner -- Word-picture juxtaposition, schemata, and defamation in television news / Tom Grimes, Robert Drechsel -- The stories they couldn't tell: how journalists use public record databases / Brooke Barnett -- The impact of Walker's Appeal on northen and southern conceptions of free speech in the nineteenth century / Amy Reynolds -- The people and the cable guy: federally empowered public interest standards / Constance Ledoux Book -- Utilizing mass media advertising for legal notice in class action lawsuits / Michael Hoefges, Kent Lancaster.