Law Commons^™

Reconciling Self-Censorship: A Qualitative Study Of The Experiences Of University Staff And Administrators, Leigh C. Morales

Doctoral Dissertations

In addition to a global pandemic, the past three years have been marked by racial, social, and political unrest. These circumstances add meaningful context to examine and better understand factors that undermine free expression and contribute to self-censorship among university staff and administrators. To date, few studies have holistically explored the unique experiences of university staff and administrators with self-censorship and how this phenomenon affects their experience on college and university campuses. Understanding why staff and administrators choose to self-censor may allow for a deeper discussion about speech climate and the degree to which colleges and universities implement and uphold …

Free Speech On Social Media: Unrestricted Or Regulated?, Alessandra Garcia Guevara

Student Writing

Social media has evolved into an essential mode of communication in recent years, allowing people to express their thoughts with the audience of their choice by sending private messages, posting their thoughts, or sharing their opinions. Such audiences can come from all over the world because this online technology breaks down geographic, linguistic, and cultural barriers. As a result, social media has evolved into a powerful tool for self-expression, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to participate in global debates. However, its misuse has had disastrous consequences in the real world, such as the attack on the Capitol that occurred …

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …

How Should We Regulate The Internet? A Proposal, Natalie Petruzelli

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

With the invention of the internet providing newfangled methods of spreading information around the world, misinformation has also found home in these pathways, disrupting the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction and creating divides in society. Regulation must be enacted to stop the effects of misinformation, but the efforts of technology companies and the general public have been insufficient thus far. Regulatory control of the internet and its content should be the responsibility of the government, based on their constitutional right to intervene under certain circumstances and the fact that previous efforts by other parties to mitigate misinformation …

The First Amendment, Common Carriers, And Public Accommodations: Net Neutrality, Digital Platforms, And Privacy, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent prominent judicial opinions have assumed that common carriers have few to no First Amendment rights and that calling an actor a common carrier or public accommodation could justify limiting its right to exclude and mandating that it provide nondiscriminatory access. A review of the history reveals that the underlying law is richer than these simple statements would suggest. The principles for determining what constitutes a common carrier or a public accommodation and the level of First Amendment protection both turn on whether the actor holds itself out as serving all members of the public or whether it asserts editorial …

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value And What We Do Not, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, I argue that the debate on free speech as pushed by the conservative right is a strategic apparatus to undermine the various diversity initiatives on college and university campuses. While supporters of the right wing extremists around the globe have pushed for various modes of exclusions (social, racial, ethnic, cultural, religious and sexual), here in the United States, such exclusions are most evident in the collapse of academic freedom and the rise of civility codes as students and educators use the platform of free speech to promote various forms of injustices and exclusions. Our neoliberal college and …

Finding Freedom For The Thoughts We Hate, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

In his dissenting opinion in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously defended tolerance as an indispensable constitutional value. He wrote: “[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

Yet accepting that the Constitution protects the thought that we hate can be difficult, even during the best of times. And these are far from the best of times. Nuclear brinksmanship …

Constitutional Rights In Post-9/11 America, Meredith Aby

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

On September 21, 2011, Meredith Aby accepted an invitation to speak on the subject of freedom of speech and association in ten years after 9/11. Her speech, which was sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, the Kessel Peace Institute, and the Mankato Area Activist Collective, is more than a powerful defense of free speech the right to dissent. It is the personal account of an ordinary person of extraordinary conviction—an activist, a mother, a partner, a teacher, and a debate coach—for whom standing up for right to oppose one’s government is more than an abstract …

Freedom Of Speech Vs. The Right To Privacy: Problems With The English Super Injunction, Nicci Fillinger

Honors Theses

Free speech. The words of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States are close to hearts of Americans, especially journalists. However, not every country has the same amount of freedom granted in the US, and most Americans recognize this. Countries such as China, North Korea, and Libya are notorious for media censorship, but Americans would not typically add England to this list. In recent years, however, cases of media censorship in England that would shock journalists have come to light.

Controversy over censorship results from tension between Article 8 and Article 10 of the European Convention on …

First Amendment, Fourth Estate, And Hot News: Misappropriation Is Not A Solution To The Journalism Crisis, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Journalism is a public good. The Framers understood the importance of a free press in a self-governing society and embedded a structural right for freedom of the press in the First Amendment. There is a journalism crisis. Symptoms of the crisis include layoffs of journalists, diminishing content in newspapers and shuttering of newspapers. The rise of online technologies has exacerbated the crisis, mainly by siphoning advertising revenue away from traditional news organizations to free classified advertisement websites such as Craigslist, search engines and myriad other non-journalistic online endeavors. The internet, however, is not the main cause of the journalism crisis. …

London, Libel Capital No Longer? The Draft Defamation Act 2011 And The Future Of Libel Tourism, Thomas Sanchez

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In the past decade, London emerged as the forum of choice for “libel tourists”—strategic, often foreign, plaintiffs who bring defamation actions in a jurisdiction with plaintiff-friendly libel laws, even if they and the defamatory material at issue lack a substantial connection with that jurisdiction. England’s defamation laws and procedures make it significantly easier for claimants to commence and prevail in libel actions than do the laws and procedures of many other countries, particularly the United States. As a result, English courts have entertained several high-profile defamation cases involving foreign parties who have only tenuous connections to England, such as …

Technologies Of Control And The Future Of The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

The technological context surrounding the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation allowed the Court to gloss over the tension between two rather disparate rationales. Those adopting a civil libertarian view of free speech could support the decision on the grounds that viewers’ and listeners’ inability to filter out unwanted speech exposed them to content that they did not wish to see or hear. At the same time, Pacifica also found support from those who more paternalistically regard indecency as low value (if not socially harmful) speech that is unworthy of full First Amendment protection. The arrival of …

Finding A Voice: Using The Internet For Free Speech And Expression In Iran, Chelsea Zimmerman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In July 2009, many Iranians took to the streets to protest the results of the presidential election in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won with a reported 62% of the vote. The protests, stemming from allegations of electoral fraud, quickly exposed the government's limited tolerance for dissent. In addition to street demonstrations, protestors utilized social networking websites to express their opposition to the election results. The world, following Internet feeds, witnessed the restrictive mechanisms Iran’s government placed on expression and speech. People throughout the world admonished Iran for the government's interference with cell phone and Internet networks. Iran’s free speech and expression …

Hate Speech, C. Edwin Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes the rationale that a full protection theory of free speech, a theory based on respect for individual autonomy, would give for protecting hate speech. The paper then notes that such a rationale will be unpersuasive to many (including this author) if the harms associated with a failure to outlaw hate speech are as great as often suggested – most dramatically, if the failure to prohibit makes a substantial contribution to the occurrence of serious racial/ethnic violence or genocide. The article then attempts to outline what empirical evidence would be needed to support this conclusion and gives reasons …

Sold Downstream: Free Speech, Fair Use, And Anti-Circumvention Law, R. Terry Parker

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Here’s a hypo. Living in Asia, I purchased a shameful amount of music and movies, all legit purchases through reputable stores, HMV and Tower Records, but little of which will get reissued. I wanted to preserve my collection but software in the discs prevented me from ripping backup copies to my computer. Lacking the technological savvy to get around this software myself, I purchased and used a product to help me circumvent these controls. Discuss.

Courts agree that copying the music and movies here is infringement but that fair use may provide a defense. However, courts do not agree …

Setting The Table Doesn't Mean The Guests Will Come To Dinner: Televised Courts In Australia, Jane Johnston

Jane Johnston

The Australian courts are entering their second decade of experimentation with televised court proceedings. Yet, the process has been slow and largely unfulfilling for both the courts and the television networks. Developments in this field, compared to other countries, notably the United States, Canada and New Zealand, have progressed only on an ad hoc basis. A preliminary study indicates that the management in television newsrooms, notably news directors, have not been proactive in gaining camera access in any systematic or unified way. Indeed, the courts have argued: “we got the table set but nobody came to dinner”. In contrast, the …