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Facebook And Politicians’ Speech, Sarah C. Haan Jan 2021

Facebook And Politicians’ Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Scholarly Articles

In his Article Facebook’s Speech Code and Policies: How They Suppress Speech and Distort Democratic Deliberation, Professor Joseph Thai argues that Facebook skewed public debate with a policy that exempted politicians from its content-based rules. This Response updates the reader on Facebook’s retreat from this policy and identifies some preliminary lessons from it. Between May 2020 and January 2021, Facebook moved away from its “light touch” regulation of politicians’ speech by employing strategies like labeling and down-ranking—and, eventually, removal of content. After the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Facebook de-platformed President Trump altogether, putting a final …


John Stuart Mill’S Harm Principle And Free Speech: Expanding The Notion Of Harm, Melina Constantine Bell Jan 2021

John Stuart Mill’S Harm Principle And Free Speech: Expanding The Notion Of Harm, Melina Constantine Bell

Scholarly Articles

This article advocates employing John Stuart Mill’s harm principle to set the boundary for unregulated free speech, and his Greatest Happiness Principle to regulate speech outside that boundary because it threatens unconsented-to harm. Supplementing the harm principle with an offense principle is unnecessary and undesirable if our conception of harm integrates recent empirical evidence unavailable to Mill. For example, current research uncovers the tangible harms individuals suffer directly from bigoted speech, as well as the indirect harms generated by the systemic oppression and epistemic injustice that bigoted speech constructs and reinforces. Using Mill’s ethical framework with an updated notion of …


The End Of The Affair, Marc O. Degirolami Jan 2021

The End Of The Affair, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

Religion and liberalism have reached a complicated entente in the law of American and European democracies. At times the relationship has been diffi- dently cordial; at others something that appeared warmer. This period marked a change from previous eras of far more open mutual hostility. Liberalism and the traditional, historically rich and influential religions—particularly Christianity— never have been allies. To the contrary, liberalism was designed in part expressly to neuter the communal and political power of religion—again, especially Christianity—and to separate law from religion for the purpose of weakening the latter. The current rapprochement has endured for more than a …