Law Commons^™

Rethinking The Context Of Hate Speech Regulation, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

In this essay I review Michael Herz and Peter Molnar (eds.) The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses (Cambridge University Press 2012). As I show in the review, the Herz and Molnar volume advances our understanding of comparative hate speech regulation in three ways. First, the essays suggest that local context has a role to play in understanding, assessing, and applying hate speech regulations, even in an age when online hate speech is pressuring states and regions to reach common solutions to these problems. Second, the essays rebut the commonly held premise that the United States …

Harassing Speech In The Public Schools: The Validity Of Schools' Regulation Of Fighting Words And The Consequences If They Do Not, Adam A. Milani

Akron Law Review

What can - and should - schools do about the harassment which their students are suffering? While the issues of hateful and harassing speech and political correctness on college campuses have received a great deal of attention in both the mass media and legal journals, the very real problem of student-to-student harassment in grammar and high schools has only recently been given attention in either forum. More specifically, there has been little attention paid to the questions of whether (1) the First Amendment permits grammar and high schools to control harassing speech by students, (2) schools violate civil rights statutes …

Racist Speech, Outsider Jurisprudence, And The Meaning Of America, Steven H. Shiffrin

Steven H. Shiffrin

No abstract provided.

Restricting Hate Speech Against Private Figures: Lessons In Power-Based Censorship From Defamation Law, Victor C. Romero

Victor C. Romero

This article examines the debate between those who favor greater protection for minorities vulnerable to hate speech and First Amendment absolutists who are skeptical of any burdens on pure speech. The author also provides another perspective on the debate by highlighting the "public/private figure" distinction as an area within First Amendment law that acknowledges differences in power, a construct anti-hate speech advocates should use to further their cause. Specifically, the author places the "public/private figure" division in a theoretical and historical context and then provides empirical support for the thesis that whites enjoy a more prominent societal role and greater …

Abuse And Harassment Diminish Free Speech, Anita Bernstein

Pace Law Review

Owen Fiss focused on “the robustness of public debate” to conclude on his last page: “The autonomy protected by the First Amendment and rightly enjoyed by individuals and the press is not an end in itself, as it might be in some moral code, but is rather a means to further the democratic values underlying the Bill of Rights.”

This article embraces the same values but more conservatively. Whereas Fiss defended state-sponsored coercion, I leave the government mostly outside the descriptions and arguments presented here. Scholars have sought to apply the law—of crimes, torts, intellectual property, and statutory allotments and …

There Are No Racists Here: The Rise Of Racial Extremism, When No One Is Racist, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

At first glance hate murders appear wholly anachronistic in post-racial America. This Article suggests otherwise. The Article begins by analyzing the periodic expansions of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the protection for racist expression in First Amendment doctrine. The Article then contextualizes the case law by providing evidence of how the First Amendment works on the ground in two separate areas — the enforcement of hate crime law and on university campuses that enact speech codes. In these areas, those using racist expression receive full protection for their beliefs. Part III describes social spaces — social media and employment where …

A Few Thoughts On Free Speech Constitutionalism, Helen Norton

Publications

No abstract provided.