Law Commons^™

Extremist Speech, Compelled Conformity, And Censorship Creep, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Silicon Valley has long been viewed as a full-throated champion of First Amendment values. The dominant online platforms, however, have recently adopted speech policies and processes that depart from the U.S. model. In an agreement with the European Commission, tech companies have pledged to respond to reports of hate speech within twenty-four hours, a hasty process that may trade valuable expression for speedy results. Plans have been announced for an industry database that will allow the same companies to share hashed images of banned extremist content for review and removal elsewhere.

These changes are less the result of voluntary market …

Hate Speech At Home And Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

The United States’ best-known constitutional protection internationally is surely the First Amendment. Around the world, the United States is perceived as protecting freedom of expression and the press first and foremost, among all rights. And whether admired for its purity and idealism or dismissed as naïve and sui generis, the United States’ approach to free speech is globally examined, critiqued, and debated. It is the United States’ most prominent constitutional export, informing the drafting of foreign constitutions, statutes, and judicial interpretations, and undergirding the protection for freedom of expression in the international and regional human rights systems.

This chapter …

Defining Hate Speech, Andrew Sellars

Faculty Scholarship

There is no shortage of opinions about what should be done about hate speech, but if there is one point of agreement, it is that the topic is ripe for rigorous study. But just what is hate speech, and how will we know it when we see it online? For all of the extensive literature about the causes, harms, and responses to hate speech, few scholars have endeavored to systematically define the term. Where other areas of content analysis have developed rich methodologies to account for influences like context or bias, the present scholarship around hate speech rarely extends beyond …

The Legal Challenges Of Diversity (Review Essay), Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Within the last year two excellent books, Mariana Valverde’s Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance In an Age of Diversity and Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech, address how social anxieties about “diversity” surface in the development and enforcement of the law. While the two books focus on different eras and countries, they similarly illustrate the tensions in legal contexts that can result from the growth in diversity

Hate Speech And The Demos, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

It is sometimes said that the statist and aristocratic traditions of Europe render its political institutions less democratic than those of the United States. Richard Posner writes of “the less democratic cast of European politics, as a result of which elite opinion is more likely to override public opinion than it is in the United States.” If that is true, then there are obvious ways in which it figures into debates over the wisdom of hate-speech regulation. The standard European argument in favor of such regulation may easily be characterized as antidemocratic: Restrictions on hate speech protect unpopular minority groups …

Thirteenth Amendment Optimism, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Thirteenth Amendment optimism is the view that the Thirteenth Amendment may be used to reach doctrinal outcomes neither specifically intended by the Amendment's drafters nor obvious to contemporary audiences. In prominent legal scholarship, Thirteenth Amendment optimism has supported constitutional rights to abortion and health care and constitutional powers to prohibit hate speech and domestic violence, among other things. This Essay examines the practical utility of Thirteenth Amendment optimism in the face of dim prospects for adaption by courts. The Essay argues that Thirteenth Amendment optimism is most valuable, both historically and today, as a means of motivating the political process …

Intermediaries And Hate Speech: Fostering Digital Citizenship For Our Information Age, Danielle K. Citron, Helen Norton

Faculty Scholarship

No longer confined to isolated corners of the web, cyber hate now enjoys a major presence on popular social media sites. The Facebook group “Kill a Jew Day,” for instance, acquired thousands of friends within days of its formation, while YouTube has hosted videos with names like “How to Kill Beaners,” “Execute the Gays,” and “Murder Muslim Scum.” The mainstreaming of cyber hate has the troubling potential to shape public expectations of online discourse.

Internet intermediaries have the freedom and influence to seize this defining moment in cyber hate’s history. We believe that a thoughtful and nuanced intermediary-based approach to …

Intermediaries And Hate Speech: Fostering Digital Citizenship For Our Information Age, Danielle Keats Citron, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

No longer confined to isolated corners of the web, cyber hate now enjoys a major presence on popular social media sites. The Facebook group Kill a Jew Day, for instance, acquired thousands of friends within days of its formation, while YouTube has hosted videos with names like How to Kill Beaners, Execute the Gays, and Murder Muslim Scum. The mainstreaming of cyber hate has the troubling potential to shape public expectations of online discourse.

Internet intermediaries have the freedom and influence to seize this defining moment in cyber hate’s history. We believe that a thoughtful and nuanced intermediary-based …

Hate Speech And The Language Of Racism In Latin America: A Lens For Reconsidering Global Hate Speech Restrictions And Legislation Models, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

In Latin America, like many countries in Europe, hate speech is prohibited. Yet Latin America is rarely included in the transnational discussion regarding the regulation of hate speech. Instead, the discourse focuses on a comparison of the advisability of Europe's hate speech regulations and free speech acceptance of hate speech in the United States. As a result, the ability to fundamentally examine the connections between hate speech and inequality, in addition to the most effective legal mechanisms for addressing it, is undermined. It is especially critical to broaden the hate speech debate now that we are seeing an apparent rise …

Beyond Lawrence: Metaprivacy And Punishment, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Lawrence v. Texas remains, after three years of precedential life, an opinion in search of a principle. It is both libertarian – Randy Barnett has called it the constitutionalization of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty – and communitarian – William Eskridge has described it as the gay rights movement's Brown v. Board of Education. It is simultaneously broad, in its evocation of our deepest spiritual commitments, and narrow, in its self-conscious attempts to avoid condemning laws against same-sex marriage, prostitution, and bestiality. This Article reconciles these competing claims on Lawrence's jurisprudential legacy. In Part I, it defends the …

Law And The Ideal Citizen, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

The theme identified for this lecture series is the subject of responsibility. I assume Washington and Lee has selected that topic out of a sense that it has not received sufficient attention, as compared, for example, to the subject of "rights." I select "rights" as the counter-example because we often hear of the two in tandem – "rights and responsibilities." As such, the concept of responsibility connotes a sense of obligation as to what is due from us to others and to the community. It is, in that sense, easier to be in favor of rights than it is of …

Implications Of Mill's Theory Of Liberty For The Regulation Of Hate Speech And Hate Crimes, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The notion that utilitarianism cannot support a theory of fundamental rights is a recurring source of conflict in law and philosophy.' Those who adhere to this view argue that a utilitarian or consequentialist approach cannot provide a stable, permanent justification for rights: at any moment, the utilitarian calculus might conclude that what it considered a right yesterday, actually reduces total welfare, and therefore is not a right today. Perhaps no one has gone further in attempting to refute this claim than John Stuart Mill.' As a result, any effort to construct a consequentialist theory of fundamental rights must draw at …

Civil Actions For Emotional Distress And R.A.V. V. City Of St. Paul, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The law of emotional distress is characterized by judicial reluctance to create and expand remedies for emotional injuries. The issue here is whether the Court's decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul will impose further limitations on the right to recover civil damages for the intentional infliction of emotional injury, particular emotional injuries resulting from hate speech. This symposium first examines the applicability of the tort to redress claims based on abusive epithets based on the victim's race, gender, or sexual orientation. The symposium then argues that using this tort in cases involving hate speech should not create constitutional …

Free Speech In The United States And Canada, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

This comparison of freedom of speech in the United States and Canada concentrates on Supreme Court decisions in the two countries and on kinds of speech mainly engaged in by extreme dissenters and political outsiders. After brief comments about constitutional language and general approaches, I discuss subversive speech and other speech that encourages criminal acts, hate speech, symbolic speech, and public demonstrations.

In both countries, a major premise of modern adjudication is that freedom of expression is a central feature of liberal democracy. Government "by the people," even in the extended sense of government by representatives, requires that citizens openly …