It is with great pleasure that I introduce the Spring 2022 Symposium. Through our first publication, we explored how the First Amendment has evolved in the modern era with the perfuse use of social media in society. This temporal topic strikes deep to some of the issues which most directly affect our everyday life. What is social media? Is it public or private? Subject to follow free speech protections or not? What are reasonable free speech protections in an era where so many can be reached with such ease…

Written by Minji Kang

The First Amendment of the US Constitution provides that the "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This command safeguards governmental suppression of viewpoints expressed in the marketplace of ideas. It largely stems from John Stuart Mill's economic analogy of speech in his 1859 publication. Asserting that no one alone knows the truth, or that no one idea alone embodies either the truth or its antithesis, Mill claims that the free competition of ideas is the best way to separate falsehoods from fact and ideas left untested will slip into dogma. The First Amendment protects speech "critical to the advancement of knowledge, the transformation of tastes, political change, cultural expression, and other purposes and consequences of constitutionally protected speech." The question of what constitutes an abridgment of freedom of speech has been a recurring debate among legal scholars, with countless cases brought to trial every year.

Written by Erin Buchanan

In July 2017, the case of Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump was filed. The litigation attempted to establish that censorship involving political leaders by private social media platforms like Twitter restricted First Amendment and free speech rights. The case is grounded in the idea that public officials (in this case, Donald Trump) could block constituents from seeing their content, effectively excluding them from a publicly accessible political sphere and violating their constitutional rights. The case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs, who filed a second case on similar grounds in July 2020. There have been associated controversies about politicians allegedly having their own First Amendment rights violated by media platforms through the deactivation of their accounts as well. Regardless of the outcome of Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, this case and others like it call into question how First Amendment rights apply to political activity and censorship on social media platforms. Ultimately, the controversy surrounds whether privately-owned and regulated social media platforms have become public due to their necessity in public life or due to their use by public elected officials. Neither of these aspects of media provide a solid foundation for subjecting private platforms to public regulation, nor do they give grounds for requiring private media platforms to uphold constitutional rights…

Written by Jonathan Laifman

The American Revolution was more than merely a transformation of the legal system but also an intentionally driven cultural shift in the conception of what a government ought to be and do. At the bedrock of this movement was the notion of a Republican Mother who was to raise “sons prepared to sacrifice themselves to the good of the polis”. In the Revolutionary Era, this meant, among other things, pushing rights beyond a “parchment barrier”, which Constitution Framer James Madison feared they would remain, and into an elevated place in the consciousness of the American public. It is in line with this development that the Incorporation Doctrine would eventually see the Constitution be applied nearly in its entirety as restrictions against actions of the States. With the rights seemingly so omnipotent, it is natural that a majority of Americans would support the First Amendment being applied to social media as well. These lay citizens are (likely) unknowingly invoking the principle of declaring a private entity a state actor. By looking into the precedent on the elevation of omnipresent, public serving, and private entities – specifically railroad companies – to the level of state actors, insight can be gained into the validity and strength of such an argument were it to be made in court.

Written by Rachelle DeSantis

At every waking second, someone is using social media to engage in pertinent news, lighthearted follies with their peers, or anything in between. Social media use is on the rise, and it has become a critical part of how people interact with the outside world. The rapid increase of social media usage has posed a new set of legal challenges for the Court when it comes to the power that the government has to regulate social media sites, and the discretion that social media sites are afforded to regulate their users. The Court is faced with a new uncertainty about how First Amendment protections on freedom of speech find their place in the world of social media. In this brief paper, I will examine a few of these newfound legal questions regarding the usage of social media, and analyze their relevant case law…

Written by Elias Abadi

The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise [of religion] . . . or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble . . . ." The fourteenth amendment incorporates this fundamental right to provide First Amendment protections at the state level as well. Therefore, a state cannot infringe upon its citizen’s fundamental First Amendment rights. The First Amendment may also protect individuals and their rights from a public state employee, such as a police officer. There is a circuit split over how the First Amendment interacts with police officers as several circuit court decisions have found that police officers cannot take away an individual’s First Amendment rights as long as they are not obstructing an arrest or investigation, while other circuits have found that they can infringe on some rights. The confusion over an individual’s First Amendment rights is especially problematic in the digital age. Police departments around the country are increasingly ramping up efforts to monitor the online activity of ordinary citizens through social media. This monitoring can have a chilling effect on the free speech and expression rights of activists, communities of color, and, broadly, all social media users. This raises an important legal question: when would official police surveillance and activity on social media constitute a violation of the First Amendment due to its chilling effect on those rights…

Written by Taylor Perry

On February 24, 2022, the Russian military invaded its neighboring country, Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained that his main goal was to liberate the people of Eastern Ukraine, whom he believes to be valid Russian nationals, and to annex the territories in which they live. Between Russia’s February invasion and April 22, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office reported 5,381 Ukrainian civilian casualties. Critics of the conflict, including the United States, the European Union, and human rights groups like Amnesty International, argue that these casualties are a display of unnecessary aggression and human rights violations on the part of the Russian government…

Written by Eric Bui

Central to the First Amendment is the preservation of “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee.” Social media platforms provide a rather pervasive apparatus for said marketplace. They actively recognize their role in the public sphere as communicative platforms. Before the Select Committee on Intelligence, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey opened testimony saying, “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation,” underlining an “open and free exchange of ideas.” Similar sentiments were echoed, as Dorsey referred to the platform as a “digital public square.” But site moderation …

Written by Grace Okafor

The First Amendment, which grants the freedom of speech, press, religion, and right to assembly, is one of the more transparent and well-known amendments included in the Bill of Rights. Ratified by Congress in 1791, the document, but especially the First Amendment, was quite revolutionary, diverging from the restrictive sentiments of the monarchist governments at the time. While other countries might strike down against critical speech directed at their monarchs and other leaders, this amendment protects all forms of speech. A caveat of the amendment’s overall simplicity is, naturally, its lack of specificity, causing many questions to arise surrounding what exactly constitutes free speech. Malicious, targeted speech that might endanger an individual is rightfully not protected under the amendment as outlined by Brandenburg v Ohio (which established the idea of evaluating speech’s is likelihood of inciting lawless action). What has further complicated understanding …

Written by Michael Lipof

In the wake of Knight First Amendment Institute vs. Trump, in which the Court ruled that then President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking users on Twitter which constituted a “designated public forum”, an awareness of the delicate relationship between the First Amendment and society’s digital dimension has been awakened across the political spectrum. Especially now with Elon Musk attempting to acquire Twitter, citing his desire to protect free speech on the platform, both sides of the spectrum support government regulation of social media companies. On one hand, conservatives believe that social media companies like Meta and Twitter are monopolies that actively restrict conservative speech. On the other hand, liberals believe that corporations like Parler encouraged or rather did not stop their users from planning the events surrounding January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. Although each side presents different reasoning for government regulation, both conservatives and liberals agree on one thing: an increase in regulation of social media companies. It is evident that in today's day and age of social media, regulation needs to be addressed. Therefore, social media companies should be treated as analogous to broadcast media for three main reasons…

Written by Michael Melinger

Elon Musk does not only want to travel to space or eradicate gas powered vehicles, but he also wants to own one of the largest online communication platforms: Twitter. Musk has since struck a deal, setting him up to take the global communication platform private at nearly $44 billion. On the deal, Musk said “Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” However, where the terms town square and alike has become commonplace for the understanding of public forums or places where ideas are exchanged as developed by the court in Hague, other “courts have found the internet to be a private forum.” But as Musk sees it, actors who thrust themselves into debate on the platform are thrusting themselves into the town square and into the public eye…