In America Talk Isn’t Cheap, It’s Free

The First Amendment Is for Everyone—Which Makes a Mess

The First Amendment protects you. The First Amendment also protects your enemies. While the volume of today’s battles may be louder, the right to free speech remains a foundational aspect of American democracy. That was the conclusion of a panel of experts assembled at the ASU California Center in downtown L.A. for the Zócalo/ASU Cronkite School event “Does the First Amendment Still Protect Free Speech?”

Los Angeles Times editorial writer Carla Hall, who moderated the discussion, kicked it off with the words of University of Michigan legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon, …

When the Great War Reached Wisconsin, Free Speech Was the First Casualty

President Wilson's Government Criminalized Dissenters, Socialists, and German Immigrants as Traitors

[wimbta]Woodrow Wilson did not want to go to war. On two different occasions during the weeks leading to the 1917 declaration of war that brought the United States into World …

How Democracy, in the Kremlin’s Crosshairs, Can Fight Back

Russian Cyber Meddling Turns Free Speech and Technology Against Open Societies

The most dramatic development of France’s recent Presidential election was last Friday’s announcement by the Emmanuel Macron campaign that their email and account records had been the target of a …

This Isn’t a First Amendment Issue, Twitter

Just Because Governing Online Speech Is Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Forbidden by the Constitution

Earlier this month, Twitter announced that it would be using new tools to curb hate speech and harassment on its site. The news came on the heels of a …

Why the Middle East Never Bought Obama’s Politics of Hope

Egyptian Revolutionaries Were Hardly Surprised When America Fumbled the Arab Spring

On the night of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, I stood outside a dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin, debating two Egyptian bloggers about Obama’s win.

About two …

Will Globalization Kill Free Speech?

The First Amendment May Require New Limits in a More Interconnected World

U.S. Supreme Court justices are not supposed to say anything interesting outside of the Court, but in 2010 Justice Stephen Breyer was asked in a rare TV appearance if he …