Podcasts about The Volokh Conspiracy

DID THE DEMS JUST PASS ANOTHER UNCONSTITUTIONAL GUN BILL? I've got Dave Kopel from the Independence Institute on to discuss at 1 today, as he is the guy who studies this stuff all day long. By the way, Dave Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute; an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, in Washington; and a Senior Fellow at the University of Wyoming College of Law Firearms Research Center. His website is davekopel.org. He writes frequent for the Volokh Conspiracy law blog, hosted by Reason magazine. So he knows what he's talking about.

The morning of March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was detained at his apartment in New York City. Khalil is a 30-year-old Algerian citizen. He was born in Syria and is of Palestinian descent. He came to this country on a student visa in 2022, married an American citizen in 2023, became a green card holder in 2024, and finished his graduate studies at Columbia University in December 2024. Mahmoud was also the spokesman and negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group that says it is “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” and which played an active role in the rioting that took over Columbia buildings last spring. He has not been charged with any crimes—at least not so far. But the White House wants to deport him on the grounds that he poses a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went as far as to post on X: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” Many of us believe that Khalil's ideology is abhorrent. He enjoyed the United States' educational system—attending one of our most prestigious universities—while advocating for America's destruction and for a group that seeks the genocide of the Jewish people. At the same time, the case for his deportation is not clear-cut. Here's the divide: Some say this is an immigration case. As Free Press contributing editor Abigail Shrier has put it: “This is an immigration, not a free speech case. It's about whether the U.S. can set reasonable conditions on aliens for entry and residence.” But others say this is, in fact, a free speech case that cuts to the heart of our most cherished values. To figure all this out, we're hosting three of the smartest legal minds we know. Eugene Volokh is an expert on the Bill of Rights who is currently a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He's also a contributor to Reason magazine, where he runs his own blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder is a practicing lawyer and the director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. Just yesterday, he filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the Southern District of New York against Khalil and several others for material support for terror. Jed Rubenfeld is a Free Press columnist and a professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School. This case is one we have written about extensively in The Free Press—and one that we are actively debating in our newsroom. So we were thrilled to be able to bring together some of the smartest people on this complicated issue. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can you sue protesters who block the street in front of your business? Protesters who block your way to work? People who are trying to get you fired? Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer, who have written and taught about tort law as well as free speech law, discuss all these questions and more. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Eugene Volokh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he had been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed., 2023) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. ABOUT THE SERIES: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy and one of the country's foremost experts on the 1st Amendment and the legal issues surrounding free speech. Jane Bambauer is a distinguished professor of law and journalism at the University of Florida. On Free Speech Unmuted, Volokh and Bambauer unpack and analyze the current issues and controversies concerning the First Amendment, censorship, the press, social media, and the proverbial town square. They explain in plain English the often confusing legalese around these issues and explain how the courts and government agencies interpret the Constitution and new laws being written, passed, and decided will affect Americans' everyday lives.

This week on The Nick Halaris Show we are featuring prominent legal scholar and free speech expert, Eugene Volokh.  Eugene is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the author of The Volokh Conspiracy, a widely read legal blog, and a co-host of the Free Speech Unmuted Podcast.  For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Free speech debates are all the rage today and I wanted to have Eugene on the show to lay some important groundwork for this often misunderstood topic.  Constitutional free speech law is a complicated and most commentators online, especially the loudest voices, don't have a clue.  After decades of teaching and high-level legal scholarship, Eugene has a way of explaining very complex matters in digestible ways.  Tune in to this important episode to learn:   • What public universities can and cannot do when it comes to limiting speech• The difference between viewpoint and content-neutral restrictions• The rare instances where free speech can actually be restricted• The relationship between free speech law and state power over public school curricula • Why free speech is so critical to democratic governance • & Much, much more Stay tuned to the end to learn why Eugene thinks free speech absolutism is a misnomer and to understand how free speech law applies to the public produces of social media companies. As always, I hope you all enjoy this episode.  Thanks for tuning in!        Love this episode? Please rate, subscribe, and review on your favorite podcast platform to help more users find our show.

Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer discuss the various rules the Court applies in obscenity cases and the forthcoming Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton decision.  Fun fact: Associate Justice Potter Stewart, who wrote the “I know it when I see it” line in a 1964 obscenity opinion, later concluded that any such obscenity test would be unconstitutionally vague. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Eugene Volokh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he had been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed., 2023) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. ABOUT THE SERIES: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy and one of the country's foremost experts on the 1st Amendment and the legal issues surrounding free speech. Jane Bambauer is a distinguished professor of law and journalism at the University of Florida. On Free Speech Unmuted, Volokh and Bambauer unpack and analyze the current issues and controversies concerning the First Amendment, censorship, the press, social media, and the proverbial town square. They explain in plain English the often confusing legalese around these issues and explain how the courts and government agencies interpret the Constitution and new laws being written, passed, and decided will affect Americans' everyday lives.

Incitement, solicitation, fighting words, threats, bad tendencies, and more, with special attention to NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982), the Court's little-publicized precedent on the subject. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Eugene Volokh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he had been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed., 2023) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. ABOUT THE SERIES: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy and one of the country's foremost experts on the 1st Amendment and the legal issues surrounding free speech. Jane Bambauer is a distinguished professor of law and journalism at the University of Florida. On Free Speech Unmuted, Volokh and Bambauer unpack and analyze the current issues and controversies concerning the First Amendment, censorship, the press, social media, and the proverbial town square. They explain in plain English the often confusing legalese around these issues and explain how the courts and government agencies interpret the Constitution and new laws being written, passed, and decided will affect Americans' everyday lives.  

In Moody v. Netchoice, the Supreme Court considered the Florida and Texas laws that tried to limit social media platforms' power to moderate (or is it censor?) user posts.  In Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court considered whether the federal government impermissibly pressured social media platforms to moderate (or is it censor?) user posts.  What did the Court tell us?  Jane and Eugene try to figure it out. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Eugene Volokh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he had been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed., 2023) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. ABOUT THE SERIES: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy and one of the country's foremost experts on the 1st Amendment and the legal issues surrounding free speech. Jane Bambauer is a distinguished professor of law and journalism at the University of Florida. On Free Speech Unmuted, Volokh and Bambauer unpack and analyze the current issues and controversies concerning the First Amendment, censorship, the press, social media, and the proverbial town square. They explain in plain English the often confusing legalese around these issues and explain how the courts and government agencies interpret the Constitution and new laws being written, passed, and decided will affect Americans' everyday lives.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Silicon Valley) sits down with First Amendment scholars Jane Bambauer and Eugene Volokh to explore Internet policy and free speech. Topics include the TikTok ban, social media child addiction claims, competition, and more. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Congressman Ro Khanna represents California's 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is serving his fourth term. Rep. Khanna serves on the House Armed Services Committee as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems (CITI), as co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, a member of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, where he previously chaired the Environmental Subcommittee. As a leading progressive in the House, Rep, Khanna is working to restore American manufacturing and technology leadership, improve the lives of working people, and advance U.S. leadership on climate, human rights, and diplomacy around the world. Eugene Volokh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he had been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (8th ed., 2023) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. ABOUT THE SERIES: Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh is the co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy and one of the country's foremost experts on the 1st Amendment and the legal issues surrounding free speech. Jane Bambauer is a distinguished professor of law and journalism at the University of Florida. On Free Speech Unmuted, Volokh and Bambauer unpack and analyze the current issues and controversies concerning the First Amendment, censorship, the press, social media, and the proverbial town square. They explain in plain English the often confusing legalese around these issues and explain how the courts and government agencies interpret the Constitution and new laws being written, passed, and decided will affect Americans' everyday lives.

THE SUPREME COURT WILL SOON DECIDE: If a social media censures you for your viewpoint - does that violate the First Amendment? If laws tell Social Media companies they must publish your viewpoint...is the company's First Amendment rights violated?We all say we want free speech. But if you own a private company can the government tell you what it can and cannot post?  Are social media companies the public square...common carriers...or...private companies that can choose their own content?That is the question before the Supreme Court. In this episode, Bob talks with Supreme Court scholar Eugene Volokh:Facts of the caseThe State of Texas enacted HB 20 to regulate large social media platforms, such as Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), and YouTube. The law purports to prohibit large social media platforms from censoring speech based on the viewpoint of the speaker.NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General of Texas, challenging two provisions of the law as unconstitutional: (1) Section 7, which prohibits viewpoint-based censorship of users' posts, except for content that incites criminal activity or is unlawful. (2) Section 2, which requires platforms to disclose how they moderate and promote content, publish an "acceptable use policy," and maintain a complaint-and-appeal system for their users.The district court issued a preliminary injunction, holding that Section 7 and Section 2 are facially unconstitutional. The court argued that social media platforms have some level of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment, and HB 20 interferes with that discretion. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, rejecting the idea that large corporations have a “freewheeling” First Amendment right to censor what people say. It reasoned that HB 20 does not regulate the platforms' speech but protects other people's speech and regulates the platforms' conduct.Question:Do Texas HB 20's provisions prohibiting social media platforms from censoring users' content and imposing stringent disclosure requirements violate the First Amendment?Our guest:Eugene Volokh teaches First Amendment law and a First Amendment amicus brief clinic at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (6th ed. 2016), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2013), as well as over 90 law review articles. He is a member of The American Law Institute, a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. His law review articles have been cited by opinions in eight Supreme Court cases and several hundred court opinions in total, as well as several thousand scholarly articles.

Is AI output generally protected by the First Amendment, even though AIs have no self to express (or so we think ...)? Can people sue if they are libeled by AIs, or if AIs give them false information that leads to physical harm? Jane and Eugene discuss this, and more. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS Eugene Volokh is a visiting fellow (soon to be senior fellow) at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed., 2020) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

The First Amendment protects against certain kinds of indirect government suppression of speech, as well as direct. That means the government can't coerce bookstores, platforms, and the like, to remove material. But when does persuasion become coercion? And when, if ever, is even noncoercive persuasion aimed at the removal of speech unconstitutional? ABOUT THE SPEAKERS Eugene Volokh is a visiting fellow (soon to be senior fellow) at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed., 2020) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

On Monday March 4th, the Supreme Court reversed Colorado's decision to remove President Trump from the ballot. The Court unanimously held that individual states cannot bar insurrectionists from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Five Justices went further, ruling that Congress alone may enforce Section 3. In this episode, constitutional scholars Mark Graber of the University of Maryland Law School and Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School join Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the Court's 9-0 decision to avoid a chaotic “patchwork” of state-level ballot eligibility decisions and the 5-4 majority's view that Section 3 requires Congress to act before an insurrectionist may be disqualified from office. Resources: Trump v. Anderson (2024) Mark Graber, “Trump's apologists say it doesn't matter if he's guilty of insurrection. That's not true”, The Guardian, (March 5, 2024) Mark Graber, The Forgotten Fourteenth Amendment: Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty (2023)  Michael McConnell, “Is Donald Trump Disqualified from the Presidency? A Response to Matthew J. Franck”, Public Discourse, (Jan. 18, 2024) Prof. Michael McConnell, Responding About the Fourteenth Amendment, “Insurrection,” and Trump, Volokh Conspiracy, (Aug. 2023)  Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today's conversation on social media @ConstitutionCtr and #WeThePeoplePodcast. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly. You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library.

When public school libraries remove books based on the views expressed in the books, are they violating the First Amendment? What if the librarians stocking the shelves have a political agenda? It all comes down to a precedent called Pico, and Eugene and Jane disagree about which Supreme Court justices got the rule right. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS Eugene Volokh is a visiting fellow (soon to be Senior fellow) at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed., 2020) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer's research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer's research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. RELATED RESOURCES: Board of Ed. v. Pico (1982)

Good Morning #LALiens and Happy Hump Day! Yesterday's stream and attendance were incredible. If you are a new arrival, welcome! For our regulars, hold it down in the chat! . Today, Norm and Mike attempt to satisfy the platform tag police (yeah, we see you): . › NFL contracts are in the news. Los Angeles Chargers' franchise quarterback, Justin Herbert, and the team have agreed to a 5-year extension that makes Herbert the highest paid at the position by annual salary. By contrast, the running back position across the NFL continues to cheapen, highlighted by New York Giants star, Saquon Barkley, signing a one-year deal just to avoid a prolonged holdout a la Leveon Bell. What is to blame for the disparity? . › As teased at the end of yesterday's stream, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled, "The Rise and Fall of the Chief Diversity Officer." The Journal also published a piece entitled "The Hidden Cost of Being Overweight," which tracks the new legal pressures being applied in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to join Michigan in listing weight as a characteristic protected from discrimination. There is a saying in the south that goes something like, "that's like going around one's butt to get to one's elbow," that seems appropriate here. . › Advice to New Law Students: Ilya Somin writes for the Volokh Conspiracy and lists four (4) pieces of advice to law students beginning their law school journeys this fall. Norm and Mike review this list and each offer a piece of advice of their own. . Join us. . For the rest of the year, creators will receive 100 percent of the revenue from the purchase of monthly subscription badges, which Rumble recently launched for the price of $5 per month. Please consider purchasing a subscription badge to LAL and be assured that LAL will receive every penny of that subscription through the end of the year. Your consideration and patronage is most sincerely appreciated! . Daily livestreams beginning at 8:00 am EST on: › Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/LawandLegitimacy › Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lawandlegitimacy › X: https://twitter.com/LawPodDaily . Subscribe and turn on notifications! . Support Law and Legitimacy: . - Locals: https://lawandlegitimacy.locals.com/ - X: @LawPodDaily, @PattisNorm, and @MichaelBoyer_ - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Audible, Spotify, or wherever you receive podcasts and rate LAL 5 stars. - Subscribe here on our Rumble and Youtube channels, give us a Rumble, and join our active community of free-thinkers, contrarians, and the unafraid on Locals!

Good Morning #LALiens and Happy Hump Day! Yesterday's stream and attendance were incredible. If you are a new arrival, welcome! For our regulars, hold it down in the chat! . Today, Norm and Mike attempt to satisfy the platform tag police (yeah, we see you): . › NFL contracts are in the news. Los Angeles Chargers' franchise quarterback, Justin Herbert, and the team have agreed to a 5-year extension that makes Herbert the highest paid at the position by annual salary. By contrast, the running back position across the NFL continues to cheapen, highlighted by New York Giants star, Saquon Barkley, signing a one-year deal just to avoid a prolonged holdout a la Leveon Bell. What is to blame for the disparity? . › As teased at the end of yesterday's stream, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled, "The Rise and Fall of the Chief Diversity Officer." The Journal also published a piece entitled "The Hidden Cost of Being Overweight," which tracks the new legal pressures being applied in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to join Michigan in listing weight as a characteristic protected from discrimination. There is a saying in the south that goes something like, "that's like going around one's butt to get to one's elbow," that seems appropriate here. . › Advice to New Law Students: Ilya Somin writes for the Volokh Conspiracy and lists four (4) pieces of advice to law students beginning their law school journeys this fall. Norm and Mike review this list and each offer a piece of advice of their own. . Join us. . For the rest of the year, creators will receive 100 percent of the revenue from the purchase of monthly subscription badges, which Rumble recently launched for the price of $5 per month. Please consider purchasing a subscription badge to LAL and be assured that LAL will receive every penny of that subscription through the end of the year. Your consideration and patronage is most sincerely appreciated! . Daily livestreams beginning at 8:00 am EST on: › Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/LawandLegitimacy › Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lawandlegitimacy › X: https://twitter.com/LawPodDaily . Subscribe and turn on notifications! . Support Law and Legitimacy: . - Locals: https://lawandlegitimacy.locals.com/ - X: @LawPodDaily, @PattisNorm, and @MichaelBoyer_ - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Audible, Spotify, or wherever you receive podcasts and rate LAL 5 stars. - Subscribe here on our Rumble and Youtube channels, give us a Rumble, and join our active community of free-thinkers, contrarians, and the unafraid on Locals!

As ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms have taken off, they've demonstrated exciting possibilities about the potential benefits of artificial intelligence; while at the same time, have raised a myriad of open questions and complexities, from how to regulate the pace of AI's growth, to whether AI companies can be held liable for any misinformation reported or generated through the platforms. Earlier this week, the first ever AI defamation lawsuit was filed, by a Georgia radio host who claims that ChatGPT falsely accused him of embezzling money. The case presents new and never-before answered legal questions, including what happens if AI reports false and damaging information about a real person? Should that person be able to sue the AI's creator for defamation? In this episode two leading First Amendment scholars—Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law and Lyrissa Lidsky of the University of Florida Law School—join to explore the emerging legal issues surrounding artificial intelligence and the First Amendment. They discuss whether AI has constitutional rights; who if anyone can be sued when AI makes up or mistakes information; whether artificial intelligence might lead to new doctrines regarding regulation of online speech; and more.  Resources: Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy, “First (?) Libel-by-AI (ChatGPT) Lawsuit Filed” (June 6, 2023) Walters v. OpenAI L.L.C., No. 23-A-04860-2 Eugene Volokh, Large Libel Models? Liability for AI Output Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy, “The Great Success of Artificial Intelligence” (June 7, 2023) Lyrissa Lidsky, “Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace”, Duke Law Journal (2000) Lyrissa Lidsky, “Of Reasonable Readers and Unreasonable Speakers: Libel Law in a Networked World” (2016) Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org.    Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr.    Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.   

Princeton professor and author Keith Whittington joins Tim to talk about the current state of free speech, or not-so-free-speech on the American college campus. Keith has a long resume of accomplishments, including the authoring of the award-winning book, “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech.” But in this episode, we talk about Keith's role in the formation of a new and already growing organization that champions freedom of speech called the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA). https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/shapingopinion/Encore_-_How_Free_is_Speech_on_Americas_College_Campus.mp3 There is a growing fear on college campuses among professors and instructors that they could say or do the smallest thing and it could ruin their careers. They could be canceled for using the wrong story or word to illustrate a point while teaching a class. Something they say or do could be perceived by some students as a triggering factor – something that could trigger some negative emotion that hinders learning. If you follow the news, or just do a quick Google search, you'll find stories where educators, or the colleges themselves, were called out by students for perceived lack of sensitivity to certain issues. It's stories like those that have created a growing concern among educators that something has to be done to turn the tide. They're concerned that students and others may have the wrong idea about what a college education is supposed to be about. That college is a place to challenge yourself and be challenged. To investigate, analyze and expose yourself to different ways of thinking, diverse schools of thought. And above all, not to fear such exposure or see it as something to be protected from. It's with this in mind, that Professor Keith Whittington of Princeton, and more than 200 other scholars from across America decided to form the AFA.  Keith says the AFA is dedicated to helping college educators, quote – “speak, instruct, and publish without fear of sanction, bullying, punishment or persecution.” Links Keith Whittington's Princeton Home Page The Academic Freedom Alliance: A Q&A with Keith Whittington, Academe Blog Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech, by Keith Whittington (Barnes & Noble) Fresh Hope for Campus Free Speech, New York Post/AP About this Episode's Guest Keith Whittington Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance. He writes about American constitutional law, politics and history and American political thought. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and Harvard Law School and is a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, among other outlets, and he is a regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog. He is the author of several books, including Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech and Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University.  

As promised, the Cyberlaw Podcast devoted half of this episode to an autopsy of Gonzalez v. Google LLC , the Supreme Court's first opportunity in a quarter century to construe section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And an autopsy is what our panel—Adam Candeub, Gus Hurwitz, Michael Ellis and Mark MacCarthy—came to perform. I had already laid out my analysis and predictions in a separate article for the Volokh Conspiracy, contending that both Gonzalez and Google would lose. All our panelists agreed that Gonzalez was unlikely to prevail, but no one followed me in predicting that Google's broad immunity claim would fall, at least not in this case. The general view was that Gonzalez's lawyer had hurt his case with shifting and opaque theories of liability, that Google's arguments raised concerns among the Justices but not enough to induce them to write an opinion in such a muddled case. Evaluating the Justices' performance, Justice Neil Gorsuch's search for a textual answer drew little praise and some derision while Justice Ketanji Jackson won admiration even from the more conservative panelists. More broadly, there was a consensus that, whatever the fate of this particular case, the court will find a way to push the lower courts away from a sweeping immunity for platforms and toward a more nuanced protection. But because returning to the original intent of section 230 is not likely after 25 years of investment based on a lack of liability, this more nuanced protection will not have much grounding in the actual statutory language. Call it a return to the Rule of Reason. In other news, Michael summed up recent developments in cyber war between Russia and Ukraine, including imaginative attacks on Russia's communications system. I wonder whether these attacks—which are sexy but limited in impact—make cyber the modern equivalent of using motorcycles as a weapon in 1939.  Gus brings us up to date on recent developments in competition law, including a likely Department of Justice's challenge to Adobe's $20 Billion Figma deal, new airline merger challenge, the beginnings of opposition to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) proposed ban on noncompete clauses, and the third and final nail in the coffin of the FTC's challenge to the Meta-Within merger.  In European cyber news, the European Union is launching a consultation designed to make U.S. platforms pay more of European telecom networks' costs. Adam and Gus note the rent-seeking involved but point out that rent-seeking in U.S. network construction is just as bad, but seems to be extracting rents from taxpayers instead of Silicon Valley. The EU is also getting ready to fix the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in the sense that gamblers fix a prize fight. The new fix will make sure Ireland never again wins a fight with the rest of Europe over how aggressively to extract privacy rents from U.S. technology companies. I am excited about Apple's progress in devising a blood glucose monitor that could go into a watch. Adam and Gus tell me not to get too excited until we know how many roadblocks The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will erect to the use and analysis of the monitors' data. In quick hits,  Gus confirms our suspicion that generative AI Is coming for the lawyers' jobs And that Illinois' biometric privacy law has gone from a really bad idea to a social, economic, and litigation catastrophe.  The Illinois Supreme Court could have staved this one off and didn't.  Download 445th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

As promised, the Cyberlaw Podcast devoted half of this episode to an autopsy of Gonzalez v. Google LLC , the Supreme Court's first opportunity in a quarter century to construe section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And an autopsy is what our panel—Adam Candeub, Gus Hurwitz, Michael Ellis and Mark MacCarthy—came to perform. I had already laid out my analysis and predictions in a separate article for the Volokh Conspiracy, contending that both Gonzalez and Google would lose. All our panelists agreed that Gonzalez was unlikely to prevail, but no one followed me in predicting that Google's broad immunity claim would fall, at least not in this case. The general view was that Gonzalez's lawyer had hurt his case with shifting and opaque theories of liability, that Google's arguments raised concerns among the Justices but not enough to induce them to write an opinion in such a muddled case. Evaluating the Justices' performance, Justice Neil Gorsuch's search for a textual answer drew little praise and some derision while Justice Ketanji Jackson won admiration even from the more conservative panelists. More broadly, there was a consensus that, whatever the fate of this particular case, the court will find a way to push the lower courts away from a sweeping immunity for platforms and toward a more nuanced protection. But because returning to the original intent of section 230 is not likely after 25 years of investment based on a lack of liability, this more nuanced protection will not have much grounding in the actual statutory language. Call it a return to the Rule of Reason. In other news, Michael summed up recent developments in cyber war between Russia and Ukraine, including imaginative attacks on Russia's communications system. I wonder whether these attacks—which are sexy but limited in impact—make cyber the modern equivalent of using motorcycles as a weapon in 1939.  Gus brings us up to date on recent developments in competition law, including a likely Department of Justice's challenge to Adobe's $20 Billion Figma deal, new airline merger challenge, the beginnings of opposition to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) proposed ban on noncompete clauses, and the third and final nail in the coffin of the FTC's challenge to the Meta-Within merger.  In European cyber news, the European Union is launching a consultation designed to make U.S. platforms pay more of European telecom networks' costs. Adam and Gus note the rent-seeking involved but point out that rent-seeking in U.S. network construction is just as bad, but seems to be extracting rents from taxpayers instead of Silicon Valley. The EU is also getting ready to fix the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in the sense that gamblers fix a prize fight. The new fix will make sure Ireland never again wins a fight with the rest of Europe over how aggressively to extract privacy rents from U.S. technology companies. I am excited about Apple's progress in devising a blood glucose monitor that could go into a watch. Adam and Gus tell me not to get too excited until we know how many roadblocks The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will erect to the use and analysis of the monitors' data. In quick hits,  Gus confirms our suspicion that generative AI Is coming for the lawyers' jobs And that Illinois' biometric privacy law has gone from a really bad idea to a social, economic, and litigation catastrophe.  The Illinois Supreme Court could have staved this one off and didn't.  Download 445th Episode (mp3) You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast opens with a look at some genuinely weird behavior by the Bing AI chatbot – dark fantasies, professions of love, and lies on top of lies – plus the factual error that wrecked the rollout of Google's AI search bot. Chinny Sharma and Nick Weaver explain how we ended up with AI that is better at BS'ing than at accurately conveying facts. This leads me to propose a scheme to ensure that China's autocracy never gets its AI capabilities off the ground.  One thing that AI is creepily good at is faking people's voices. I try out ElevenLabs' technology in the first advertisement ever to run on the Cyberlaw Podcast. The upcoming fight over renewing section 702 of FISA has focused Congressional attention on FBI searches of 702 data, Jim Dempsey reports. That leads us to the latest compliance assessment on agencies' handling of 702 data. Chinny wonders whether the only way to save 702 will be to cut off the FBI's access – at great cost to our unified approach to terrorism intelligence,  I complain that the compliance data is older than dirt. Jim and I come together around the need to provide more safeguards against political bias in the intelligence community.  Nick brings us up to date on cyber issues in Ukraine, as summarized in a good Google report. He puzzles over Starlink's effort to keep providing service to Ukraine without assisting offensive military operations.  Chinny does a victory lap over reports that the (still not released) national cyber strategy will recommend imposing liability on the companies that distribute tech products – a recommendation she made in a paper released last year. I cannot quite understand why Google thinks this is good for Google. Nick introduces us to modern reputation management. It involves a lot of fake news and bogus legal complaints. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and European Union (EU) and California privacy law are the censor's favorite tools. What is remarkable to my mind is that a business taking so much legal risk charges so little. Jim and Chinny bring us up to date on the charm offensive being waged in Washington by TikTok's CEO and the broader debate over China's access to the personal data of Americans, including health data. Jim cites a recent Duke study, which I complain is not clear about when the data being sold is individual and when it is aggregated. Nick reminds us all that aggregate data is often easy to individualize.  Finally, we make quick work of a few more stories: This week's oral argument in Gonzalez v. Google is a big deal, but we will cover it in detail once the Justices have chewed it over.   If you want to know why conservatives think the whole “disinformation” scare is a scam to suppress conservative speech, look no further than the scandal over the State Department's funding of an non-governmental organization (NGO) devoted to cutting off ad revenue for “risky” purveyors of “disinformation” like Reason (presumably including the Volokh Conspiracy), Real Clear Politics, the N.Y. Post, and the Washington Examiner – all outlets that can only look like disinformation to the most biased judge. The National Endowment for Democracy has already cut off funding, but Microsoft's ad agency still seems to be boycotting these conservative outlets. EU Lawmakers are refusing to endorse the latest EU-U.S. data deal. But it is all virtue signaling. Leaving Twitter over Elon Musk's ownership turns out to be about as popular as leaving the U.S. over Trump's presidency. Chris Inglis has finished his tour of duty as national cyber director. And the Federal Trade Commission's humiliation over its effort to block Meta's acquisition of Within is complete. Meta closed the deal last week. Download 443rd Episode (mp3)  You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast opens with a look at some genuinely weird behavior by the Bing AI chatbot – dark fantasies, professions of love, and lies on top of lies – plus the factual error that wrecked the rollout of Google's AI search bot. Chinny Sharma and Nick Weaver explain how we ended up with AI that is better at BS'ing than at accurately conveying facts. This leads me to propose a scheme to ensure that China's autocracy never gets its AI capabilities off the ground.  One thing that AI is creepily good at is faking people's voices. I try out ElevenLabs' technology in the first advertisement ever to run on the Cyberlaw Podcast. The upcoming fight over renewing section 702 of FISA has focused Congressional attention on FBI searches of 702 data, Jim Dempsey reports. That leads us to the latest compliance assessment on agencies' handling of 702 data. Chinny wonders whether the only way to save 702 will be to cut off the FBI's access – at great cost to our unified approach to terrorism intelligence,  I complain that the compliance data is older than dirt. Jim and I come together around the need to provide more safeguards against political bias in the intelligence community.  Nick brings us up to date on cyber issues in Ukraine, as summarized in a good Google report. He puzzles over Starlink's effort to keep providing service to Ukraine without assisting offensive military operations.  Chinny does a victory lap over reports that the (still not released) national cyber strategy will recommend imposing liability on the companies that distribute tech products – a recommendation she made in a paper released last year. I cannot quite understand why Google thinks this is good for Google. Nick introduces us to modern reputation management. It involves a lot of fake news and bogus legal complaints. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and European Union (EU) and California privacy law are the censor's favorite tools. What is remarkable to my mind is that a business taking so much legal risk charges so little. Jim and Chinny bring us up to date on the charm offensive being waged in Washington by TikTok's CEO and the broader debate over China's access to the personal data of Americans, including health data. Jim cites a recent Duke study, which I complain is not clear about when the data being sold is individual and when it is aggregated. Nick reminds us all that aggregate data is often easy to individualize.  Finally, we make quick work of a few more stories: This week's oral argument in Gonzalez v. Google is a big deal, but we will cover it in detail once the Justices have chewed it over.   If you want to know why conservatives think the whole “disinformation” scare is a scam to suppress conservative speech, look no further than the scandal over the State Department's funding of an non-governmental organization (NGO) devoted to cutting off ad revenue for “risky” purveyors of “disinformation” like Reason (presumably including the Volokh Conspiracy), Real Clear Politics, the N.Y. Post, and the Washington Examiner – all outlets that can only look like disinformation to the most biased judge. The National Endowment for Democracy has already cut off funding, but Microsoft's ad agency still seems to be boycotting these conservative outlets. EU Lawmakers are refusing to endorse the latest EU-U.S. data deal. But it is all virtue signaling. Leaving Twitter over Elon Musk's ownership turns out to be about as popular as leaving the U.S. over Trump's presidency. Chris Inglis has finished his tour of duty as national cyber director. And the Federal Trade Commission's humiliation over its effort to block Meta's acquisition of Within is complete. Meta closed the deal last week. Download 443rd Episode (mp3)  You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Thursday, February 16th, 2023. CrossPolination Ad Did you guys know that you can sign up for a club membership, a magazine subscription, AND tickets to the Ark Encounter all in one place?! That’s some crosspollination right there! Fightlaughfeast.com is your one-stop-shop for everything CrossPolitic. Here’s what you should do. You should sign up for a club membership, then sign up for the Ark Encounter for a $100 discount off of your purchase, and then sign up for a magazine subscription. We’ve even got our own social media platform built into our website now for our club members… once you’re a club member, you’ll get access to exclusive content like a Bible Study series with Pastor Toby, a special series with New Saint Andrews President, Dr. ben Merkle, all of our back-stage content, and all of our conference talks, with more to come! There really hasn’t been a better time to be a CrossPolitic Club Member. Sign up today, at fightlaughfeast.com. That’s fightlaughfeast.com. https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-buffalo-supermarket-shooter-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-without-parole?utm_campaign=64487 Buffalo supermarket shooter sentenced to life in prison without parole Buffalo supermarket mass shooter Payton Gendron was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and domestic terrorism, among other charges. Gendron killed 10 people in a racially motivated massacre in Buffalo, New York last year. He pleaded guilty to all 15 counts brought by Buffalo prosecutors. https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/first-amendment-court-blocks/2023/02/15/id/1108781/ Federal Judge Blocks N.Y. Law Mandating Social Media 'Hateful Conduct' Policies A federal judge has blocked New York's new law that prohibits hate speech on social media, ruling the measure violates the Constitution's protection of free speech. U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. on Tuesday, in Volokh v. James, sided with the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog and Peter Thiel-backed video site Rumble Inc., which claimed the law will hurt online services and silence disfavored viewpoints. New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul in June signed a legislative package that included new regulations governing how social media platforms police what the law calls "hateful conduct." The "Hateful Conduct Law" required that social media websites make it easy for users to report "incidents of hateful conduct," and to respond to complaints explaining how the matter is being handled. Carter began his ruling by citing the Supreme Court's 2017 Matal v. Tam decision in which the justices unanimously ruled that a federal law prohibiting trademark names that disparage others was unconstitutional because "speech may not be banned on the grounds that it expresses ideas that offend." After calling the law "well-intentioned," Carter explained his decision. "Yet, the First Amendment protects from state regulation speech that may be deemed 'hateful' and generally disfavors regulation of speech based on its content unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest," Carter wrote in his decision. "The Hateful Conduct Law both compels social media networks to speak about the contours of hate speech and chills the constitutionally protected speech of social media users, without articulating a compelling governmental interest or ensuring that the law is narrowly tailored to that goal. "In the face of our national commitment to the free expression of speech, even where that speech is offensive or repugnant, Plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction, prohibiting enforcement of the law, is GRANTED." Carter said the law overreached. "The Hateful Conduct Law does not merely require that a social media network provide its users with a mechanism to complain about instances of 'hateful conduct,'" Carter wrote. "The law also requires that a social media network must make a ‘policy’ available on its website which details how the network will respond to a complaint of hateful content. "In other words, the law requires that social media networks devise and implement a written policy — i.e., speech." https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/14/exclusive-secret-china-donations-to-university-of-delaware-soared-after-the-opening-of-the-biden-institute/ Secret China Donations to University of Delaware Soared After the Opening of the Biden Institute A second university has been found to have received more than $6.7 million in anonymous donations from China, including direct funding from the Chinese government, after Joe Biden set up a program there in his name, according to a Government Accountability Institute analysis. The revelation comes following reporting that anonymous China-linked funds flowing to the University of Pennsylvania almost tripled after the inauguration of the Penn-Biden Center, which illegally housed classified documents. On March 13, 2017, less than seven weeks after concluding his second term as vice president, Joe Biden announced the founding of the Biden Institute at his home state’s University of Delaware (UD). According to the announcement, part of Biden’s “vision for the institute is an annual conference at UD, similar to the World Economic Forum or the Aspen Institute.” At the time of Biden’s announcement at UD, multiple members of the Biden family were working on deals worth millions of dollars with foreign businessmen linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. And Biden’s other university program at the University of Pennsylvania was apparently housing classified documents from the Obama-Biden administration in an improper way. Prior to hosting the Biden Institute, UD had never disclosed any funding from China. One year later (and just two months after the Penn Biden center opened its D.C. office), anonymous donations from China to UD skyrocketed. The first payment came in April 2018 in the amount of $3,204,070 from an anonymous donor in China. In December 2018, another anonymous donation from China arrived for $1,869,515. A third anonymous China-linked payment, for $624,904, arrived in December 2019. In 2020, the year that Biden was campaigning for president, anonymous Chinese state-linked entities sent three more payments totaling $1,005,761 to UD, the bulk of which arrived after Biden had been declared the president-elect. Three of these donations from China—with a combined total of $1,005,761—were reported as coming from a “Foreign Government Source,” according to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) records assembled from information reported to the DOE by the University of Delaware. It should be noted that, according to the available records, none the donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania following the creation of the Penn Biden Center appear to have been reported to the DOE as coming from a “Foreign Government Source” — a fact which led at least one fact-checker to conclude that the Penn Biden Center was being unfairly labeled as “China-funded” because the influx of funding from China to UPenn following its establishment was not given this DOE identifier. However, three donations originating from China to the University of Delaware in the years following the launch of the Biden Institute clearly bear the “Foreign Government Source” identifier. The actual DOE record field for this identifier asks, “Is this funding from a government?” For these three donations, the answer supplied by the University of Delaware is “Yes,” as seen in the three images below taken from the DOE website (highlight added for emphasis). Neither the Biden Institute nor the UD have responded to requests to identify the Chinese donors or explain why the Chinese government decided to fund UD after the Biden Institute was created. Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Biden Institute is how it was conceived. The initial idea for Biden Institute at UD was apparently hatched by Joe’s son, Hunter Biden, while the elder Biden was still the vice president. In March 2016, Hunter Biden met with UD’s incoming president, Dr. Dennis Assanis, as Hunter and his business associates were making plans to create a “stage” to promote the “Biden brand,” emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show. Other emails on the laptop indicate that Hunter and his business associates were concerned about boosting Joe’s “future earnings potential,” while Joe was still the vice president. New Saint Andrews: Today’s culture shifts like sand, but New Saint Andrews College is established on Christ, the immovable rock. The college is a premier institution that forges evangelical leaders who don’t fear or hate the world. Guided by God’s word, equipped with the genius of classical liberal arts and God-honoring wisdom, with a faculty dedicated to academic rigor and to God’s kingdom, New Saint Andrews College offers an education that frees people. Logic and language, hard work and joyful courage, old books and godly professors — New Saint Andrews Colleges provides time-tested resources that can equip your student for any vocation. To find out more, visit: nsa.edu https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/14/south-dakota-bans-child-sex-changes-kristi-noem-transgender/ South Dakota Bans Child Sex Changes Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed legislation Monday banning both surgical and nonsurgical sex change procedures for minors. The “Help Not Harm” bill bars health care providers from prescribing minors puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or performing cross-sex surgeries on minors. Doctors found violating the law will have their medical licenses revoked. The move comes amid a broader push from red states to crack down on the procedures. Patients harmed by violations of the new law have three years, or until they turn 25, to seek civil damages; whichever date is later, according to the bill. The legislation takes effect July 1, and health care professionals may keep patients on cross-sex drug regimens through the end of the year if they determine it’s necessary to gradually wean them off the drugs for the sake of their health. While cross-sex genital surgeries are rare for minors, numerous clinics and hospitals offer puberty blockers, hormones and mastectomies to minors as part of the gender transition process; the procedures are still legal at the federal level and in most states.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Thursday, February 16th, 2023. CrossPolination Ad Did you guys know that you can sign up for a club membership, a magazine subscription, AND tickets to the Ark Encounter all in one place?! That’s some crosspollination right there! Fightlaughfeast.com is your one-stop-shop for everything CrossPolitic. Here’s what you should do. You should sign up for a club membership, then sign up for the Ark Encounter for a $100 discount off of your purchase, and then sign up for a magazine subscription. We’ve even got our own social media platform built into our website now for our club members… once you’re a club member, you’ll get access to exclusive content like a Bible Study series with Pastor Toby, a special series with New Saint Andrews President, Dr. ben Merkle, all of our back-stage content, and all of our conference talks, with more to come! There really hasn’t been a better time to be a CrossPolitic Club Member. Sign up today, at fightlaughfeast.com. That’s fightlaughfeast.com. https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-buffalo-supermarket-shooter-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-without-parole?utm_campaign=64487 Buffalo supermarket shooter sentenced to life in prison without parole Buffalo supermarket mass shooter Payton Gendron was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and domestic terrorism, among other charges. Gendron killed 10 people in a racially motivated massacre in Buffalo, New York last year. He pleaded guilty to all 15 counts brought by Buffalo prosecutors. https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/first-amendment-court-blocks/2023/02/15/id/1108781/ Federal Judge Blocks N.Y. Law Mandating Social Media 'Hateful Conduct' Policies A federal judge has blocked New York's new law that prohibits hate speech on social media, ruling the measure violates the Constitution's protection of free speech. U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. on Tuesday, in Volokh v. James, sided with the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog and Peter Thiel-backed video site Rumble Inc., which claimed the law will hurt online services and silence disfavored viewpoints. New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul in June signed a legislative package that included new regulations governing how social media platforms police what the law calls "hateful conduct." The "Hateful Conduct Law" required that social media websites make it easy for users to report "incidents of hateful conduct," and to respond to complaints explaining how the matter is being handled. Carter began his ruling by citing the Supreme Court's 2017 Matal v. Tam decision in which the justices unanimously ruled that a federal law prohibiting trademark names that disparage others was unconstitutional because "speech may not be banned on the grounds that it expresses ideas that offend." After calling the law "well-intentioned," Carter explained his decision. "Yet, the First Amendment protects from state regulation speech that may be deemed 'hateful' and generally disfavors regulation of speech based on its content unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest," Carter wrote in his decision. "The Hateful Conduct Law both compels social media networks to speak about the contours of hate speech and chills the constitutionally protected speech of social media users, without articulating a compelling governmental interest or ensuring that the law is narrowly tailored to that goal. "In the face of our national commitment to the free expression of speech, even where that speech is offensive or repugnant, Plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction, prohibiting enforcement of the law, is GRANTED." Carter said the law overreached. "The Hateful Conduct Law does not merely require that a social media network provide its users with a mechanism to complain about instances of 'hateful conduct,'" Carter wrote. "The law also requires that a social media network must make a ‘policy’ available on its website which details how the network will respond to a complaint of hateful content. "In other words, the law requires that social media networks devise and implement a written policy — i.e., speech." https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/14/exclusive-secret-china-donations-to-university-of-delaware-soared-after-the-opening-of-the-biden-institute/ Secret China Donations to University of Delaware Soared After the Opening of the Biden Institute A second university has been found to have received more than $6.7 million in anonymous donations from China, including direct funding from the Chinese government, after Joe Biden set up a program there in his name, according to a Government Accountability Institute analysis. The revelation comes following reporting that anonymous China-linked funds flowing to the University of Pennsylvania almost tripled after the inauguration of the Penn-Biden Center, which illegally housed classified documents. On March 13, 2017, less than seven weeks after concluding his second term as vice president, Joe Biden announced the founding of the Biden Institute at his home state’s University of Delaware (UD). According to the announcement, part of Biden’s “vision for the institute is an annual conference at UD, similar to the World Economic Forum or the Aspen Institute.” At the time of Biden’s announcement at UD, multiple members of the Biden family were working on deals worth millions of dollars with foreign businessmen linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. And Biden’s other university program at the University of Pennsylvania was apparently housing classified documents from the Obama-Biden administration in an improper way. Prior to hosting the Biden Institute, UD had never disclosed any funding from China. One year later (and just two months after the Penn Biden center opened its D.C. office), anonymous donations from China to UD skyrocketed. The first payment came in April 2018 in the amount of $3,204,070 from an anonymous donor in China. In December 2018, another anonymous donation from China arrived for $1,869,515. A third anonymous China-linked payment, for $624,904, arrived in December 2019. In 2020, the year that Biden was campaigning for president, anonymous Chinese state-linked entities sent three more payments totaling $1,005,761 to UD, the bulk of which arrived after Biden had been declared the president-elect. Three of these donations from China—with a combined total of $1,005,761—were reported as coming from a “Foreign Government Source,” according to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) records assembled from information reported to the DOE by the University of Delaware. It should be noted that, according to the available records, none the donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania following the creation of the Penn Biden Center appear to have been reported to the DOE as coming from a “Foreign Government Source” — a fact which led at least one fact-checker to conclude that the Penn Biden Center was being unfairly labeled as “China-funded” because the influx of funding from China to UPenn following its establishment was not given this DOE identifier. However, three donations originating from China to the University of Delaware in the years following the launch of the Biden Institute clearly bear the “Foreign Government Source” identifier. The actual DOE record field for this identifier asks, “Is this funding from a government?” For these three donations, the answer supplied by the University of Delaware is “Yes,” as seen in the three images below taken from the DOE website (highlight added for emphasis). Neither the Biden Institute nor the UD have responded to requests to identify the Chinese donors or explain why the Chinese government decided to fund UD after the Biden Institute was created. Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Biden Institute is how it was conceived. The initial idea for Biden Institute at UD was apparently hatched by Joe’s son, Hunter Biden, while the elder Biden was still the vice president. In March 2016, Hunter Biden met with UD’s incoming president, Dr. Dennis Assanis, as Hunter and his business associates were making plans to create a “stage” to promote the “Biden brand,” emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show. Other emails on the laptop indicate that Hunter and his business associates were concerned about boosting Joe’s “future earnings potential,” while Joe was still the vice president. New Saint Andrews: Today’s culture shifts like sand, but New Saint Andrews College is established on Christ, the immovable rock. The college is a premier institution that forges evangelical leaders who don’t fear or hate the world. Guided by God’s word, equipped with the genius of classical liberal arts and God-honoring wisdom, with a faculty dedicated to academic rigor and to God’s kingdom, New Saint Andrews College offers an education that frees people. Logic and language, hard work and joyful courage, old books and godly professors — New Saint Andrews Colleges provides time-tested resources that can equip your student for any vocation. To find out more, visit: nsa.edu https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/14/south-dakota-bans-child-sex-changes-kristi-noem-transgender/ South Dakota Bans Child Sex Changes Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed legislation Monday banning both surgical and nonsurgical sex change procedures for minors. The “Help Not Harm” bill bars health care providers from prescribing minors puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or performing cross-sex surgeries on minors. Doctors found violating the law will have their medical licenses revoked. The move comes amid a broader push from red states to crack down on the procedures. Patients harmed by violations of the new law have three years, or until they turn 25, to seek civil damages; whichever date is later, according to the bill. The legislation takes effect July 1, and health care professionals may keep patients on cross-sex drug regimens through the end of the year if they determine it’s necessary to gradually wean them off the drugs for the sake of their health. While cross-sex genital surgeries are rare for minors, numerous clinics and hospitals offer puberty blockers, hormones and mastectomies to minors as part of the gender transition process; the procedures are still legal at the federal level and in most states.

Toby Davis is joined by Eugene Volokh to discuss his blog the Volokh Conspiracy and, along with Rumble and Locals, a challenge to New York's Law that requires Social Media Networks to publish a plan for for responding to alleged hate speech by users. Eugene wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “NEW YORK STATE WANTS TO CONSCRIPT ME TO VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION”. We discuss this article and the implications of a law that Volokh says "violates the First Amendment" by opening the door to define hate speech at the State government level. Eugene Volokh is a Ukrainian-American legal scholar known for his scholarship in American constitutional law and libertarianism as well as his prominent legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Volokh is regarded as an expert on the First Amendment. He is the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law and is an academic affiliate at the law firm Mayor Brown.Ready the WSJ Article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-state...Read the Volokh Conspiracy here: https://reason.com/volokh/To learn more about the Podcast, visit:https://www.unitynowpodcast.comMake sure to like and subscribe to UnityNow! to get weekly content about the Unity movement!Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnityNowPodcastTwitter: https://twitter.com/UnityNowPodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/unitynowpodcast

In this episode of Real Talk, KJK Student Defense Attorneys Susan Stone and Kristina Supler are joined by Eugene Volokh, a leading First Amendment Law Professor from UCLA.  Topics they discuss are related to the First Amendment.  The conversation includes how the internet impacts Free Speech, what responsibilities the Social Media Platforms have towards free speech, and how Free Speech impacts abortion, fraternities and sororities, as well as housing laws. Links: Eugene Volokh's Bio (UCLA Webpage) Free Speech Rules Videos:  https://FreeSpeechRules.org Show Notes: (02:40)  Has the internet changed the First Amendment on Free Speech (03:33)  How the Supreme Court views Online versus Offline Free Speech (04:41)  How Search Engines Can Reveal Your Court Case (06:08)  How Posting on Social Media Can Open You To a Lawsuit (06:44)  What Posts Can You Go to Jail For (08:05)  Do Social Platforms Have the Legal Right To Remove People From Their Platforms? (13:35)  Do Social Platforms Have the Legal Right to Curtail Hate Speech (15:40)  What is Doxing?  How Can Social Platforms Prevent This from Happening to You (16:58)  What Courts Say About Publishing Your Information (19:39)  Should Schools Police What Students Are Publishing (20:14)  What Rights to Public Universities Have For Policing Students Posts (21:39)  Private Universities: What Rights Do They Have For Policing Posts (23:07)  Can Admissions Departments Reject Students for Previous Posts (25:33)  How First Amendment Protections Extend to Clothing (26:20)  How a Toy Gun Can Land a Student In Hot Water (28:16)  Students Today and Views on the First Amendment (30:49)  Can People Protest For Protections Related to Criminal Conduct (32:24)  Can People Get Exemptions By Saying a Law is Against Their Religion? (33:10)  What is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (35:07)  Can Businesses Prevent Men and Women From Working Together Based On Religious Beliefs? (36:58)  Can a Woman Get A Religious Exemption For Abortion Where It's Illegal (40:30)  How Courts Protect Your Right to Expressive Association (41:49)  Under What Circumstances Can You Exclude Someone From Living With You Based on Race, Sex, Sexual Orientation (44:03)  First Amendments Rights and Fraternities and Sororities. Transcript: Susan Stone: Kristina, can we geek out today and talk about the First Amendment?  Kristina Supler: I think we do that every day, but  Susan Stone: let's, okay. But let's talk on our podcast about the First Amendment, because our practice is often at the intersection of free speech when it impacts and conflicts with different types of student issues, like cancel culture or when students get disciplined, or Greek life issues like the Freedom of Association, uh, less often discussed First Amendment issue. Susan Stone: And it's difficult to balance the idea of the free exchange of ideas versus saying whatever you want, just because you wanna say it when you wanna say it and where you wanna say it. And it seems like everybody today is a lot less tolerant of views that aren't their own and cancel culture is becoming a very large part of our practice, which is why we launched our reputation management section. Kristina Supler: We are very pleased to be joined today by Professor Eugene Volokh who is a leading First Amendment scholar at U C L A, where he teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church, and state relations law, among many other classes. Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and the US Supreme Court, and also for Judge Alex Kazinski on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who's also very well known,  Susan Stone: uh, and a court we've practiced  Kristina Supler: in. That's right. Yep. Um, Eugene is renowned for his textbook on the First Amendment, and he's actually one of the most cited law review article authors in our country. He's also the founder and co-author of the Highly Regarded Legal Blog, the Volokh Conspiracy, which is now hosted at reason.com. Kristina Supler: Thanks for joining us today. Oh, very much.  Eugene Volokh: My pleasure.  Susan Stone: And I should say I seasoned him. He was at a conference that we were at and you saw me inching up to Eugene, and I'm thinking I am going to make this person my friend, and talk about the First Amendment with him. So thank you for being on our podcast. Susan Stone: We're gonna start with a question broadly for our listeners. Eugene, how has the internet changed the way we view the First Amendment and freedom of speech in a very big way? And then we will drill down and funnel down that question  Eugene Volokh: well, depends on, uh, whom you mean by we. It hasn't so far, at least seemingly changed the way the justices view free speech or generally lower court judges, or in many ways, lawyers generally speaking the same kind of speech that is constitutionally protected offline is constitutionally protected online and vice versa. Eugene Volokh: Occasionally there have been times when. First Amendment law has turned a lot on the medium of expression, so for example, radio and television. Broadcast radio, television, not cable, let's say. Were, uh, were and probably still are seen as more regulatable for historical reasons. From the 19 teens to the 1950s, movies were seen as not really protected by the First Amendment, but the internet ever since near its birth as a popular medium. Eugene Volokh: Back in 1997, the Supreme Court said, speech on the internet is, Treated under the same rules as speech off line. So as a legal matter the internet hasn't changed First Amendment law much. Now I do think that people's reactions to various free speech questions may be affected by the internet. So, for example, I think a lot of people view things like Facebook and Twitter, those kinds of social media platforms, YouTube also and TikTok and various others as kind of part of their right to free speech and they get upset, understandably. Eugene Volokh: When those platforms restrict them, even though they're private platforms. So people would've probably said if the, if the New York Times refuses to publish my letter to the editor, well, of course, you know, they only publish as few too bad, but. But that's fine. Plus they get to decide where they want to publish and what they don't. Eugene Volokh: But I think the same people might very well bristle if Twitter or Facebook de deletes their posts for understandable reasons. Again. and, and there's an interesting question of whether that should affect the legal understanding, but but my guess is that at least it does affect people's understanding. Eugene Volokh: Another example has to do with access to court records. There's a longstanding tradition That material and court records is open to the public. Open to everybody. Yes. But it used to be before the internet. That meant that if you really wanted to get something on a court record, like maybe if you were a reporter and you were being to pay to write about lawsuits, you'd go to the courthouse, you'd go to the basement, you'd look at the, uh, at the files and you'd write about it. Eugene Volokh: But most, most court records would be basically invisible to. Now that they're all on the internet and often directly searchable, people get really upset that every case that they've been involved in, whether it was a witness as a plaintiffs, the defendant is a criminal defendant, as a victim, is now on the internet. Eugene Volokh: And people Google their names and they, they figure out uh, the stuff about them. So again, I do think the internet changes people's perceptions of information, of speech and the like, even if it hasn't changed the legal rules, at least. That's  Kristina Supler: actually a perfect segue to the next question I wanted to ask you, which is when you are speaking to, let's just say lay people, not, not judges or lawyers and, and speaking generally or more broadly about the First Amendment, what do you say? Kristina Supler: In terms of people who sort of have this idea that, well, on the internet, I'm, I'm an anonymous person, I can say whatever I want. It's the internet, it's the worldwide web. What do you say in terms of, well, maybe not quite there, there are some repercussions  Susan Stone: and that would be contained in the terms of service of the providers? Eugene Volokh: Oh, well, I think there are two questions lurking in here. One is somebody posts something. That, let's say, accuses someone else of some crime and then they get sued for libel too, not a newspaper. Why are you suing me for libel? Well, it turns out that. There are restrictions on speech. So for example, if you, especially if you say something knowingly false about someone else that damages the reputation, you could get sued and maybe, maybe before the internet, if you just said it orally, probably would be a lot harder to catch you and, but with the internet now, you could get caught. Eugene Volokh: Likewise, if you post something threatening. You could get prosecuted for a threat and people might say, well, what about free speech? Well, there are some narrow but significant exceptions to free speech, like for true threats of illegal conduct, like for defamation such as libel and the like. So people do have to remember that something that they just whip out in and angry or drunk or foolish moment. Eugene Volokh: To me, never, never you damaging. Today, , there's a separate question. Which is, well, what if it's something that violates, say, Twitter's terms of service or it doesn't even violate them. You know, private entities can generally remove your material or kick you off uh, for, uh, for whatever reasons they want right now. Eugene Volokh: At the same time though so how is that different from the things we started? Well, first of all, you're the, the, the downside to you, we have technology is pretty limited. Like people value their ability to tweet or value their ability to post on Facebook. But I think most people would rather, would rather get kicked off of Twitter than go to jail. Eugene Volokh: Uh, I would agree. ,  Susan Stone: my god, that is a bold statement, but, Would you take the position that you agree with decisions to pull someone off of Twitter like Kanye West or Donald Trump?  Eugene Volokh: Well, so it lot depends on what you mean by a Greek. So for example, I, I think that that large wealthy platform corporations like Twitter and Facebook should not be. Eugene Volokh: Essentially interfering with public debate about elections by taking government officials or candidates for office and kicking them off of their sites. Now, maybe they have the right to do that. They certainly have the legal right to do that. At least in most states. There's some state laws try to limit that. Eugene Volokh: It's an interesting question whether they're constitutional, but they might very well have the legal right to do that. One might still say that's not really good for. When a platform, just because it happens to have a lot of users and be economically extraordinarily wealthy and powerful, that it should be able to leverage that economic power into political power. Eugene Volokh: So that's a lot more of a concern with regard to candidates may still be applicable to Kayne West. Well, by the way, I think he is talking about running. For president, but uh, think it's particularly dangerous when they do that with regard to credible candidates for office. Because if an election, which could have been 51 49, 1 way is swung 51 49 another way because. Eugene Volokh: Uh, Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk or, uh, Zuckerberg decide that they, that they don't like a particular kind of speech, even for good reason, decide that that may be something we might be troubled by. We may say they should have the legal right to do this, but we might suggest that they ought not do it. Eugene Volokh: There's a separate question of may the government step in and say, You might think that you are like a newspaper, which gets to decide what's in it, put in its pages. You might think you're like a bookstore, which gets to decide what books to sell. But we think you're actually more like the phone company, which isn't entitled to say, we're gonna cut off someone's phone line because they're communists. Eugene Volokh: Or they're recruiting for the kkk, or they're recruiting for Antifa, or something like that. So, Is that permissible? Would it be permissible for the government to say, we're so worried about you being able to leverage your economic power and your ownership of this tremendously important means of communication into political power that we're gonna require you to be viewpoint neutral in your decision. Eugene Volokh: So not to kick off people because they're racist or anti-Semites, or because they're spreading particular views about covid or about elections or. That's an interesting and difficult question, and maybe the answer is that those platforms would have the right not to say, recommend certain posts not to pitch those posts to users as you might be interested in this or that because that's their speech, but might be required to host it, to host those posts on their. Eugene Volokh: So it could be that certain kinds of regulations as to the, what I call the hosting function of platforms are constitutionally permissible, whereas regulations of what I call the recommendation function of the platforms, which is a lot more, their speech would be impermissible.  Eugene Volokh: So I am really wrestling with that. Eugene Volokh: Is the, are these providers more like a telephone service company and we don't want the government listening in our co in on our conversation? Well, Eugene Volokh: I'm sorry if I can interrupt. I just wanna make clear the telephone point is not about privacy, it's not about confidentiality. Thank you. Even if somebody is widely known to be using a telephone line as a communist recruitment line, or a kkk, get out the vote line. Eugene Volokh: They're promoting it this way. Nobody's listening in on anything. It's well. still, then a phone company is not allowed to say, we're going to cancel your phone line because we think you're using it for evil purposes. No phone companies have to serve everybody so long as they, so long as they pay they can't engage in viewpoint based discrimination among their subscribers as opposed to, uh, among their users, let's say, the people who have phone lines as opposed to say a newspaper, which. Eugene Volokh: And probably should decide which op-eds to publish based in part on their viewpoint. Susan Stone: Thank you for that clarification. Would the barometer of censorship move up as the language moves from hate to calling for violence? Does that change your view? Is that like yelling? Fire in a theater. When you get on Twitter and say, this person is bad, cancel them, hurt them, or this candidate, let's storm the capitol. Susan Stone: I mean, when do you think there is the obligation? When does it really change from a moral obligation to a legal obligation to intervene?  Eugene Volokh: Okay, so again, we have. Several different things going on here. One is shouting fire in a crowded theater. I just wanna make it clear, the Supreme Court did say in a case, which actually since then has been overruled in considerable measure shank of the United States, uh, that the First Amendment doesn't protect falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and thereby starting a panic. Eugene Volokh: So that was already a pretty narrow category of things that indeed are legally punish. So I wanna bracket this question of shouting fire in a crowded theater, falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater. It's, I, it's often used as an analogy, but it actually isn't much of an analogy because, precisely because to the extent the court has endorsed it, it's really very narrow. Eugene Volokh: It has to do with, with falsehoods that risk, knowing falsehoods, really that risk, imminent, imminent stampe, imminent loss of life. the second question is should platforms make, distinguish between. So-called hate speech, which could just be the spreading of opinions sharply critical of racial groups or religious groups. Eugene Volokh: By the way, that's very common for people to sharply criticize religions or of sexual orientations or gender identities or of sexist or whatever else, and calling for violence and yeah, I could imagine a platform saying, look, we are open to all sorts of viewpoints, but not the viewpoint that you should go out there and act violent. Eugene Volokh: So if you say, let's go out there and kill the Jews, or if you say, let's go out there and kill police officers. Or if you say, let's go out there and engage in violent revolution and kill the oppressive capitalists. Or let's go out there and kill the spoilers of the earth. Who are who are polluting our, our atmosphere with with greenhouse gases, whatever your ideology may be. Eugene Volokh: If you're calling for violence, we're gonna kick you off. I think, you know, you could imagine a platform plausibly saying, I think. , look, this is, this is something where we draw the line. We're gonna accept a wide range of views, including about race, about religion and such, but not if you call violence. So, so you could imagine that. Eugene Volokh: Now again, phone companies can't even do that, right? Uh, but you can imagine that possibly being a reasonable position for a company uh, to take. There's a third cat question though. Okay. Which maybe returns.  Eugene Volokh: Yeah, I wanna bring a scenario to you, and it might be that third category. Kristina and I had a case around a year ago where, uh, students were considered unpopular for various reasons on campus, and they were doxed, and these, our clients were terrified that their families were. Eugene Volokh: Going to be hurt. And I think that doxing has become a much bigger problem on college campuses. Eugene Volokh: So I'm gonna need you to define doxing. because people have used doxing to mean a lot of things. Okay. Tell me what you mean by doxing.  Kristina Supler: Publicly outing someone's home address telephone number so that other people can gang up on them and sort of got it. Kristina Supler: Espouse the mob and town. .  Eugene Volokh: So that's a very interesting question. So you're talk, uh, about whether it should be permissible for the government or maybe just for a public university with regard to its students, to forbid the publication of people's home addresses and phone numbers. The reason it sounds so appealing is you can have all sorts of public debates by and large, without knowing people's home addresses or phone numbers. Eugene Volokh: So one could imagine such a rule, and in fact there are a. Few statutes that do target that, or even more clearly like social security numbers. Very hard to see how my social security number is going to be relevant to some public debate. So you could argue that that's the kind of thing that should be restrict. Eugene Volokh: By the, the courts have not really been quite firm, even on social security numbers. They haven't had a lot of occasion to deal with it when there have been attempts to outlaw the publication of home addresses, usually focused on home addresses, say have police officers and others. Oh, legislators is another case that I was actually involved in as a lawyer. Eugene Volokh: Courts have said, no, it's unconstitutional to ban such publication, and there are various reasons. One of them, by the way, is that in most of the country, it is legal to picket it outside someone's home. I'm not wild about residential picketing, but it's a tactic that has been used and continues to be used by the left and by the right, by various groups on the left and on the right. Eugene Volokh: And if there is a legal right as there is in most places it could be restricted by ordinances or statutes, but most places don't ban residential picketing. If there's a legal right to picket someone's home, there has to be a legal right to inform. Home to this place that, cuz that's the home we're gonna be picketing. Eugene Volokh: So that's what makes that pretty complicated. But note Gary, you said, you said at home addresses and phone numbers, I often hear doxing used to refer to other things like, for example, a person's identity, the identity of a person who would rather remain anonymous. Like somebody who is a, an anonymous online commenter and somebody says, we think they're a troll. Eugene Volokh: We're gonna track them down and we're gonna tell you this is the person's name. Well, that could lead to possible threats against the person. It's also the sort of thing that newspapers pretty routinely do too, right? Like if you write a story about someone who'd rather not be written about, they could say, you're doxing me. Eugene Volokh: You're revealing my personal information. What's that information? My name? Well, it is personal information, but we. Have to have the right to talk about people's names and to find, figure out who's the person who's anonymously doing this or that. Likewise, sometimes people say, well, uh, this person docks me by revealing the name of my employer. Eugene Volokh: Well, that too might be relevant for a variety of reasons, both to figure out, let's say if the anonymous commenter is hired by somebody, maybe they gives them a conflict of interest if they'll say anonymous journalist or a popular tweeter or something like that. Also, sometimes people do organize. Or threatened boycots of employers because of the speech of their employees. Eugene Volokh: I don't approve of that as a general matter. But but in many places it's legal. And again, if that's legal, then you have to be able to identify whom you need to threaten to boycott. Hmm.  Kristina Supler: Eugene, I wanna switch gears a little bit. So Susan and I represent students across the country involved in a lot of different types of matters, general student misconduct, title ix, so on and so forth. Kristina Supler: I'm wondering what are your thoughts on whether schools should get involved in sort of policing what students post on the internet?  Eugene Volokh: Well, at least it de, it depends on what kind of. Uh, so  Kristina Supler: course private, private ,  Eugene Volokh: public versus private college versus high school. Yeah, high school versus elementary school. Eugene Volokh: That's actually gonna be our follow  Kristina Supler: up  Eugene Volokh: question, so let's take an example and also what kind of things are they, are they posting? So let's take an example. Let's say UCLA starts policing what people post by threatening to expel them for racist posts. That's a first amendment. If that's the policy, it's open and shut, unconstitutional. Eugene Volokh: And whoever is targeted by this should sue and they'll get, they'll get money, or at least their lawyers will get attorney fees. Uh, so, so that's, oh, that's good. always, that's always, you're  Susan Stone: speaking my language, .  Eugene Volokh: Exactly. . So, okay, so that's an example. But let's look even at the public university context. Eugene Volokh: Let's say the university says, you know, we've been hearing about various threats of violence. It could be racist violence, or it could just be, you know, there's chatter, like there's a strike going on and there's chatter about maybe vandalizing government buildings, uh, university building. And of hurting another  Susan Stone: student  Eugene Volokh: or of hurting another student, which is what we deal with Sore gonna do, is we're gonna monitor that, maybe hire someone to search for these things, maybe set up some ai, like talk to our computer science department. Eugene Volokh: Can you set up an AI that monitors tweaks to see if there are, if there seem to be references to things connected to our university, and then have somebody probably, it's not. And AI would have to be some human looking through and saying, oh, wait a minute. That either that, maybe that looks like a death threat and that's something we should prosecute someone for. Eugene Volokh: Or maybe even, it doesn't look like it's illegal itself, but it's useful information for us to know because maybe we wanna have more police presence at someplace or something like that. Or, or alternatively, let's say that it's not a threat of. What it is, is somebody posting, posting, uh, information about forthcoming exams that they managed to hack into somebody's computer. Eugene Volokh: Right. Oh, we know.  Susan Stone: Yes. We had those cases.  Eugene Volokh: Right, right. You know, you'd think that universities ought to be policing that public or private, doesn't really matter. Now, what if it's a private university? What if it's Harvard that decides we're gonna expel people who express anti-trans views? I think that would be very bad. Eugene Volokh: I don't think it's unconstitutional because Harvard's a private, if they do it university. Well, if they do it, I think that's a violation of academic freedom principles. It may be a violation of, of academic freedom policies that they've adopted as contracts in California, by the way, they weren't Harvard, but if we were Stanford, California has a statute that bars. Eugene Volokh: Private universities, generally speaking, there's an important exception we'll get to from expelling students based on, on their speech and otherwise disciplining students based  Susan Stone: on their speech. And I do wanna say, when I say they, I don't mean Harvard in particular listeners out there. I am saying though, that schools, that generally, schools generally, I wanna make that clarification in fact. Susan Stone: Eugene, we had cases where college admissions were revoked when school admissions committees were informed after an acceptance of students. We've had a couple of those cases that students, when they were 16, 15, made comments that were. Either consider racist or sexist. Mm-hmm. and against the values of the institution. Susan Stone: So there is a lot going on when schools find out about certain types of  Eugene Volokh: speech. Right, right. And I do think that that kind of policing is improper. And again, a private university may be free to do that, but I don't think it should, but, . Let's assume that this is particular kind of university, which is known as a theological seminary. Eugene Volokh: Mm-hmm. , where they say, you know, we believe in some particular religious viewpoint and we want to train future ministers of that viewpoint. And you've just been posting about how you're an atheist. Or posting things that, that, maybe not even an atheist, cuz then why would you want to come, come, uh, to study at our school? Eugene Volokh: You're a heretic, right? You claim you are a good ex Methodist, let's say, but really your views are ones we do not want around our institution. You know, I would cut, I, I would be more open to the, that kind of university doing it in part. My sense is a lot of these places, not all of them, I think some theological seminaries do, and some religious schools more broadly do make a big thing out of how they are open to all sorts of views. Eugene Volokh: But if some of them do in fact say, you know, we're, we're not there to educate everybody regardless of viewpoint. We are there. Promo promulgate our understanding of the gospel. Well then it's something more plausible for them to say, we're trying to build a community of people who think like us and not people who think differently from us. Eugene Volokh: So, so again, that's just the university level at the high school and the junior high school and elementary school level, it may be even even different. So that's, That's why it's, uh, it's hard to answer these questions in the abstract,  Susan Stone: so we'll drill down. We have every, typically it's either after spring break, we have a number of cases where younger kiddos, especially junior high students, middle school age, love posting pictures of themselves, either with toy guns or a bullet or the ubiquitous. Susan Stone: Hitler mustache, and we usually have to deal with those cases because they are, they usually get issued a suspension or expulsion notice.  Eugene Volokh: Right. Well, so I think a lot depends on the circumstances. A lot depends on whether there's evidence of substantial disruption. For example, something may depend on whether it's in a context where it looks like it's threatening or where it targets a particular person at the same time. Eugene Volokh: I've been involved in some cases where uh, there were attempts to punish students for just not even punish them, but just to stop them from wearing t-shirts that depict weapons to school. Well, and they, they were wearing some disciplined mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And they, and they. Where, for example, some t-shirts that support gun rights, that have a picture of a gun or that have the logo of a pro-gun rights organization that has a gun on it. Eugene Volokh: They were told not to wear it and courts generally say no, they have a First Amendment right to wear it. There's no, there's no pictures of guns exception to the First Amendment, Kristina. So likewise with toy guns, if somebody, if a school were to say, you are not allowed to pose even outside school on the internet with a toy gun. Eugene Volokh: I think that's a First Amendment violation. Now, if what was happening is these, that the student had a picture of himself with a gun that doesn't look like a toy gun, turns out it's a toy gun, doesn't look like a toy gun, and he's saying, teacher Jones, you know I'm gonna shoot you with this. Well, even if it turns out that he couldn't do it, cuz it's a toy gun, that may very well be a punishable. Eugene Volokh: Yeah.  Susan Stone: Kristina, don't you think we've come so far from Tinker Vido, the case where students prevailed in protecting their right to protest Vietnam to what's going on today. Do you think there's a difference?  Kristina Supler: Oh gosh. I mean, it's just, I, I keep coming back to the internet and the impact of the internet and these online platforms for students too. Kristina Supler: Cause of course, that's primarily the lens that we're sort of examining these issues through is from a student perspective, the level, what is said, the, the. persistence with what is said, the frequency, how people sort of jump on the bandwagon. And you know, I, I, I don't especially love the phrase cancel culture, but it's just a reality now and students are caught up in things so often, for better or for worse. Kristina Supler: It can be scary at times. Yeah.  Susan Stone: When we talk to students, if someone says something that is, they love the word, the, the word of 22 is not triggering. They don't like being gas lit. I don't know if you're hearing you gaslight me. Um, do kids. Fight. I think of Tinker Vido. I think of I'm 56 and how precious the First Amendment is. Susan Stone: Do you think students even value the First Amendment anymore, or is everyone just like, I, I'm triggered. You're causing me anxiety, you're causing me depression. I don't wanna talk about it. Don't say anything.  Eugene Volokh: Everyone is, a lot of people, students are a large  Susan Stone: group . Are  Kristina Supler: you suggesting that we ought not generalize Eugene Volokh: Well, I'd be hesitant to say that I know how people think. Including people that I spend very little time around. I spent very little time around, say K through 12 students. Except, except my, my kids who were one of whom just went to college, but they were both K through 12 for, for many years. And I saw some of their classmates, cause that's, they skipped high school Eugene Volokh: But, but, but that's a very, uh, narrow subset of the whole population. And I don't even know all. On top of that, if you're comparing to how things were back in Tinker v Des Moines Independent School District back in 1969 that's, uh, you know, I certainly don't know what kids those days thought. Right. And I don't think there were good surveys that we could look back on. Eugene Volokh: And then on top of that, I think, um, a lot of students may say, you know, we value free speech, but with some, except, And the fact is, almost all of us, even those who value free speech a lot, recognize some exception. Again, for threats or for liable or, or, or for the like. So what I think has happening out there is there are, if you're talking about students, there are many tens of millions of students. Eugene Volokh: Who have different views about who should be free to speak under which circumstances. And then on top of that, there are probably quite a few who haven't really thought hard about the subject. So as a consequence, you ask them a question in a survey, they may give you an answer just to get you off off their backs. Eugene Volokh: But it could be a different answer tomorrow when something ill different is in the news because it's not something that they're really. To rest on as a as a kind of a, a, a, with a definitive answer. So I don't know what students these days think. I have a much better sense of what the legal rules are because they are set forth in part by our hierarchical authority, by the Supreme Court, and I can read their, their opinions. Eugene Volokh: I, I can read the minds of tens of millions of student. I'd like to, it  Kristina Supler: indulge me as we do a little law school exam question. Let's talk about criminalization of abortion. We've obviously had a recent significance, Supreme Court ruling and how that sort of meshes with or intersects with free speech considerations, particularly on public college campuses. Kristina Supler: I'm curious what your thoughts are if students live in a state where abortion is illegal, are they free to publicly protest and rally for something? otherwise a, a crime. What other speech pre are there still speech protections for protests related to criminal conduct?  Eugene Volokh: Well, what, what you're, what you're describing is a protest that maybe that they may include just decriminalizing conduct. Eugene Volokh: Just like people are free to rally for decriminalizing marijuana in a case that, that, and excuse me, in a state that still bans marijuana, they're free to rally for decriminalizing abortion. , right? Or not even decriminalizing, but fully legalizing and funding abortion. I'm perfectly free to do that more. Eugene Volokh: What about  Susan Stone: religious considerations? What if you are a student, you find that you're pregnant and you are part of a religion where your clergy says, You know what? I don't think you are in a position. I think your health is endangered. You should go get an abortion. Do you think that the state has the right to interfere with that free exercise of what someone had going on between that person and their clergy? Eugene Volokh: Well, so the answers may be, but the important thing is that, or one important thing is we've now moved a lot from a right to speak to a right to act, right? So remember I said you don't, you have a right to. , you have a right to argue that marijuana should be legalized. You have a right to argue that heroin should be legalized. Eugene Volokh: Perfectly good arguments that both should be legalized. That doesn't necessarily doesn't mean that you have the right to actually use marijuana. Or to use heroin. And incidentally, marijuana is an example of where at least some religious groups, uh, do view it as a sacrament. And courts have generally said no to those kinds of claims. Eugene Volokh: So, so the one thing we know for sure is people can't just get an exemption from a generally applicable religion neutral law simply by saying, I don't like it, or It's against my religion, or, My spiritual leader tells me that it's a bad law or tells me we should violate that law that can't by itself be enough because then otherwise all of us could violate any laws we want just by announcing this is part of our religion. Eugene Volokh: Or maybe maybe joining some religion that authorizes that. So it's a very different question. The pre speech question is very different from freedom of action. Now as to freedom of action, it is quite complic. It so there's for example, a case that was just decided by a trial court in Indiana. Eugene Volokh: Indiana has a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It's modeled on a federal law that applies to federal statutes, but this one applies to state statutes in Indiana, these are called RRA for short. So the Indiana RRA says essentially that if the government substantially burdens somebody's religious belief through some regulation, then that person gets an exemption. Eugene Volokh: Unless the government can show that denying the exemption, that applying the law, notwithstanding the religious objection is narrowly tailored to compelling government interest. So let me give you an easy case under the law in favor of an exemption. Many courtrooms, as I understand it, probably most have a rule that says you can't wear hats in. Eugene Volokh: Agreed. Why? It's just sort of seen as disrespectful. It's not a, it's not a tremendously important rule, but it is the rule and you can't just say, I don't like this rule. I like my cap. Baseball cap. Nope, sorry. You wanna be in a courtroom. You gotta follow the rules. But let's say that hat is a Yamal cup or it's a Sikh turt, or it's a Muslim woman's or Orthodox Jewish woman's head scarf, let's say. Eugene Volokh: Or it's a Catholic nun. Headgear well, that there you might very well have an exemption. Why? Because the law prohibits you from doing something your religion tells you to do. That's the substantial burden part, and it's hard to see some compelling government interest in making sure that people not wear a headgear in, in court. Eugene Volokh: Maybe it's a. Legitimate interest, maybe even a substantial interest, but compelling. The law says it's gotta be very, very higher.  Susan Stone: So folks, so there's out there listening. I just wanna add, when we get calls about, I wanna be on a sports team and I want a Covid exemption. Yep.  Eugene Volokh: There you go. There you go. Eugene Volokh: And in states that have, uh, these kinds of RFRA rules, you may very well get such an exception. Okay, so let's look at ex at an example of something that, uh, that pretty clearly wouldn't. Uh, viewed as basis for an exemption. Let's say somebody says, you know, I, my religion tells me that men and women shouldn't work together because that's contrary to modesty rules. Eugene Volokh: So I'm not gonna hire this woman to work in this particular secluded place to right next to a man because, you know, he was there first and I'm not gonna fire him, and I'm not gonna hire a woman to work with him. That violates anti-discrimination. and, but the person says, you know, my religion tells me that it would be sinful for me to put men and women in a situation where there may be temptation. Eugene Volokh: Well, okay, maybe that substantially burdens your religious beliefs, but there's a compelling government interest in ensuring equal opportunity and employment and making sure that women or men or others aren't handicapped in, in getting in, in, in developing their careers this way. So that, so that's just a reminder that restrictions on conduct. Eugene Volokh: Are often permissible, even if restrictions on speech wouldn't be, let's say for example, he says, I want to speak out urging all anti-discrimination laws be repealed. He has every right to do that. The First Amendment obviously protects his right to argue in favor of the propriety of discrimination, even if it's illegal, because what's illegal now could be made legal later. Eugene Volokh: That's part of the political process, but it doesn't mean he can violate this law. So, one question, the abortion situation. Does the law substantially burden a woman's religious beliefs? So for that, she has to be able to sincerely testify that her religion is motivating her to get an abortion. So as I understand it, at least many rabbis say that. Eugene Volokh: Women should get an abortion to avoid threats to life. But of course, state laws already allow that. But also threats to physical and mental health. So if the woman concludes that she, that there would be really extremely mentally. Damaging for her to have another child whom she may be emotionally or financially unprepared to take care of. Eugene Volokh: Then in that case, she should get an abortion. So if that's so, and if the woman believes that, that's a substantial burden, by the way, if the woman just says, my religion tells me that abortions are fine, that's, that's not enough to trigger this religious exemption regime. The religion has to tell her that she actually should get it, not that it's her right to get it. Eugene Volokh: So then the question. Can the government show that there's a compelling interest in preventing abortions, and that's something that courts in those states are going to have to resolve. And that's one thing that makes this such a complicated question. How do you decide? I mean the, the statute says compelling government interest, but nobody has ever set up a clear rule as to what is a compelling government interest and what's not. Eugene Volokh: So that's what makes this an extra complicated question. Much more complicated than a lot of free speech  Susan Stone: questions. Yeah. Compelling to whom? What's compelling to you may not be compelling to me, Susan.  Eugene Volokh: I have. Right. Although the court, the statute seems to say compelling in the judges'. . That's  Susan Stone: right.  Kristina Supler: Yeah. Kristina Supler: Susan, we're here with the foremost first Amendment scholar expert in our country. I want you to ask him a question about fraternities.  Susan Stone: Are you ready? are you ready for Let's go deep. Okay. Because it's gonna be our final question. We represent a lot of students in hazing cases, and we see a lot of campuses. Susan Stone: The minute there's an allegation of hazing. Shut down the fraternity. Do students have a First Amendment associational Right to gather in a Greek organization? And, you know, do I have the right to drink beer with people under the same Greek letters or can colleges say you're out, you don't, how does that whole Right to free association. Susan Stone: I always think that's something we don't talk about in the First Amendment. Play into that decision. It's so  Kristina Supler: interesting how, uh, every day in our cases we're dealing with you know, issues that are. Teenagers, college students. But from a legal perspective, there's, there's pretty weighty constitutional issues at  Susan Stone: play at Well, yeah, and it, for my corporate partners out there, take that. Susan Stone: We have some big issues in the student and athlete defense practice. Right.  Kristina Supler: What are your thoughts on, on what's happening now with Greek organizations on college campus and, and what really feels like the push to do away with them and, and the tension? I think with freedom of association and I think that was  Susan Stone: part of litigation, correct. Susan Stone: To get rid of single sex organizations.  Eugene Volokh: Okay. So it's compliment as it, but it's often  Susan Stone: complicated. ,  Kristina Supler: so it's complicated for a couple of  Eugene Volokh: weeks. One is there are actually. Two kinds of constitutional rights that are labeled the Right to Associate and the Supreme Court in a 1983 case. Uh, Roberts, v US Jaycees actually went into this in a little bit of detail. Eugene Volokh: I'm sorry, I just looked it up. Uh, I got it wrong. 1984 Case Roberts  Susan Stone: c James. That's okay. I got the Des Moines v, the Des Moines Tinker v Des Moines Rock. So it's okay. It's okay. We're among the friends and listeners.  Eugene Volokh: Neither of those rights is actually listed in the Constitution, but the court has said for a long time, there's a right to expressive association, which is to say a right to associate in ways that promote your ability to express your views. Eugene Volokh: And for example, in a political association,  Susan Stone: I'm a Democrat, religious association Republican. Got it. Right.  Eugene Volokh: So for example, if the government were to say, Uh, that people can't form political organizations. They wanna speak, they can just speak by themselves, but they can't pool their resources in order to, uh, to express themselves. Eugene Volokh: That would be clearly unconstitutional because it would violate the right to expressive association. There's also a right to intimate association, which the court has said extends to basically small. Groups of people who are either very close friends or have to share living quarters and the like. You know my, so I'll give you an example, a  Susan Stone: little dirty on that. Susan Stone: Kristina . Sorry, I, I always go to the gutter, don't I?  Kristina Supler: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. But go  Eugene Volokh: on. So write to intimate association. Here's an example of a case where this was implicated fr it's not from the Supreme Court, but from the ninth Circuit. So out, out uh, on the West Coast, it's, but it's an important federal appellate court. Eugene Volokh: There was, a lawsuit which asked whether a roommate finding service was entitled to provide ways for people to search for roommates of the same sex and roommates or of the opposite sex, but search for roommates, bi sex and bisexual orientation, or whether that was. Whether that was impermissible housing discrimination in violation of state law, and the court said, look, yeah, that's a, as a landlord, you don't have the right, generally speaking to say, I'm not gonna rent a women or to gays, or to blacks, or to Jews, or to fundamentalist Christians. Eugene Volokh: but as a roommate, even one who's just looking for a stranger to share an apartment with you, you could say, look, you know, I'm a woman. I'm only comfortable with other women, or I'm only comfortable with straight women. I don't want a lesbian woman, or I'd prefer a lesbian woman. Or even, you know, I'm black and I wanna live with other blacks, or I'm a. Eugene Volokh: I'm of Korean extraction. I wanna live with other Koreans, or I want to keep a kosher household. And in order for that to work, I I want to live with other Jews. So that's an, the court said, I oversimplify here a little bit, but it basically said, yes, there is this right of intimate association of choosing whom you are going to live with. Eugene Volokh: So, right of expressive association, as I understand it would rarely apply to fraternities. They're not fundamentally organized in order to express their. They may in the process sometimes do that, like they may put out statements or engage in some political activity or some such, but that's very very slight part of what they do. Eugene Volokh: And in fact, in Roberts v US jcs, the court said it basically a, an adult fraternity, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the jcs, like an adult club like that was not protected. By expressive association law, at least against application of anti-discrimination laws, it was required to let in women. On the other hand, fraternities, I think, are intimate associations. Eugene Volokh: They are groups of people living together to be sure. It's not one person, one roommate. It could be a couple of dozen people or more living together, but they do live together. They share household chores. They do, as I understand, it takes seriously the notion that they're supposed to become friends and brothers and such. Eugene Volokh: So they may have. Not under the First Amendment right of expressive association, but under the 14th Amendment right of Intimate Association. But the question is how far those rights extend. So I think if a university said, public university said, if you belong to a single sex fraternal or seral organization, we will expel you. Eugene Volokh: That would be as unconstitutional as saying, we'll expel you for marrying someone or we'll expel you for having as a roommate someone who is of the same sex as you, or the opposite sex or whatever else. That would be an interference with their right of intimate association  Susan Stone: under the 14th amendment. Eugene Volokh: Uh, exactly. However, let's say the university. You know, what you do off campus property is entirely up to you. And if you wanna live off campus with some people who, and call it a fraternity, it's all the same to us as if you wanna live with some camp, some people off campus and call it a roommates, however, If you want access to certain on-campus housing that we have historically leased to fraternities or sororities, well, we're gonna say no. Eugene Volokh: We're only gonna release them now from now on to kind of unisex groups, groups that allow members of both sexes. Well, there, the government would be acting essentially as landlords and would have a good deal of authority to say, you know, our property, we want our property to be used for. Unisex groups and not for single sex groups. Eugene Volokh: So a lot depends on the particular rules that the institutions are, are creating. And of course, a lot also depends on whether it's a private institution or not. Cuz if it's a private institution, it's not bound by constitutional by, by 14th Amendment rules or First amendment rules. Uh, and the first place, because it's not the. Eugene Volokh: Thank you  Kristina Supler: so much. Good food for thought today. This 14th amendment issue in particular, not on my radar, so I've learned a great deal today, but it's been such a pleasure speaking with you, Eugene. We're really grateful for your time today.  Susan Stone: and I am so happy that I inched myself up. Eugene was actually talking, do you remember about the use of pseudonyms? Susan Stone: Mm-hmm. and at our conference, and we often file as John Doe, so we were listening to what you had to say because we usually have had our motions for pseudonyms. Granted very important issue. And very important issue. Yes. And I have to tell you, trying to cover. All of the First Amendment issues that we wrestle with in our practice in the span of an hour. Susan Stone: Impossible, but you have boiled it down. Did anyone ever tell you to write First Amendment for Dummies? I would be the first to buy that copy and well, I  Eugene Volokh: will say I did put together. Thanks for the generous, uh, thanks to Generous Grant by the Stanton Foundation. I put together. A series of 10 videos called Free Speech Rules. Eugene Volokh: So if you go to free speech rules.org, one word, or you search for free speech rules, and especially Embolic on YouTube, you'll find these videos. They're mostly aimed at kind of high school students and college students. They're kind of snappy and short and graphical, wonderful. But you know, I think all of us might like something snappy and short and graphical. Eugene Volokh: So they'll actually cover not all of the First Amendment by any means, but some of the issues. College student speech, high school student speech, and the luck.  Susan Stone: I love it. And thank you for sharing that everyone please check it out in and check it out. And thanks for being on Real talk with Susan and Kristina.

Shermer and Bernstein discuss: the SCOTUS case on affirmative action and race preferences at Harvard and elsewhere • Elizabeth Warren (Cherokee ancestry — Bureau of Indian Affairs rejects?) • Tiger Woods: Cablinasian (European, African, Thai, Chinese ancestry) • George Zimmerman (Hispanic, half Hispanic, mixed-race, White Hispanic, White, or…?) • Rachel Dolezal (NAACP official, adopted an African American identity, though has none) • Kamala Harris (child of an Indian immigrant mother, father of mixed-African and European heritage from Jamaica) • BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) • ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) • the biology and legality of race • the one-drop rule of race classification • the rise of modern racial classification • Hispanic, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Armenian, Cajun, South Asian, Arab, and Iranian categories • American Indians/Native Americans • race classification and reparations • How can we achieve a race-blind society? David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William and Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin. Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” “well-written and destined to be influential,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.

A call for the separation of race and state, backed by a deep dive into the surreal world of racial classification in America...Clarity from Chaos guest: David E. Bernstein, author of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in AmericaAmericans are understandably squeamish about official racial and ethnic classifications. Nevertheless, they are ubiquitous in American life. Applying for a job, mortgage, university admission, citizenship, government contracts, and much more involves checking a box stating whether one is Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American.While reviewing the surprising history of American racial classifications, Classified raises questions about the classifications' coherence, logic, and fairness; for example:• Should Pakistani, Chinese, and Filipino Americans be in the same category despite their obvious differences in culture, appearance, religion, and more?• Why does the government not allow Americans to classify themselves as bi- or multi-racial?• How did the government decide that a dark-complexioned, burka-wearing Muslim Yemini should be classified as generically white, but a blond-haired, blue-eyed immigrant from Spain should be classified as Hispanic and treated as a member of a minority group?• Why does the government require biomedical researchers to classify study participants by the official racial categories, when the classifications have no scientific basis?In an increasingly diverse society with high rates of intergroup marriage, the American system of racial classification is getting even more arbitrary and absurd. With rising ethno-nationalism threatening democracy around the world, it's also dangerous. Classified argues that the time has come to consider abolishing official racial classification and replace it with the separation of race and state.David E. Bernstein holds a University Professorship chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, William & Mary, Brooklyn Law School, and the University of Turin.Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” “well-written and destined to be influential,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.Professor Bernstein is married and has three children of mixed Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Spanish-Jewish origin. He prefers not to classify them.FIND HIS TWITTER HERE:Support the show"Wherever you find yourself is exactly and precisely where God wills you to be" Follow us on X: @CFC30290 Follow us on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-3123766 Website: https://clarityfromchaospodcast.buzzsprout.com/ Thanks for listening to Clarity from Chaos

On today's docket, we will discuss the impact of body-cameras worn by police officer on police interactions and legal analysis of those interactions. I will discuss an Article by Prof Orin Kerr that was published on the Volokh Conspiracy website, which brought up some interesting observations and conclusions.  Professor Orin Kerr's article: How Body-Worn Cameras Are Changing Fourth Amendment Law---For the show notes, go here. Comment below the show notes if you have any questions about this episode.For more about this podcast, go here. For ways to improve your Legal English, go here.For the Intro To Legal English Course, go here. This is a free course!To read more about or to purchase Criminal Law Lexicon, go to the Amazon page here.The author is Timothy Barrett, the host of this podcast. This book is designed for non-native English speakers who want to improve their understanding of the proper Legal English terms concerning the field of Criminal Law. This book introduces this lexicon and gives examples of using these words.Check out our NEW website: 4 Business-EnglishImprove Your Communication SkillsIn the modern business world, communication is key to success. Often, communication is conducted in English. Whether you are dealing with native-English speakers, or English as a Second Language speakers, you need to communicate effectively in the lingua franca of the 21st Century: English. There are many common business terms that you need to understand, and some you need to master. Often, academic English courses do not teach these business phrases or lexicon. That is where 4 Business English can help.This site is designed with business professionals in mind. People who need to improve their professional English skills - reading, writing, conversational, or even public speaking and giving formal presentations. 

In early December, Prof. Eugene Volokh, Rumble Canada, and Locals Technology filed a complaint in federal court against New York Attorney General Letitia James, seeking to stop a new New York state law from taking effect. The suit challenges a recently enacted section of New York's General Business Law, “Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited.” The new law originated, in part, as a response to a 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead as the result of what is alleged to be a racially motivated crime. The law aims to restrict "hateful" speech on social media platforms and requires social media networks to “provide and maintain a clear and easily accessible mechanism for individual users to report incidents of hateful conduct.” Additionally, the networks must establish and publish a policy outlining how they will “respond [sic] and address the reports of incidents of hateful conduct on their platform.” The State of New York has asserted that hate speech moderation of this sort can be a useful tool in preventing hate crimes. Plaintiffs are represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and argue that the law violates the First Amendment and forces social media networks to police their users. They further submit that enforcement of the law requires a subjective determination of what constitutes “hateful conduct,” thereby instituting viewpoint discrimination and chilling constitutionally protected speech. Please join us for this Litigation Update from Prof. Eugene Volokh.Featuring:Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; Founder, The Volokh Conspiracy

0:00 - Remembering Mike Leach   15:18 - Angelica Ford, owner of Fueled by AF & Kevin Bastuga, from Signature Bank, celebrate Angelica's victory in our Business Boost contest. For more on Fueled by AF, the health and fitness company that provides accessible, quality healthy snacks and facilities for all, regardless of ability, visit fueledbyafsnacks.com   22:25 - The rent is too damn high and his credit score is too damn low   27:12 - Dan & Amy have updates on the York HS incident   01:01:59 - Kevin E. Stuart, assistant professor of political science at the University of St. Thomas and a founding member of Strong Families of Taylor, tells the story of  A Small Texas City Gets a Drag-Queen Parade for Christmas 01:14:19 - Noted economist Stephen Moore “tips his cap” to the Biden admin for lowering inflation to 7.1%... still the highest interest in 35 years    01:30:04 - Jane Byrne interchange scheduled to wrap up!!! & Sports & Politics: World Cup Controversies  01:41:39 - Eugene Volokh, co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy blog and a law professor at UCLA, explains how New York State Wants to Conscript Me to Violate the Constitution. You can check out the Volokh Conspiracy blog at volokh.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shortly before a New York law targeting online hate speech took effect, a prominent First Amendment scholar joined two social media platforms in challenging it in a federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan. The plaintiffs are UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, the social media company Rumble, and another website called Locals. Passed in the wake of the white-supremacist inspired mass murder in Buffalo, the challenged law forces social media platforms to post a policy for moderating content that would “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” against people based on race, class, gender or other protected groups. Those platforms would have to establish a reporting system for enforcement and would be subject to civil liability for violations. This week's guest — Professor Volokh, who runs the blog the Volokh Conspiracy — explains why he believes that the language of the statute is too broad to pass constitutional muster. He also hashes out Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is such a key law for free speech on the internet and why it's recently become such a lightning rod across the political aisle. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stanford's Evelyn Douek and Alex Stamos weigh in on the latest online trust and safety news and developments:Using a powerful AI language model developed by OpenAI, the new ChatGPT tool allows anyone to generate short text that is indecipherable from written text and that draws upon vast amounts of publicly available information. - Janus Rose/ Vice, Ina Fried/ AxiosMore: ChatGPT has fun and informative uses, but is also easy to abuse — from generating recipes or funny movie scripts, to the spread of misinformation or nefarious tips to get away with crimes.TikTok and Bumble are adopting a tool developed by Meta with international charity SWGfL's Revenge Porn Helpline. The tool uses hashing technology for submitted content to identify and block non-consensual intimate media from participating platforms. - Olivia Solon/ Bloomberg NewsMore: Victims make a tradeoff on whether a single human reviewer seeing their intimate image outweighs its spread across the social media and dating services using the technology. - @oliviasolonRumble and the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog run by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, are challenging a New York law that prohibits hate speech in a federal lawsuit, claiming it would violate First Amendment free expression protections. - Chris Dolmetsch/ Bloomberg NewsThe “Twitter Files” were released in a staggered thread of more than 40 tweets on Friday evening. The string of tweets includes screenshots of Twitter staff's internal communications and external email correspondence which lack any smoking gun. Instead, the thread is most likely to reinforce existing beliefs about the decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story and related content. - Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui/ The Washington PostTwitter CEO Elon Musk disputed news reports on research by advocacy and civil rights groups that found hate speech slurs were more prevalent on the platform. Musk claimed the data actually shows a decrease in the reach of hate speech on the platform since his acquisition and said the Twitter safety team will publish weekly reports on the data going forward. - Mohar Chatterjee/ PoliticoMore: As University of California, Berkeley researcher Jonathan Stray points out, both sides can claim they are right depending on the data and measurement of success. More transparency and collaboration could move these efforts in the right direction. That seems unlikely for now, but could be required under the EU's new digital regulations.Join the conversation and connect with Evelyn and Alex on Twitter at @evelyndouek and @alexstamos.Moderated Content is produced in partnership by Stanford Law School and the Cyber Policy Center. Special thanks to John Perrino for research and editorial assistance.Like what you heard? Don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast with friends!

On today's show ... Affirmative action mocks ethnic diversity as the Supreme Court takes up preferences at Harvard, legal scholar David Bernstein argues that labels like ‘Hispanic' and ‘Asian' are completely arbitrary. GUEST OVERVIEW: Known as a fearless contrarian, Professor Bernstein often challenges the conventional wisdom with prodigious research and sharp, original analysis. His book Rehabilitating Lochner was praised across the political spectrum as “intellectual history in its highest form,” a “fresh perspective and a cogent analysis,” “delightful and informative,” “sharp and iconoclastic,” “well-written and destined to be influential,” and “a terrific work of historical revisionism.” Professor Bernstein blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy (the leading law professor blog) and at Instapundit.com. Professor Bernstein is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.

David E. Bernstein is a law professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. His primary areas of scholarly research are constitutional history and the admissibility of expert testimony. Bernstein is a contributor to the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.  Today he talked about the potential fair admissions case before the Supreme Court.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week's Guests: Author - David Bernstein Comedian - Boris Khaykin The World's Famous comedy Cellar presents "Live From America Podcast" with Noam Dworman and Hatem Gabr. The top experts and thinkers of the world and the best comics in the Nation get together weekly with our hosts to discuss different topics each week, News, Culture, Politics, comedy & and more with an equal parts of knowledge and comedy! David E. Bernstein is a law professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. His primary areas of scholarly research are constitutional history and the admissibility of expert testimony. Bernstein is a contributor to the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy. Follow Live From America YouTube www.youtube.com/channel/UCS2fqgw61yK1J6iKNxV0LmA Twitter twitter.com/AmericasPodcast www.LiveFromAmericaPodcast.com LiveFromAmerica@ComedyCellar.com Follow Hatem Twitter twitter.com/HatemNYC Instagram www.instagram.com/hatemnyc/ Follow Noam Twitter twitter.com/noamdworman?lang #DavidBernstein #Classified #RacialClassificationinAmerica

You've heard of legally blind, and even legally blonde, but what about legally white?GMU Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy blogger David Bernstein explores “the borderlands of legal whiteness” in his new book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.Fellow conspiracist and Prof. Randy Barnett has already included it in the syllabus for his upcoming Georgetown Law seminar, Recent Books on the Constitution.Bernstein joins to discuss the many contradictions involved in the government's attempt to put clear labels on complex categories.Should Hispanics of Spanish descent be considered minorities, or European whites? Why are Asians discriminated against in college admissions – especially given the incredible range of geographies, cultures, and socio-economic statuses contained within that broad designation?What will the Supreme Court decide in the pending suit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina brought by the “Students for Fair Admissions” group?Tune in every Sunday morning on AM radio, or streaming onlineHaving had a sneak preview of the book, I can tell you that it is a must-read for Constitutional Law buffs, and anyone interested in American legal history.

In this hour: - Professor of Law and Volokh Conspiracy creator Eugene Volokh discusses the Second Amendment and compares it to the First Amendment and free speech. -  Ohio becomes a Constitutional Carry state! - One vote for Utah having the best concealed carry laws. Tom Gresham's Gun Talk 06.12.22 Hour 2

A conversation about free speech with UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh Topics Computer engineering vs lawSCOTUS LeakBackground of free speechTwitter and free speechAre platforms utilities?The Ministry of Truth Disinformation BoardAnd more! Bio (from UCLA Law)Eugene Volokh teaches First Amendment law and a First Amendment amicus brief clinic at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (6th ed. 2016), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2013), as well as over 90 law review articles. He is a member of The American Law Institute, a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. His law review articles have been cited by opinions in eight Supreme Court cases and several hundred court opinions in total, as well as several thousand scholarly articles.Volokh worked for 12 years as a computer programmer. He graduated from UCLA with a B.S. in math-computer science at age 15, and has written many articles on computer software. Volokh was born in the USSR; his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was seven years old. LinksThe Volokh Conspiracy,Free speech videosnarrativemonopoly.comtwitter   

It's Episode 6:  Andrew and Jerry Save Free Speech!  It's clear that platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter favor certain kinds of speech over other kinds of speech.  Without the free exchange of ideas, solving the world's problems becomes impossible. We're joined by noted free speech expert and co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy, UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh!  We tackle the thorny question of how to protect free speech without curtailing the rights of others.  We also revisit the Russia-Ukraine crisis in light of the weekend's events, and Andrew talks about his problems with the season premiere of Billions!

In the flood of information on social media, both opinions and statements of fact are shared freely, accurate and inaccurate alike. When a false statement of fact about an individual damages his reputation, however, it could qualify as libel. This week, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, founder of the Volokh Conspiracy blog, joins host Debi Ghate to discuss what qualifies as libel, both civilly and criminally, the state of free speech in the university, and the ethical and moral considerations of public discourse within legal limits.Watch our interview on YouTubeFollow Debi Ghate (@GhateDebi) on Twitter You can connect with us on social media!Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube 

As if the stakes of the election weren't high enough, the added complication of a Supreme Court vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg has turned divisive politics into an all-out war. President Trump is set to nominate a candidate on Saturday, and on Sunday morning (8-9am PACIFIC), I'll discuss breaking news with analysis from Josh Blackman – a law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and prolific blogger at Reason's Volokh Conspiracy. Blackman says “This is like a game of eight-dimensional chess,” because of all the moving parts. First, there are questions of legality. Second, questions of legitimacy. Third, questions of practicality and political gamesmanship. With Kamala Harris presiding over the Senate Judiciary Committee, the sparks will fly in the nomination hearings. If a new justice is confirmed, what will happen after the election? Some have dared to consider the dread possibility that the Supreme Court must intervene to decide a contested election. In that situation, would the new justice have to recuse him or herself? And what about Clarence Thomas? He has certainly not forgotten the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of then-Senator Joe Biden during his confirmation hearings. As I told Craig Roberts recently, this is the stuff that Academy-Award movies are made of. It might be entertaining, if it weren't so anxiety-provoking.I'm thrilled to welcome Professor Blackman to my show for the first time to discuss his recent writings and commentary on the vacant Supreme Court seat. We'll discuss the precedent for appointing a nominee in the final month's of a president's term, as well as the political calculations for Republicans and more importantly, Democrats, who have entertained the idea of packing the courts should they return to power.Joe Biden himself has said this is a slippery slope, but how long can he withstand pressure from the rest of the Democratic Party? Is court packing a foregone conclusion if the Democrats take power?

How has free speech changed in the past 50 years? What do the First Amendment's protections look like in the modern era? On this weeks episode, we're talking with Eugene Volokh, a prominent First Amendment law professor at UCLA. Eugene Volokh teaches First Amendment law and a First Amendment amicus brief clinic at UCLA School of Law, where he has also taught copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed. 2020), and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed. 2013), as well as over 90 law review articles. He is a member of The American Law Institute, a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and co-author of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. His law review articles have been cited by opinions in eight Supreme Court cases and hundreds of other court opinions, as well as several thousand scholarly articles. Volokh worked for 12 years as a computer programmer.

Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow, Dan Griswold, sat down with Ilya Somin to discuss his new book, Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom. Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law. In addition to Free to Move, Somin is the author of several other books, including Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, and is a regular contributor to the popular blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. The audio, as well as the transcript of this conversation between Griswold and Somin, has been slightly edited for clarity. Love the show? Consider giving us a rating on Apple Podcasts and be sure to check out the Discourse Magazine for more.

Join Jimmy Sengenberger with UCLA law professor Eugene Volok and Cato Institute's Matthew Feeney! On a Free to Choose Friday, Jimmy (@SengCenter) focuses on the dangers of regulating “Big Tech.” UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh, purveyor of the Volokh Conspiracy blog at Reason (@VolokhC), offers a legal analysis of President Trump's social media executive order Thursday, the idea of regulating big tech generally, and why both are troubling and problematic from a legal standpoint. Then, Matthew Feeney (@M_Feeney), director of the Cato Institute Project on Emerging Technologies, joins Jimmy to explore the pitfalls of regulating Big Tech, the fallacies of the argument for it, and why President Trump is erring in his social media executive order.

Hindu mythology holds that the whole world rests on the back of a turtle. What does the turtle rest on? According to legend, “it's turtles all the way down.”While many are pushing for one-world-government to address new challenges like Coronavirus, there is another approach that can be dubbed “Federalism all the way down.” In other words, why stop at devolving power from Federal Government to the states? The more we decentralize power, the more people can effectively “vote with their feet” and choose which turtle– er, jurisdiction– they will reside in.This is one of the core premises of Ilya Somin's vitally important new book Free To Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Somin, a Law professor at George Mason University and blogger at Reason's The Volokh Conspiracy, has been on my show several times to discuss his work on eminent domain, rational voter ignorance, and most recently, court packing. These topics deal with the delicate balance of powers between majorities and minorities; the voting public and life-time appointed officials. His latest book looks at the most important balance of powers of all – that which exists among the various jurisdictions where people can chose to live.He finds that the option to vote with one's feet is often a more powerful lever than the ballot box for getting the political change that we all want, yet feel powerless to achieve. Tired of calling your congressman or donating to your favorite politicians to no avail? Why not send a stronger message and withdraw your tax dollars from your city or state if you are so unhappy?Ilya's new book also contains a bold defense of more open migration from other countries. He takes objections seriously but answers them one-by-one. The right to move should trump the alleged rights of ethnic groups or individuals to exclude on the basis of national origin. Ilya joined me this Sunday to discuss his new book and the prospects for Federalism in the aftermath of Coronavirus. Will states that innovate safe ways of re-opening their economy be beneficiaries of an exodus out of states that don't? Could the U.S. relieve global poverty by opening its doors to more immigrants from countries stricken by looming famines?

“A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” – Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. MadisonConstitution geeks, rejoice. The book you've been waiting for has arrived. Repugnant Laws by Keith Whittington (William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton) takes readers under the hood of our system of checks and balances – examining “Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present.”Whittington, who writes for my favorite legal blog the Volokh Conspiracy, joins me live. He has written a great deal about impeachment lately, but his real constitutional expertise is the main check that the judiciary exercises over the legislature – its ability to overturn state and federal laws which it deems unconstitutional. The power of judicial review was first discovered by the Supreme Court in the infamous case of Marbury v. Madison, in which Chief Justice John Marshall opined that “A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” (Who else but the courts could decide when a law enacted by Congress is repugnant to the Constitution?)Since then, the makeup of the courts has influenced the direction of policy in subtle but powerful ways. Whittington's book analyzes thousands of cases in which the Supreme Court either upheld or overturned federal laws. He applies the precision of a scientist (a political scientist, that is) to questions of politicization and examines whether an activist judiciary is antidemocratic.RealClear Politics reports that President Trump is “Remaking the Federal Judiciary at a Historic Rate”. According to Whittington's data, this will influence political outcomes for decades to come. But while judicial appointees may tend to side with the dominant political coalitions, he notes that they do not make their decisions along strict ideological lines.I have previously explored whether the courts should exercise restraint in allowing lawmakers to craft a wide range of legislation (see Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement).I have also argued in favor of a more activist judiciary, which defends individual rights from being overridden by majority rule, and believe that the courts are the last bulwark against excessive democracy. However, everyone seems to be in favor of judicial activism when it favors his or her politics. That explains why restraint and “minimalism” are in vogue among liberals when the conservatives are in power, and vice versa.Find out why Randy Barnett says Repugnant Laws is “Simply a must-read for any serious student of our Constitution and how it actually works.”

Gene Healy and I broke down the articles of impeachment, and discussed the role of impeachment in restraining an unconstrained executive branch.Don't miss it.Scott Adams often says that when it comes to politics, we're watching two different movies on the same screen.Impeachment is the prime example. I present two different movies: Judge Napolitano told Nick Gillespie that “at least three or four articles” of impeachment could have been drafted.Richard Epstein, on the other hand, called the original impeachment charge “ludicrous.” The charge of obstruction of congress is even more complex. Who can I turn to in a situation like this?I usually turn to my favorite scholars at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Hoover, but in this case, the layers of disagreement, nuance, and partisan spin have made it nearly impossible to figure out who's right.Thankfully, Gene Healy – vice president at the Cato Institute – has a new cover story for Reason Magazine, appropriately titled, “Don't Freak Out About Impeachment.”So, did Trump actually commit an impeachable offense?Perhaps, Healy suggests, we should set aside the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky for a moment: "The third-rate shakedown attempt of Ukrainegate probably isn't even the worst thing Trump did in the month of July…" – Gene Healy, As he pointed out in his 2018 report The Indispensable Remedy: The Broad Scope of the Constitution's Impeachment Power, impeachment is an underutilized process for reigning in the executive branch. Has Trump abused his power significantly in the past 3 years? A better question might be whether the “cult of the presidency” has grown so large and unwieldy that anyone who takes the job is implicitly agreeing to an “abuse of power”?Maybe we should always demand that Congress impeach every president immediately after the election so that the legislature can get on with legislating. Of course, these days Congress prefers to even defer its job of lawmaking to the administrative agencies of the executive branch…In a short video for the Cato Institute, Healy quotes founding father Elbridge Gerry, who said, “A good magistrate will not fear impeachments and a bad one ought to be kept in fear of them.”With impeachment, Healy should have gotten his wish, but if it doesn't hurt Trump politically, perhaps Congress should look less at partisan politics and more at the real abuses of power by the executive branch:The military-industrial complex (including drone strikes on American citizens)Usurpation of congress's lawmaking authorityThe corruption of science via technocratic administrative ruleStealthy “midnight regulation” Just to name a few that I cover in my new report on the administrative bureaucracy – a “shallow state” lurking in the swamps of DC that rivals the deep state in its unaccountable control over our lives.

“If you want to build a democracy that works for everyone, you must have an honest judiciary. If you want an honest judiciary, you #PackTheCourts”— @PackSCOTUS Twitter accountTwo weeks ago, David A. Kaplan warned that the judicial branch had become far too powerful. I agreed.We've felt the effects in the form of bitter partisanship over judicial nominations. When Mitch McConnell gambled on denying Merrick Garland a hearing until after the 2016 election, Democrats saw it as their responsibility to respond in kind by turning Kavanaugh's nomination into a circus. Since that failed to stop his nomination, some have escalated their rhetoric even further — going as far as reviving FDR's failed court packing scheme.Ilya Somin says this is a terrible idea. The Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy (now hosted at Reason.com) has written several articles explaining why.Dangers of Growing Support for Court-PackingThe same logic that ultimately put the idea to rest back in 1937 holds today. Somin quotes a Democratic senator who put it concisely back then:“Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guaranties of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers and that can extinguish your right of liberty, of speech, of thought, of action, and of religion. A weapon whose use is only dictated by the conscience of the wielder.” — Sen. Burton Wheeler (D)But the political heat of the moment has apparently made some Democrats forget that the power to turn 9 into 13, 19 or more, could backfire in the hands of the “wrong” president. And without judicial independence, “right” and “wrong” are all a matter of perspective.Even liberal scholars and politicians, he notes, have opposed the idea — from Noah Feldman and Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School, to Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey. They say that court packing is not a proportional response to the failure to give Garland a hearing, and note that it would only worsen the legitimacy crisis that the court's detractors claim as the reason for packing it.Somin's take on the legitimacy crisis is more subtle. He thinks it's overblown, but with so many mainstream Democratic candidates talking about court packing, it's not as unthinkable as it once was.The primary race has barely just begun, but this already seems to be an area in which Democrats have started a race to the bottom.Ilya returned to the show to talk about the the history of court packing, and why it's just as bad an idea today as it was 80 years ago.

There's no better emblem of the complicated evolution of civil rights in America than the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Originally passed to ensure equal access to educational resources, Title IX reads as follows:“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”Although a libertarian might bristle at Title IX's financial involvement in education, the statute otherwise seems innocuous — requiring nothing more than equal treatment for students, regardless of gender.Since the 1970s, however, women have not only achieved parity with men in college admissions, they have surpassed men in graduation rates. Thus, the purpose of Title IX seems largely to have been achieved.As the cultural landscape has changed, however, the focus of anti-discrimination efforts has also shifted. After omen could no longer claim discrimination at the admissions level, bureaucrats started to advocate in other areas like athletics, where men traditionally received more resources in accord with their greater interest in sports (especially at the elite level). Most people are familiar with Title IX's equalization of athletics, but in terms of peak controversy, this was a passing phase in the law's evolution.Now, educational institutions have become the prime battleground in a larger culture war that includes the debates over sexual harassment, due process, “rape culture,” and transgender rights. In 2016, Republicans argued that Title IX has been perverted “by bureaucrats — and by the [then] President of the United States — to impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people.”How did the seemingly uncontroversial notion of non-discrimination has become such a lightning rod in the American culture war?R. Shep Melnick is a professor of American politics at Boston College, where he focuses on the intersection of law and politics. Melnick argues that the current enforcement of Title IX has transformed the act from its original intention by politically motivated bureaucrats. He recently wrote The Transformation of Title IX [@The Brookings Institution Press (2018)] as a response to the partisan vortex that has swallowed rational discourse about the law. Shep joined the show to discuss the problems of overly-zealous administrative lawmaking in the context of the Title IX debate.Dear Colleague: Due Process is DoneThe U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has the authority to issue new rules governing non-discrimination. The Administrative Procedure Act specifies that prior to a rule change, there must be a period for “notice-and-comment” by relevant parties in the educational institutions. The modern controversy hinges around a few legally questionable actions taken by the OCR in its administration of Title IX.In 2011, the Obama administration issued new “guidelines” on sexual harassment to federally-funded universities that bypassed the standard notice-and-comment requirements for such changes. The administration claimed its guidelines constituted mere “clarifications” of earlier policies. In contrast, statements from the administration suggested that it was a sweeping overhaul of the entire campus culture as it relates to sexual harassment complaints. The infamous “Dear Colleague Letter” — directed from the OCR to all universities receiving federal funds — specified that a single sexual harassment complaint could trigger a lengthy investigation of the institution — turning actual victims and the accused into pawns in the larger culture war.Worse, the letter required schools to use the lowest possible standard of evidence (a mere “preponderance”) in deciding the fate of the accused. While not an official criminal proceeding, these campus tribunals often determined whether a student would be marked for life as a sexual predator — effectively denying him his rights to “life, liberty and property” without due process.As K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, authors of The Campus Rape Frenzy wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog last year:The letter required universities to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty findings, a form of double jeopardy. It further told schools to accelerate their adjudications, with a recommended 60-day limit. And, perhaps most important, OCR strongly discouraged cross-examination of accusers, given the procedures that most universities employed.— The path to Obama's Dear Colleague Letter, Jan. 31, 2017Perhaps most frighteningly, government publications began to lecture schools on what constitutes a healthy, mutually respectful sexual relationship. Bureaucrats this by redefining sexual harassment as a form of discrimination, but only when the act targets a member of a particular sex. Strangely, a bisexual who is an “equal opportunity” offender — targeting both men and women — does not fall under the purview of Title IX complaints.Melnick notes that the OCR's mandated “sea change,” coupled with the threat of losing federal funding, has given rise to a new bureaucracy of Title IX coordinators at every major university.The Transgender Transformation and Rule by LetterThe second questionable form of Obama-era administrative rule-making seems to have turned the intent of Title IX on its head. New guidelines redefined the word “sex” as it appears in the act to correspond to the gender identity of a student whose rights are being called into question. This legal maneuvering is particularly suspect since the term “gender identity” entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish one's identity from their biological sex.Morever, many Obama-era mandates (e.g., requiring colleges to allow biological males to use women's locker rooms), not only opened the door for novel claims of harassment and discrimination, but took administrative lawmaking to new heights (or depths) of absurdity.The Office of Civil Rights cannot reasonably resolve every discrimination and harassment issue in a sane and apolitical manner from its perch in Washington. President Trump has repealed the Obama guidelines, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has called for an end of “rule by letter.” Melnick sees this as a rare instance of sound policy and transparency from the Trump administration, but there is always a risk that it will merely flip the script and use the transgender issue to fire up the Republican base's own culture warriors.Here's a preview of my take:If Trump decides to take a page from Obama's playbook, he might further polarize some of the most important civil rights concerns of the day. While some on the left have allowed the persecution of innocent men with dubious claims of a campus “rape culture,” others on the right have sometimes found a convenient scapegoat among individuals who don't map neatly onto either biological sex.No one is arguing that transgender individuals should be denied equal access to educational facilities, and there are valid civil rights concerns that must to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.Whenever strings are attached to federal grants, there is erosion of the American system of federalism and policy experimentation at the state and local level. In this way, Title IX has been abused to impose a one-size-fits-all solution across the nation's universities.The federal government should leave room for different approaches to be tested, and OCR should focus on the basic of civil rights and clear cut cases of discrimination. The courts remain open to remedy situations where schools fail to render a fair decision.For a full and nuanced perspective on the most important civil rights issues of the day, look no further than my show this Sunday with Shep Melnick.

This Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 82, from March 2012. The original intent of a jury was to keep government tyranny in check. In today's legal system, jurors are rarely told that they have this power. Jason Hartman interviews legal scholar and civil liberties activist, Roger Roots, on the responsibilities of juries and the Constitutional purpose of juries. Roger explains cases of unfair advantage by the U.S. Justice Department, where jurors are often directed and instructed by judges as to what convictions they may bring against a person, without being given the opportunity to review the laws. The full function of the jury is to be a final check and balance on the government legal system. Roger also discusses violations of First Amendment rights, corrupt laws, political involvement in corporations and markets, and how the violations against our First Amendment rights squelches the voice of the people who try to expose corruption. Roger talks about his work with the Fully Informed Jury Association, where he has pushed for legislation in favor of juries being fully informed of their rights and duties and the overturning of various small laws that prevent our legal system from working as our Founding Fathers intended. Dr. Roger Roots is a nationally recognized criminologist, legal scholar and civil liberties activist. He is active in libertarian politics, and in the promotion of a freer, fairer and more just world. He is the author of more than two dozen noteworthy scholarly articles, and some of his research has been relied on by federal courts. He is an advocate for the rights of the disenfranchised, the downtrodden and the politically estranged. In recent years, Roots has focused his work and advocacy on three areas: the fully informed jury movement, the reestablishment of Fourth Amendment protections and the establishment of a fair and equal court system for all participants. Roots has has published an important article on the lopsided procedural rules of the federal court system, “Unfair Rules of Procedure: Why Does the Government Get More Time?” which appeared in The American Journal of Trial Advocacy in 2010. He has applied for two major research grants to continue and pursue this research, and he hopes to secure research funding to pursue this research in the near future. In 2011, Roots initiated a formal request to U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, chair of the United States Judicial Conference, in the hopes that certain unfair advantages for the U.S. Justice Department can be removed from the Federal Rules of court procedure. This work is ongoing. Roots has argued that various filing requirement disparities in the Federal Rules of Civil, Appellate and Supreme Court Procedure give an unfair advantage to the U.S. Justice Department in civil and criminal litigation, and that this advantage is compounded over time. This advantage places the poor and minorities in an especially disadvantaged position. Roots has presented academic papers on the topic before the Law and Society Association national conference and the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology. During the 2011 Montana legislative session, Roots coauthored legislation that became House Bill 332, introduced by Representative Bob Wagner, to require Montana judges to fully inform juries of their absolute right to acquit and to determine the law in jury trials. The legislation did not get out of the House Judiciary Committee, but Roots has redrafted a proposed bill for the 2013 Legislative Session. Roots has also coauthored and sponsored a proposed constitutional amendment in Montana requiring juries in criminal trials be instructed regarding their power to review the law. On May 26, 2011, the Montana Secretary of State approved the proposed constitutional amendment (CI-107) for circulation as a ballot initiative. Dr. Roots is a member of the Board of Advisers of the Fully Informed Jury Association (www.FIJA.org), America's oldest and largest educational organization solely dedicated to informing jurors and potential jurors of their lawful heritage, purpose and powers. Roots was a featured speaker at the 2008 Libertarian Party National Convention in Denver, Colorado regarding fully informed juries. He has been interviewed by The Orlando Sentinel and other publications regarding the rights and powers of juries. In February, 2011, he addressed a packed crowd at the New York City Junto Meeting at the Great Society Library in Manhattan, along with Professor Julian Heicklen, America's foremost street advocate for fully informed juries. In recent years, Roots has studied the origins of search-and-seizure protections and has launched a long-term research project into the original intent behind the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. In 2009, Roots published a major article on the subject, “The Originalist Case For the Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule,” Gonzaga Law Review, Vol. 45, pp. 1-66. The article has been the topic of academic discussions on the Volokh Conspiracy and other venues. Roots is currently engaged in research into the provenance of certain Founding-Era British books and pamphlets held in American rare book libraries. In 2010, Roots was awarded a research grant from the New York Institute of Technology to continue this research. This research focuses on the question of whether any of America's Constitutional Framers owned or had access to these pamphlets prior to the drafting and ratification of the Fourth Amendment. (The larger research question is whether pre-Framing discussions of (what became) the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule in British pamphlets were read or discussed by America's Founding Fathers. Dr. Roger Roots has also taught criminal justice and sociology classes at the college level, a pursuit he greatly enjoys. He especially enjoys teaching legal history and constitutional criminal procedure. Although he began his adult life as a high school dropout and an ex-convict, he now holds a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Montana State University—Billings, a Masters degree in Criminal Justice Science from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, a law degree from Roger Williams University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Roots was an honor student throughout higher education, and kept a Deans Scholarship in all three years of law school. On two occasions, he entered and won national legal writing competitions. His mentor at UNLV was the great Las Vegas gambling researcher Frederick Preston, who founded the doctoral program in Sociology at UNLV. His outside dissertation advisor was none other than Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the great libertarian economist and author of the landmark book, Democracy: The God That Failed who inherited the Murray Rothbard professorship at UNLV. As an attorney Roger Roots has worked on a variety of civil and criminal cases. He is the only lawyer in the history of the U.S. 8th Circuit to ever overturn a conviction on venue grounds. United States v. Stanko, 528 F.3d 581, 584 (8th Cir. 2008). Here is the winning brief. Roots has also worked on litigation concerning America's lost legacy of grand jury oversight, a topic he has studied and written about on numerous occasions. Roots' legal scholarship has been cited in the Harvard Law Review and the Yale Law Journal and been relied on by courts across the United States. (See, e.g., Baur v. Veneman, 352 F.3d 625 (2d Cir. 2003); United States v. Marcucci, 299 F.3d 1156, 1162 (9th Cir. 2002); United States v. Holmstrom, 246 F.Supp.2d 1101, 1110 (E.D.Wash. 2003)). Roots is an infrequent blogger for some of America's premier libertarian websites, including Lewrockwell.com and Nolanchart.com. He was a featured speaker at the 2002 Nevada State Libertarian Party Convention and at the 2008 National Libertarian Party Convention in Denver, Colorado. He has also spoken before the Austrian Scholars Convention of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Dr. Roots is a founding member of the Wall of Tolerance, co-founded by Rosa Parks, whose courageous stand against authoritarian government in 1955 showed millions of others how to resist government by simply saying no.