Clashes over free speech rights and wrongs haunt public debates about the state of democracy, freedom and the future. While freedom of speech is recognized as foundational to democratic society, its meaning is persistently misunderstood and distorted. Prominent commentators have built massive platforms around claims that their right to free speech is being undermined. Critics of free speech correctly see these claims as a veil for misogyny, white-supremacy, colonialism and transphobia, concluding it is a political weapon to conserve entrenched power arrangements. But is this all there is to say? Rethinking Free Speech will change the way you think about the politics of speech and its relationship to the future of freedom and democracy in the age of social media. Political theorist Peter Ives offers a new way of thinking about the essential and increasingly contentious debates around the politics of speech. Drawing on political philosophy, including the classic arguments of JS Mill, and everyday examples, Ives takes the reader on a journey through the hotspots of today’s raging speech wars. In its bold and careful insights on the combative politics of language, Rethinking Free Speech provides a map for critically grasping these battles as they erupt in university classrooms, debates around the meaning of antisemitism, the “cancelling” of racist comedians and the proliferation of hate speech on social media. This is an original and essential guide to the perils and possibilities of communication for democracy and justice. Clashes over free speech rights and wrongs haunt public debates about the state of democracy, freedom and the future. While freedom of speech is recognized as foundational to democratic society, its meaning is persistently misunderstood and distorted. Prominent commentators have built massive platforms around claims that their right to free speech is being undermined. Critics of free speech correctly see these claims as a veil for misogyny, white-supremacy, colonialism and transphobia, concluding that it is a political weapon to conserve entrenched power arrangements. Rethinking Free Speech will change the way you think about the politics of speech in the age of social media. Peter Ives offers a new way of thinking about the essential and increasingly contentious debates around the politics of speech. Drawing on political philosophy and everyday examples, Ives takes the reader on a journey through the hotspots of today’s raging speech wars. This book provides a map for critically grasping these battles as they erupt in university classrooms, debates around the meaning of antisemitism, the “cancelling” of racist comedians and the proliferation of hate speech on social media. This is an original and essential guide to the perils and possibilities of communication for democracy and justice.

As reports of genocide, terrorism, and political violence fill today’s newscasts, more attention has been given to issues of human rights—but all too often the sound bites seem overly simplistic. Many Westerners presume that non-Western peoples yearn for democratic rights, while liberal values of toleration give way to xenophobia. This book shows that the identification of rights with contemporary liberal democracy is inaccurate and questions the assumptions of many politicians and scholars that rights are self-evident in all circumstances and will overcome any conflicts of thought or interest. Rethinking Rights offers a radical reconsideration of the origins, nature, and role of rights in public life, interweaving perspectives of leading scholars in history, political science, philosophy, and law to emphasize rights as a natural outgrowth of a social understanding of human nature and dignity. The authors argue that every person comes to consciousness in a historical and cultural milieu that must be taken into account in understanding human rights, and they describe the omnipresence of concrete, practical rights in their historical, political, and philosophical contexts. By rooting our understanding of rights in both history and the order of existence, they show that it is possible to understand rights as essential to our lives as social beings but also open to refinement within communities. An initial group of essays retraces the origins and historical development of rights in the West, assessing the influence of such thinkers as Locke, Burke, and the authors of the Declaration of Independence to clarify the experience of rights within the Western tradition. A second group addresses the need to rethink our understanding of the nature of existence if we are to understand rights and their place in any decent life, examining the ontological basis of rights, the influence of custom on rights, the social nature of the human person, and the importance of institutional rights. Steering a middle course between radical individualist and extreme egalitarian views, Rethinking Rights proposes a new philosophy of rights appropriate to today’s world, showing that rights need to be rethought in a manner that brings them back into accord with human nature and experience so that they may again truly serve the human good. By engaging both the history of rights in the West and the multicultural challenge of rights in an international context, Rethinking Rights offers a provocative and coherent new argument to advance the field of rights studies.

The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in Schenck vs. the United States is one of the most important free speech cases in American history. Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is most famous for first invoking the phrase "clear and present danger." Although the decision upheld the conviction of an individual for criticizing the draft during World War I, it also laid the foundation for our nation's robust protection of free speech. Over time, the standard Holmes devised made freedom of speech in America a reality rather than merely an ideal. In The Free Speech Century, two of America's leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars--Cass Sunstein, Lawrence Lessig, Laurence Tribe, Kathleen Sullivan, Catherine McKinnon, among others--to evaluate the evolution of free speech doctrine since Schenk and to assess where it might be headed in the future. Since 1919, First Amendment jurisprudence in America has been a signal development in the history of constitutional democracies--remarkable for its level of doctrinal refinement, remarkable for its lateness in coming (in relation to the adoption of the First Amendment), and remarkable for the scope of protection it has afforded since the 1960s. Over the course of The First Amendment Century, judicial engagement with these fundamental rights has grown exponentially. We now have an elaborate set of free speech laws and norms, but as Stone and Bollinger stress, the context is always shifting. New societal threats like terrorism, and new technologies of communication continually reshape our understanding of what speech should be allowed. Publishing on the one hundredth anniversary of the decision that laid the foundation for America's free speech tradition, The Free Speech Century will serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First Amendment transformed over time and why it is so critical both for the United States and for the world today.

In this book, the author explores how search media can be incorporated into freedom of expression doctrine, as well as media and communications law and policy more generally. And the book develops a theory of the legal relations between national governments and search media providers on the one hand and between end-users and information providers on the other. Among the many issues covered are the following: role of government under the right to freedom of expression; lack of transparency about the ranking and selection of search results; search engine and ISP intermediary liability; filtering by access providers; freedom of expression and the governance of public libraries; the search engine market, its business model and the separation rule for advertising; search engine self-regulation; user profiling and personalization; decisions and actions for which search engines should be able to claim protection. The analysis draws on specific legal developments under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the United States First Amendment, and investigates issues of diversity, pluralism, and freedom of expression as they relate to editorial control in other media. The author concludes with recommendations regarding search engine governance and the proper role of government, indicating which existing elements of the regulatory framework for search media can be improved and offering directions for future legal and empirical research. Considering the ever-growing cultural, political, and economic importance of the Internet and the World Wide Web in our societies, and the societal interests involved in the availability of effective search tools, this first in-depth legal analysis of search engine freedom will prove indispensable to the many practitioners and policymakers concerned with freedom of expression in the digital age.

A clear, comprehensive, and cutting-edge introduction to the field of information privacy law, with the latest cases and materials exploring issues of emerging technology, information privacy, algorithmic decisions, AI, data security, and European data protection law. New to the 8th Edition: Tighter editing and shorter chapters New sections about AI and algorithms in law enforcement (Chapter 4), consumer privacy (Chapter 9), and employment privacy (Chapter 12) New cases: MD Anderson, Loomis v. Wisconsin, Clearview AI Discussion of post-Carpenter cases Discussion of new FTC enforcement cases involving dark patterns and algorithm deletion Discussion of protections of reproductive health data after Dobbs Benefits for instructors and students: Extensive coverage of FTC privacy enforcement, HIPAA and HHS enforcement, and standing in privacy lawsuits, among other topics Chapters devoted exclusively to data security, national security, employment privacy, and education privacy Sections on government surveillance and freedom to explore ideas Engaging approach to complicated laws and regulations such as HIPAA, FCRA, ECPA, GDPR, and CCPA

Written with the sweep of an epic novel and grounded in extensive research into contemporary documents, Savage Peace is a striking portrait of American democracy under stress. It is the surprising story of America in the year 1919. In the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu pandemic, Americans began the year full of hope, expecting to reap the benefits of peace. But instead, the fear of terrorism filled their days. Bolshevism was the new menace, and the federal government, utilizing a vast network of domestic spies, began to watch anyone deemed suspicious. A young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover headed a brand-new intelligence division of the Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI). Bombs exploded on the doorstep of the attorney general's home in Washington, D.C., and thirty-six parcels containing bombs were discovered at post offices across the country. Poet and journalist Carl Sandburg, recently returned from abroad with a trunk full of Bolshevik literature, was detained in New York, his trunk seized. A twenty-one-year-old Russian girl living in New York was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for protesting U.S. intervention in Arctic Russia, where thousands of American soldiers remained after the Armistice, ostensibly to guard supplies but in reality to join a British force meant to be a warning to the new Bolshevik government. In 1919, wartime legislation intended to curb criticism of the government was extended and even strengthened. Labor strife was a daily occurrence. And decorated African-American soldiers, returning home to claim the democracy for which they had risked their lives, were badly disappointed. Lynchings continued, race riots would erupt in twenty-six cities before the year ended, and secret agents from the government's "Negro Subversion" unit routinely shadowed outspoken African-Americans. Adding a vivid human drama to the greater historical narrative, Savage Peace brings 1919 alive through the people who played a major role in making the year so remarkable. Among them are William Monroe Trotter, who tried to put democracy for African-Americans on the agenda at the Paris peace talks; Supreme Court associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who struggled to find a balance between free speech and legitimate government restrictions for reasons of national security, producing a memorable decision for the future of free speech in America; and journalist Ray Stannard Baker, confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, who watched carefully as Wilson's idealism crumbled and wrote the best accounts we have of the president's frustration and disappointment. Weaving together the stories of a panoramic cast of characters, from Albert Einstein to Helen Keller, Ann Hagedorn brilliantly illuminates America at a pivotal moment.

Since the first edition was published in 1994, Rethinking Our Classrooms has sold over 180,000 copies.

Developed from the casebook¿Information Privacy Law, this short paperback contains key cases and materials focusing on privacy issues¿related to the media. Topics covered include the privacy torts, free speech, First¿Amendment, paparazzi, defamation, online gossip and social network websites. New to the Fourth Edition: New cases and notes throughout, including the addition of a leading right of publicity case from California, De Havilland v. FX Networks, LLC. This book could be used in courses including: Media law Entertainment law Cyberlaw First Amendment / free speech Privacy law Information law Torts II Journalism

It’s easy to make a rhetorical case for the value of journalism. Because, it is a necessary precondition for democracy; it speaks to the people and for the people; it informs citizens and enables them to make rational decisions; it functions as their watchdog on government and other powers that be. But does rehashing such familiar rationales bring journalism studies forward? Does it contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding journalism’s viability going forth? For all their seeming self-evidence, this book considers what bearing these old platitudes have in the new digital era. It asks whether such hopeful talk really reflects the concrete roles journalism now performs for people in their everyday lives. In essence, it poses questions that strike at the core of the idea of journalism itself. Is there a singular journalism that has one well-defined role in society? Is its public mandate as strong as we think? The internationally-renowned scholars comprising the collection address these recurring concerns that have long-defined the profession and which journalism faces even more acutely today. By discussing what journalism was, is, and (possibly) will be, this book highlights key contemporary areas of debate and tackles on-going anxieties about its future.

This book focuses on the way in which public debate and legal practice intersect when it comes to the value of free speech and the need to regulate "offensive", "blasphemous" or "hate" speech, especially, though not exclusively where such speech is thought to be offensive to members of ethnic and religious minorities. The themes addressed are of great significance for contemporary societies in many parts of the world, including Europe and North America, and although the volume focuses principally on the European context, it also addresses the theme on an international level. Contributions look at the transnational intertextuality of the debate, as well as comparing approaches to regulation in different countries (notably between the European Court of Human Rights and the United States Supreme Court). This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.