Civil Rights

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What's the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment
Must Free Speech be Harmful?
Leslie Kendrick
Vice Dean and David H. Ibbeken ‘71 Research Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law.

I would like to thank Amy Adler, Will Baude, Danielle Citron, Genevieve Lakier, Fred Schauer, Elizabeth Sepper, and the participants in The University of Chicago Legal Forum’s 2019 Symposium for their helpful comments. This piece builds upon the analysis of rights and harm I offered in Leslie Kendrick, Free Speech as a Special Right, 45 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 87 (2017).

Popular discourse in the United States often assumes that it must. Discussions about hate speech or false speech frame harm as the price we pay for freedom.

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What's the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment
The Internet as a Speech Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform
Danielle Keats Citron
Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, Vice President, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 2019 MacArthur Fellow.
Mary Anne Franks
Professor of Law & Dean’s Distinguished Scholar, University of Miami School of Law, President, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.

Deep thanks to the editors of the University of Chicago Legal Forum for including us in the symposium. Olivier Sylvain, Spencer Overton, Genevieve Lakier, Brian Leiter, and symposium participants provided helpful comments. It was a particular pleasure to engage with co-panelists Amy Adler, Leslie Kendrick, and Fred Schauer. Matthew Atha provided superb research assistance. We are grateful to Dan Simon and Rebecca Roman for their terrific suggestions and editing.

The debate begins with a basic question: should platforms be responsible for user-generated content? If so, under what circumstances? What exactly would such responsibility look like?

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What's the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment
Discrimination, the Speech That Enables It, and the First Amendment
Helen Norton
Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law and Professor of Law, University of Colorado School of Law.

Thanks to Bethany Reece, Jessica Reed-Baum, Virginia Sargent, and Jonathan Smith for outstanding research, and to the University of Chicago Legal Forum for excellent editorial assistance. Thanks too for thoughtful comments from Rachel Arnow-Richman, Rebecca Aviel, Amal Bass, Alan Chen, Terry Fromson, Beto Juarez, Margot Kaminski, Margaret Kwoka, Vicki Schultz, Nantiya Ruan, Derigan Silver, Scott Skinner-Thompson, Catherine Smith, and the par-ticipants at the Colloquium on Scholarship on Employment and Labor Law at Texas A&M School of Law, the Free Expression Scholars Conference at Yale Law School, and the symposium on What’s the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment, at the University of Chicago Law School.

Imagine that you’re interviewing for your dream job, only to be asked by the hiring committee whether you’re pregnant. Or HIV-positive. Or Muslim. Does the First Amendment protect your interviewers’ inquiries from government regulation? This Article explores that question.

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What's the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment
"Segs and the City" and Cutting-Edge Aesthetic Experiences: Resolving the Circuit Split on Tour Guides' Licensing Requirements and the First Amendment
Marie J. Plecha
B.A. Dartmouth College; J.D. Candidate, The University of Chicago Law School.

Tourism represents an important contributor to state and local economies. Accordingly, some U.S. cities have sought to regulate operations of the industry, including the activities of official tour guides.

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What's the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment
Uncommon Law: The Past, Present and Future of Libel Law in a Time of "Fake News" and "Enemies of the American People"
Jane E. Kirtley
Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, and Director of the Silha Center for the Study of Me-dia Ethics and Law, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and affiliated faculty member, Law School, University of Minnesota.

Parts of this essay were adapted from the author’s lecture, “Uncommon Law: The Past, Present and Future of Libel in America,” delivered at the 2019 Reynolds School of Journalism First Amendment Forum at the University of Nevada in Reno, on April 23, 2019, and from her article Getting to the Truth: Fake News, Libel Laws, and “Enemies of the American People” published in Vol. 43, No. 4 of Human Rights Magazine. The author would like to thank Silha Center Research Assistants Scott Memmel, Sarah Wiley, and Jonathan Anderson for their invaluable research assistance. Uncommon Law: The Past, Present and Future of Libel in America, U. of Nev., Reno, h‌tt‌p‌s‌:‌/‌/‌e‌v‌e‌n‌t‌s‌.‌u‌n‌r‌.‌e‌d‌u‌/‌e‌v‌e‌n‌t‌/‌u‌n‌c‌ommon_law_the_past_present_and_future_of_libel_in_america#.XN8jrMhKiUk [https://perma.cc/EQ6Z-SS6D].

After many years of comparative quiet, the United States is experiencing a growth in libel suits brought by both public officials and private figures.

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Law for the Next Pandemic
Four Futures for U.S. Pandemic Policy
Daniel Hemel
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School; Visiting Professor of Law, New York University School of Law.

Thanks to Daniel Rodriguez, Crofton Kelly, Dylan Moore, and Alan‌ Rozenshtein for thoughtful comments.

In the spring of 2020, when the editors of The University of Chicago Legal Forum chose “Law for the Next Pandemic” as the theme for their upcoming fall symposium, the title seemed rather pessimistic. Really, we’re going to have to do all of this again?

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Law for the Next Pandemic
Scrambling the New Sanitationist Synthesis: Civil Liberties and Public Health in the Age of COVID-19
John Fabian Witt
Duffy Professor of Law & History; Head of Davenport College, Yale; john.witt@yale.edu.

Many thanks to Greg Schwartz for extraordinary research assistance.

Beginning in the 1980s, leading figures in the law of public health began to argue that protecting individual and human rights would promote public health, not interfere with it. Today, however, threats to this new synthesis view abound, and for good reason.

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The Body
Black Masculinity and the Government
Paul Butler
Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center

This essay was presented as a work in progress at the University of Arkansas School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. I thank the participants in those sessions. Special shout out to Chris Gordon and K-Sue Park. Chibunkem Ezenekwe, Aubrianna Mierow, and Torrell Mills provided exemplary research assistance. Much respect to Timothy Kowalczyk and Kristen Powell, the student editors of a law professor’s dreams.

Black male bodies have long been the subject of special attention from the state. This essay focuses on two government interventions in Black masculinity, dating from the 1960s, and their continuing consequences—including for the criminal justice system, and race and gender justice.