Classes & Events

Download the full programme of the Summer School

The session will be divided into two parts: (i) a lecture, presenting an overview of the problems regarding freedom of expression on online platforms, and (ii) a discussion where the participants will be able to express their opinions and test their initial normative intuitions. In the lecture part, the presenter will give an overview of the sociopolitical challenges: platforms’ rights to moderate content, obligations to moderate content, users’ rights, public rights’, etc., as well as the legal framework from the US (section 230, the First Amendment) and the EU (the e-commerce directive, the DSA). In the discussion part, students will be divided into two working groups, and asked to prepare arguments for the reform of the current legal landscape; a debate will follow, and end with a plenary discussion.

LITERATURE:

Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation, 51 U.C.D. L. REV. 1149 (2018), available at: https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/51/3/Essays/51-3_Balkin.pdf

Kate Klonick, The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech, 131 HARV. L. REV. 1598 (2018), available at: https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/the-new-governors-the-people-rules-and-processes-governing-online-speech/

Jacob Mchangama, Thoughts for the DSA: Challenges, Ideas and the Way Forward through International Human Rights Law, a report (2022), available at https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/publications/thoughts-for-the-dsa-challenges-ideas-and-the-way-forward-through-international-human-rights-law/

Whereas the former session focuses on learning about, and evaluating, the current state of problems and the law, this session will be devoted to out-of-the-box ideas for legal and social reform. Again, the session will be divided into two parts: a lecture, and a discussion. During the former, the presenter will give an overview of heterodox ideas for responding to the online content moderation problem: democratizing the space through interoperability, through delegating the choices to communities, and striving towards a more federate/polyphonic content moderation. During the latter, the students will be divided into groups, brainstorm over possible ideas, and present their weak and strong points.

LITERATURE:

Julian Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace (1993), available at: https://www.villagevoice.com/2005/10/18/a-rape-in-cyberspace/

Przemyslaw Palka, The World of Fifty (Interoperable) Facebooks, 51 Seton HALL L. REV. 1193 (2021), available at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/shlr/vol51/iss4/5/

Daphne Keller, Privacy, Middleware, and Interoperability: Can Technical Solutions, Including Blockchain, Help Us Avoid Hard Tradeoffs? (2021), available at: https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2021/08/privacy-middleware-and-interoperability-can-technical-solutions-including-blockchain-0

The “harm in hate speech”, to quote Jeremy Waldron, is multifarious but sometimes difficult to pin down. However, understanding how hate speech damages people’s lives and society is crucial in order to counteract its effects. The “Pyramid of Hate” model, as propounded by the Anti-Defamation League, represents escalating levels of attitudes and behaviours that start with biased attitudes and can subsequently evolve into acts of bias, systemic discrimination, bias-motivated violence, and even genocide. In this sense, hate speech could be situated on the lowest levels of the pyramid and constitute an actual threat of eventual hate-motivated physical violence. The model, then, identifies the harm in hate speech both with the fear it instills into its victims and the increased probability that such fear will eventually materialize. However, this does not answer the following questions: 1) how do hate words bring about, or contribute to bringing about, hate-motivated actions? 2) Are there other, more direct ways in which hate speech causes damage?

The two lessons will address the above questions by applying John L. Austin’s theory of “speech acts” to distinguish between illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of hate speech. It will be shown how these two types of effects contribute to the spreading of hatred against certain groups and can finally result into verbal and physical violence. Moreover, hate speech can directly damage persons both by immediately affecting their self-perception and mental health and by reinforcing stereotypes that impair their right to be treated as equal. Lastly, different possible strategies meant to neutralize the harming potential of hate speech will be illustrated.

LITERATURE

Rae Langton, Blocking as Counter-Speech, F. Daniel, H. Daniel, M. Moss (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts, OUP, 144–164 (2018).

Rae Langton, The Authority of Hate Speech, in J. Gardner, L. Green, B. Leiter (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, vol. III, 123–152 (2018).

Melina Constantine Bell, John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle and Free Speech: Expanding the Notion of Harm, Utilitas, 33, 2/2020.

The relation between freedom of expression and freedom of religion is a complex one. In most situations both principles seems to overlap, which means that a particular religiously motivated act is protected by freedom of religion as well as freedom of expression. From this perspective freedom of religious expression might be seen as a special case of more general freedom of expression. Nevertheless, they are also many situations where both principles are in tension, which means that for example, the protection of one’s freedom of religion leads to limitation of freedom of expression of others. The problems of blasphemy laws and religious hate speech laws provides examples in this context.

The workshop will be focused on a particular topic which is crucial for the freedom of religious expression in public sphere, namely the issue of conscientious exemptions. In short, conscientious exemption cases concern situations of tough moral dilemmas where individuals are forced to make choices between fidelity to one’s convictions and conformity to law. Typically, in such dilemmas, there are two options available: One might either stay loyal to her conscience and act against the law, or alternatively, obey the law but betray their own moral convictions. In such a situation conscientious exemption provides one a kind of legal right to disobey the law. According to Paul Bou-Habib (2006) such exemption should be seen as a right ‘to be free of burdens that either impede one’s religious conduct or make it too costly to perform’.

The workshop will be divided into three parts. In the first part of the workshop main arguments for and against introducing conscientious exemptions will be considered. The second part will consist in a discussion on the procedures in which different claims for conscientious exemptions are to be recognized and assessed. Finally, in the third part of the workshop, the legal structure of a conscientious objection will be analyzed.

LITERATURE:

Paul Bou-Habib, A Theory of Religious Accommodation, Journal of Applied Philosophy 23/2006.

Jonathan Quong, Cultural Exemptions, Expensive Tastes, and Equal Opportunities, Journal of Applied Philosophy 23/2006.

Anna Su, Judging Religious Sincerity, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 5/2016.

Freedom of expression is facing new challenges in the age of social networks and online communication. European institutions and national governments are actively searching for legal solutions for contrasting the drawbacks of digital technology and social networks: deception, trolls, information monopolies, and cyberbullies, to name only a few. The goal of this course is to offer a fresh start on these issues from the perspective of legal theory and human rights. The first section of the course deals with fake news. The second section explores the legal issues connected with hate speech online. Instead, the third and final section considers the role of social networks (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat) in the framework of the new separation of powers, with an eye to the freedom of political speech. Students are expected to discuss both case-law and doctrinal contributions.

LITERATURE:

Akman, P. Online Platforms, in Fordham International Law Journal 43(2): 209–319 (2019).

Banks, J. Regulating Hate Speech On-Line in International Review of Law, Computers & Technology 24(3): 233–9 (2019).

Klonick, K. The Facebook Oversight Board: Creating an Independent Institution to Adjudicate Online Free Expression, in Yale Law Journal 129: 2420-2499 (2020).

Persily, N. (2017) Can Democracy Survive the Internet? in Journal of Democracy 28(2): 63–76 (2017).

Sardo, A. Categories, Balancing, and Fake News: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, In The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence Issue Aug. 2020: 1–26 (2020).

This workshop focuses on ethical questions raised by the practice of public shaming, especially the contemporary phenomenon of online public shaming. The questions we will discuss might include: What exactly is public shaming; how should it be conceptualised? Can public shaming ever be justifiable? Can it be obligatory? What special moral concerns are raised by online public shaming, if any? If shaming is often unjustifiable, then what other responses to social norm violations might be available? And what mechanisms could be put in place in response to high levels of unjustifiable shaming? For example, should employers be prevented from firing shamed employees (which is currently a common outcome)? What responsibilities, if any, do social media companies have for shaming that occurs on their platform?

LITERATURE:

• Jon Ronson, ‘How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life’, The New York Times Magazine, 12th February 2015. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupidtweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html.
o Extract from Ronson’s popular book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador, 2015). It gives an insight into the experience of being shamed online.

• Paul Billingham and Tom Parr, ‘Enforcing Social Norms: The Morality of Public Shaming’, European Journal of Philosophy, 28(4) (2020): 997-1016. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejop.12543.
o Outlines an approach to analysing the morality of public shaming.

• Harrison Frye, ‘The Technology of Public Shaming’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 38(2) (2021): 128-145. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/article/technology-of-public-shaming/E7EFEDC1D9D7C628BAB0FC940D8D81C5.
o Argues that there is a mismatch between the aims of public shaming and the practice of public shaming online.

• Jennifer Saul, ‘Someone Is Wrong on the Internet: Is There an Obligation to Correct False and Oppressive Speech on Social Media?’, in Alison MacKenzie, Jennifer Rose, Ibrar Bhatt (eds.), The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era, pp. 139-157. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-72154-1_8.
o Considers arguments for an obligation to engage in counterspeech, argues that these do not carry over to the online world, and considers possible alternative approaches.

• Paul Billingham and Tom Parr, ‘A Sackable Offence? Employers’ Responses to Public Shaming’, The Ethical War Blog, 9th July 2020. Available at: http://stockholmcentre.org/a-sackable-offence-employers-responses-to-public-shaming/.
o Short blog post sketching some initial thoughts on employers’ responses to public shaming.