I am the executive director of the Law & Liberty Center at Scalia Law School. Our most significant current project at the Center is “Voices for Freedom,” which our website describes as follows: “While some view free speech as harmful to minority groups, others argue for it as a necessary condition for protecting voices underrepresented. The Liberty & Law Center’s Voices for Liberty initiative examines this intersection, considering the role that free speech has played and continues to play in advancing civil rights in America, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups and/or socially marginalized. Our program includes significant research and scholarship, speakers at the National Bureau, and numerous public events.”
I thought I’d share the research papers we’ve sponsored so far:
PAPER: “First Amendment Rights at Trial: A Critique of the Time, Place, and Manner Doctrine”
PUBLISHED: SSRN (October 2023)
AUTHOR: Alec Greven, Juris Doctor candidate at the University of Chicago Law School ABSTRACT: This article argues that the current First Amendment doctrine of times, places, and manners must be reformed because it grants undue deference to government authorities in regulating speech of which they disapprove by changing the channels in which speech may be presented, burdening speech in places disproportionately used by certain social groups and selectively enforcing those norms. Various solutions are proposed to ensure a robust right of assembly and allow groups to express themselves freely and promote social progress.
PAPER: “Free Speech for All or None: Mobs, Abolitionists, and Democrats and the Public Constitutional Struggles over the First Amendment during the American Civil War”
PUBLISHED: SSRN (October 2023)
AUTHOR: Nicholas Mosvick, director of the Buckley Legacy project at the National Review Institute
ABSTRACT: This article discusses free speech issues in the Civil War North by examining partisan newspapers and other popular accounts in order to understand popular constitutional discourse around the First Amendment during the war. The article considers many episodes that gave rise to public constitutional debate, including riots, private and military attacks on newspaper printing presses, and the arrest and military trial of one of the president’s biggest critics Abraham Lincoln, Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham.
PAPER: “Free Speech Culture as an Anticipatory ‘Reasonable Accommodation’ for People with Psychosocial Disabilities and Neurodiverse People”
PUBLISHED: SSRN (October 2023)
AUTHOR: Reuben Kirkham, lecturer, Monash University and Free Speech Union of Australia
ABSTRACT: This article starts a conversation about the relationship between disability rights and free speech. Drawing on the circumstances of people with a range of psychosocial disabilities and neurodiverse conditions, it explores how the lack of a free speech culture equates to a failure to find reasonable accommodations for a wide range of disabled people.
PAPER: “Section 230 as a Civil Rights Statute”
PUBLISHED: SSRN (September 2023); Cincinnati Law Review (imminent)
AUTHOR: Enrique Armijo, professor of law at Elon University School of Law
ABSTRACT: Many of our most urgent conversations about justice, progress, and civil rights have moved online. But the convergence of mobility, connectivity and technology is not the only reason. Thanks to Section 230 immunity of the Communications Decency Act for online platforms, websites and their hosts, speakers can engage in speech about protest, equality and dissent without fear of collateral censorship from governments, authorities and others subject to the power that they hope to silence them.
Last year we held a symposium discussing each of these documents. You can find the videos here.
And here are the documents we currently have in development:
PAPER: “Religious minorities and secular rights”
AUTHOR: Josh McDaniel, Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
PAPER: “Myra Bradwell and the Chicago Legal News: Speech as a Prerequisite for Equal Rights”
AUTHOR: Anastasia P. Boden, Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
PAPER: “Black-controlled town of Mound Bayou as beachhead for free speech in Jim Crow Mississippi”
AUTHOR: David T. Beito, research fellow at the Independent Institute and professor emeritus at the University of Alabama
PAPER: “Free Speech, Battling Faiths, and ‘Nobodies’: How Robust Free Speech Protections Helped Atheists, Humanists, and Freethinkers Become Visible Participants in American Culture”
AUTHOR: Katie McKerall, Senior Attorney, American Humanist Association
PAPER: “The Jewish Dilemma in Supporting Free Speech and Countering Anti-Semitism on American College Campuses”
AUTHOR: David L. Bernstein, founder of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values
PAPER: “Does free speech promote racial tolerance in all countries?”
AUTHOR: Claudia Williamson Kramer, Probasco President of Free Enterprise, UTC Gary W. Rollins College of Business