Op-eds etc.
By Jacob Mchangama Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on X to announce the immediate revocation of the visa of Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, as well as “his allies on the court [and] their immediate family members.” What drove Rubio to take such a drastic step against leading members of the […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan and Ashley Haek A 2023 complaint filed by Missouri, Louisiana, and other individual plaintiffs against the Biden administration argued that executive branch officials “coerced, threatened, and pressured social-media platforms to censor disfavored speakers and viewpoints by using threats of adverse government action,” thus violating the First Amendment. That lawsuit alleged that the […]
By Natalie Alkiviadou In a series of guest blog posts at The Volokh Conspiracy, Natalie Alkiviadou summarized key ideas in her new book, Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights. Part 1: Hate Speech and The European Court of Human Rights: An Overview of My New Book July 15, 2015 The European Court […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan Each June, Pride Month turns our public spaces into sites of celebration and remembrance. But Pride is not just a cultural event; it is a constitutional exercise. At its core, Pride embodies the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, press, and petition. Expressive acts of defiance wrote the history of […]
By Joan Barata The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court ( STF ) formed a majority to substantially change Article 19 of the Internet Civil Rights Framework — a rule that defines the responsibility of platforms for user content in the absence of a court order. The decision reflects growing pressure from government officials for laws that would force platforms to […]
Photo Credit: Frankie Fouganthin By Jacob Mchangama In 1793, Thomas Paine launched a furious assault on Christianity with The Age of Reason. “What is it the Bible teaches us?” he asked. “Rapine, cruelty, and murder.” He didn’t stop there. “What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan Key Takeaways The First Amendment protects people’s, corporations’ and other legal entities’ free speech rights from government restriction, but no court has found that AI programs themselves have the same free speech rights. AI-generated content is generally afforded the same First Amendment protections as content created by people or corporations and other […]
By Ashkhen Kazaryan A new Tennessee law with the unassuming acronym “PEACE” might appear, on the surface, to be a mundane update to the state’s criminal code. But tucked into the legislation’s language is a clear and deliberate threat to the First Amendment freedoms of Tennesseans. On Friday, Gov. Bill Lee signed Senate Bill 30, the Protecting […]
By Jacob Mchangama and Ashkhen Kazaryan A new bill in Congress threatens to dictate what Americans can read, watch and say online. On May 8, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah and Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., introduced the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act” (IODA) — a recycled attempt to ban online pornography nationwide. While concerns about pornography, including moral and religious ones, […]
Originally published in The Conversation. By Jacob Mchangama For much of the 20th century, young Americans were seen as free speech’s fiercest defenders. But now, young Americans are growing more skeptical of free speech. According to a March 2025 report by The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank where I am executive director, support […]