| Freedom of Speech in a Digitally Interconnected World |
| Course Number: 570-0-01 |
McLaughlin | 3 Units |
This course will examine differing national approaches to the regulation of speech and expression, aiming at a deeper understanding of the First Amendment and its values in today's context of global interconnectedness. Americans tend to underappreciate the extent to which the First Amendment, as interpreted by our federal courts, is exceptional, both in the scope of its protections and the peculiarity of its limitations and exceptions. We also tend to equate our expansive First Amendment with democracy, and censorship with dictatorship, whereas in practice nearly all other countries, including many vibrant democracies, have implemented regimes for speech regulation that are notably more restrictive than ours. To understand why, students in this course will engage in a critical, comparative examination of the major legal, cultural, religious, and political rationales put forth for limiting individual expression, and then examine how those rationales play out in real-world legal and extra-legal state systems and tactics.
Our work will be broken into three parts. We'll start with a systematic look at the leading theories and justifications asserted to support state restrictions on citizen speech and press activities. We'll then delve into country case studies, including India, Germany, Thailand, Turkey, Australia, Iran, Russia, South Korea, France, and the UK. Finally, we'll assess the ability of conflicting national systems to coexist in the age of the Internet, which is both increasingly significant as a medium of individual and organized expression, and proving to be disruptive of traditional legal and non-legal state techniques for enforcing limitations.
Special Instructions: This course is open to law students and graduate students from other parts of the university. Students will have the option to write either a significant research paper or a series of weekly writing assignments. After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor.
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| Calendar: Quarter Calendar |
| Enrollment: Consent - Max Enrollment 15 |
| Grading system: Honors-Pass |
| Elements used in grading: Class participation, attendance, written assignments and final paper |
| Type of exam: None |
| Specific graduation requirements met: Writing |
| Special instructions, rules or deadlines: See "Special Instructions" in course description above. |
Autumn Overview
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