Democracy & Elections

The Lawfare Podcast: Content Moderation and the First Amendment for Dummies

Jen Patja, Evelyn Douek, Quinta Jurecic, Genevieve Lakier
Thursday, March 11, 2021, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on disinformation and misinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Genevieve Lakier, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and First Amendment expert. It’s basically impossible to have a conversation about content moderation without someone crying “First Amendment!” at some point. But the cultural conception of the First Amendment doesn’t always match the legal conception. Evelyn and Quinta spoke with Genevieve about what First Amendment doctrine actually says, how its history might be quite different from what you think and what the dynamism of the doctrine over time—and the current composition of the Supreme Court—might suggest about the First Amendment’s possible futures for grappling with the internet.



Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Evelyn Douek is an Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Senior Research Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. She holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School on the topic of private and public regulation of online speech. Prior to attending HLS, Evelyn was an Associate (clerk) to the Honourable Chief Justice Susan Kiefel of the High Court of Australia. She received her LL.B. from UNSW Sydney, where she was Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal.
Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Genevieve Lakier is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and will be serving as Senior Research Scholar at the Knight Institute at Columbia University for the 2021-2022 year. Her work explores the changing meaning of freedom of speech in American law. Genevieve has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from NYU School of Law. She previously clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand of the Southern District of New York and Martha J. Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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