Free Speech, Government Persuasion, and Government Coercion | Free Speech, Unmuted | Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer | Hoover Institution

The First Amendment protects against certain kinds of indirect government suppression of speech, as well as direct. That means the government can’t coerce bookstores, platforms, and the like, to remove material. But when does persuasion become coercion? And when, if ever, is even noncoercive persuasion aimed at the removal of speech unconstitutional?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Eugene Volokh is a visiting fellow (soon to be senior fellow) at the Hoover Institution. For thirty years, he has been a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles School of Law, where he has taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. Volokh is the author of the textbooks The First Amendment and Related Statutes (7th ed., 2020) and Academic Legal Writing (5th ed., 2016), as well as more than one hundred law review articles. He is the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. Before coming to UCLA, Volokh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the US Supreme Court.

Jane Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches Torts, First Amendment, Media Law, Criminal Procedure, and Privacy Law. Bambauer’s research assesses the social costs and benefits of Big Data, AI, and predictive algorithms. Her work analyzes how the regulation of these new information technologies will affect free speech, privacy, law enforcement, health and safety, competitive markets, and government accountability. Bambauer’s research has been featured in over 20 scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.