Faculty Bibliography

Times v. Sullivan sets a striking principle: without (nearly unobtainable) proof of “actual malice,” public officials can’t win defamation suits. If public persons’ reputations conflict with free discourse, the latter wins. Sullivan is iconic. But it’s increasingly beleaguered, said to immunize lies that tear our polity apart. These fears are well-founded. The Sullivan Regime is broken. But understanding why starts not, as critics suggest, from new technology or constitutional doctrine. It starts from the tort of defamation. What interest does the defamation tort protect? What injury does it redress? Leading accounts look to property, dignity, or other values. But these miss something vital. In our polity, a central, serious harm defamation redresses is democratic disempowerment: the destruction of political efficacy in one’s community. Defamation victims (say, those falsely branded sex offenders) lose more than honor. They lose their ability to be credibly heard, participate in civic discussion, have their voices matter. They are discredited. And in our democracy, where participation is core to personhood, this wrong is profound indeed. This insight shows Sullivan, in balancing vigorous press against defamation suits, wasn’t trading “speech” against “non-speech” (say, politicians’ dignity). Rather, the balance was among speech priorities—vigorous press, and democratically enabled People. Silencing by lawsuits, versus silence by slanders. But Sullivan saw speech on just one side. And in our Viral Age, this error causes crisis: a wave of democratic disempowerment, crashing hardest at democracy’s front lines (school boards, election workers, journalists). Fortunately, seeing the problem shows how we might solve it. End “actual malice” for most public persons, but end all defamation suits brought by the very powerful. Make swifter merits decisions, but re-empower lay juries. Surer defeats for nuisance plaintiffs, but stark damages for egregious defamers. Bold, paradoxical shifts to protect both vigorous critique and democratic participation. And which help tame broader discontents—from baseless conspiracies to bigoted cybermobs. Lastly, most broadly, seeing defamation this way hints at a new private law paradigm: one taking democratic efficacy as a core personal interest (like our bodies, lands, and psyches). Today, this interest faces new threats (like lawless “deplatformings”) but is ill-served by old protectors (like constitutional doctrines). In this context, democracy torts—civil remedies to guard our democratic efficacy—hold great promise.

Customized Speech — speech targeted or tailored based on knowledge of one’s audience — is pervasive. It permeates our relationships, our culture, and, especially, our politics. Until recently, customization drew relatively little attention. Cambridge Analytica changed that. Since 2016, a consensus has decried Speech Customization as causing political manipulation, disunity, and destabilization. On this account, machine learning, social networks and Big Data make political Customized Speech a threat we constitutionally can, and normatively should, curtail. That view is mistaken. In this Article, I offer the first systematic analysis of Customized Speech and the First Amendment. I reach two provocative results: Doctrinally, the First Amendment robustly protects Speech Customization. And normatively, even amidst Big Data, this protection can help society and democracy. Doctrinally, the use of audience information to customize speech is, itself, core protected speech. Further, audience-information collection, while less protected, may still only be regulated by carefully drawn, content-neutral, generally applicable laws. And unless and until the state affirmatively enacts such laws (as, overwhelmingly, it has not), it may not curtail speakers’ otherwise-lawful use of such information in political Speech Customization. What does this mean for democratic government? Today, Customized Speech raises fears about democratic discourse, hyper-partisan factions, and citizen autonomy. But these are less daunting than the consensus suggests, and are offset by key benefits: modern Customized Speech activates the apathetic, empowers the marginalized, and checks government overreach. Accordingly, many current proposals to restrict such Customized Speech — from disclosure requirements to outright bans — are neither constitutionally viable nor normatively required.

In the past five years, sharing economy firms like Uber, Zipcar, Airbnb and TaskRabbit have generated both huge market valuations and fierce regulatory contests in America's cities. Incumbent firms in the taxi, hotel, and other industries, as well as consumer protection, labor, and neighborhood activists, have pushed for regulations stifling or banning new sharing economy entrants. Sharing firms have fought back, using their popularity with consumers and novel political strategies, lobbying for freedom to operate as broadly as possible without government interference. But to date, both participants and observers of these "sharing wars" have relied on an unstated assumption: if the sharing firms win these fights, their future will be largely free from government regulation. Local governments will either shut sharing down, or they will leave it alone. But this assumption is almost surely wrong. If sharing firms prevail in the current fights over the right to operate (and indications suggest they will), it is unlikely that cities and states will ignore them. Instead, as sharing economy firms move from being upstarts to important and permanent players in key urban industries like transportation, hospitality, and dining, local and state governments are likely to adopt the type of mixed regulatory strategies they apply to types of firms with whom sharing firms share important traits, from property developers to incumbent taxi operators. Using tools of agglomeration economics and public choice, this Article sketches the future of such policy regimes. Specifically, local and state governments will adopt some combination of the following policies in addition to insisting on consumer/incumbent protections: (1) subsidizing sharing firms to encourage expansion of services that produce public goods, generate substantial consumer surplus, and/or minimize the need for excessive regulation of the property market; (2) harnessing sharing firms as a tool for economic redistribution; and/or (3) contracting with sharing firms to provide traditional government services. The future of sharing economy regulation will be very different from its present, and these changes will pose profound legal, political, and ethical questions for our cities.