Free Speech Unmuted: From Brandenburg to Britain: Rethinking Free Speech in the Digital Era with Prof. Eric Heinze
Jane and I speak with Eric Heinze (Queen Mary University of London) about how the digital age has transformed the meaning and limits of free expression, from Britain’s recent Lucy Connolly case—involving online incitement and hate speech—to the philosophical and legal contrasts between the American Brandenburg standard and the U.K.’s more interventionist approach.
Prof. Heinze argues that democracies must rethink free speech in an era dominated by opaque, powerful platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where risk, harm, and accountability are far harder to define. He and Jane and I debate whether governments—or tech companies—should bear responsibility for regulating speech online, and what "freedom" really means when algorithms, not citizens, shape public discourse.
Our past episodes:
- From Brandenburg to Britain: Rethinking Free Speech in the Digital Era with Eric Heinze
- A Conversation with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff
- Free Speech Unmuted: President Trump's Executive Order on Flag Desecration
- Free Speech and Doxing
- The Supreme Court Rules on Protecting Kids from Sexually Themed Speech Online
- Free Speech, Public School Students, and "There Are Only Two Genders"
- Can AI Companies Be Sued for What AI Says?
- Harvard vs. Trump: Free Speech and Government Grants
- Trump's War on Big Law
- Can Non-Citizens Be Deported For Their Speech?
- Freedom of the Press, with Floyd Abrams
- Free Speech, Private Power, and Private Employees
- Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law
- Free Speech in European (and Other) Democracies, with Prof. Jacob Mchangama
- Protests, Public Pressure Campaigns, Tort Law, and the First Amendment
- Misinformation: Past, Present, and Future
- I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity Laws
- Speech and Violence
- Emergency Podcast: The Supreme Court's Social Media Cases
- Internet Policy and Free Speech: A Conversation with Rep. Ro Khanna
- Free Speech, TikTok (and Bills of Attainder!), with Prof. Alan Rozenshtein
- The 1st Amendment on Campus with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
- Free Speech On Campus
- AI and Free Speech
- Free Speech, Government Persuasion, and Government Coercion
- Deplatformed: The Supreme Court Hears Social Media Oral Arguments
- Book Bans – or Are They?