Can Social Media Platforms Be Held Liable for User Speech?
Can social media companies be held legally responsible for the harms caused by their users? Richard Epstein examines the surge of lawsuits targeting social media platforms, particularly claims tied to speech, adolescent harm, and platform design. Epstein explains why traditional tort law places responsibility on the individual wrongdoer rather than intermediaries, how Section 230 is meant to shield platforms from derivative liability, and why efforts to carve out “bad faith” or promotion-based exceptions risk collapsing those protections altogether. He also explores the high costs and perverse incentives of jury-driven liability, the limits of causation in complex social harms, and a deeper concern often overlooked: government pressure on platforms that threatens free speech more than platform misconduct itself.
The Libertarian
Surf’s Up: Roman Law and Beach Houses
Episode 4 of The Libertarian with Richard Epstein and Charles C.W. Cooke
Posse Comitatus: Trump, Troops, and the Limits of Presidential Power
Episode 5 of The Libertarian with Richard Epstein and Charles C.W. Cooke
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Constitutionalism
Amicus Brief: Hon. William P. Barr and Hon. Michael B. Mukasey in Support of Petitioners
Former AGs Barr and Mukasey Cite Civitas in a SCOTUS Brief
Rational Judicial Review: Constitutions as Power-sharing Agreements, Secession, and the Problem of Dred Scott
Judicial review and originalism serve as valuable commitment mechanisms to enforce future compliance with a political bargain.
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State Courts Can’t Run Foreign Policy
Suncor is also a golden opportunity for the justices to stop local officials from interfering with an industry critical to foreign and national-security policy.
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When Can a Crass Political Remark Be Deemed an Indictable “Threat of Violence”?
When can a crass political remark be deemed an indictable “threat of violence”? When those charged with recognizing the law’s “supremacy” and the “limitations” on their authority disavow both principles.
Struck By Lightning Fifty Years Later: The Court’s Broken Promise on the Death Penalty
The Supreme Court has become the source of the very arbitrariness it set out to eliminate.
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