Boston University Law Review Online
Abandoning Administrative Common Law in Mortgage Bankers
Kathryn K. Kovacs
Essay
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 1 (2015)
Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association presents the Supreme Court with the opportunity to eliminate a rule of administrative common law that conflicts with the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). When Congress enacted the APA, it deliberately chose to exempt interpretive rules from the Act’s notice-and-comment requirements. The D.C. Circuit nonetheless invalidated a Department of Labor interpretive […]
King, Chevron, and the Age of Textualism
Abigail R. Moncrieff
Essay
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 9 (2015)
“If you’re right about Chevron [deference applying to this case], that would indicate that a subsequent administration could change [your] interpretation?” As it turns out, that question was crucial to Roberts’s thinking and to the 6-3 opinion he authored, but almost all commentators either undervalued or misunderstood the question’s import (myself included). The result of […]
Enforcing the Duties of Nonprofit Fiduciaries: Advocating for Expanding Standing for Beneficiaries
Eileen L. Morrison
Student Note
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 19 (2015)
Oversight of the nonprofit sector has long been a public concern. Nonprofits are largely self-regulated; otherwise, authority to exercise oversight is largely in the hands of states’ attorneys general and the federal Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). The public may vote with their dollars; innovations such as signaling intermediaries have helped the public vet organizations before […]
The Internet Grows Up?
Neil M. Richards
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 33 (2015)
I’d like to take a step back from the problems of revenge porn and cyber-harassment, or the extent to which Citron’s remedies comport with what the First Amendment does (or should) provide. When we do that, we see Citron’s efforts (which are far broader than merely this wonderful book) as part of the maturation of […]
Cyber-Exploitation and Distributed Enforcement
Jane R. Bambauer & Derek E. Bambauer
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 37 (2015)
In the near term, at least, we advocate for greater distributed enforcement, through measures such as tort claims and copyright litigation. If victims are given better tools to identify and bring claims against their harassers, a small subset who are willing to do so can perform effective work as “private attorneys general.” Such efforts can […]
Why Is It So Hard to Rein In Sexually Violent Speech?
Catherine J. Ross
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 41 (2015)
The speech at issue is largely aimed at individuals rather than taking the form of noxious group disparagement (racist or sexist rants about groups of people), but it is often based at least in part on gender, race or sexual orientation. Citron shows how the personal nature of the postings (often including the target’s real […]
Increasing the Transaction Costs of Harassment
Woodrow Hartzog & Evan Selinger
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 47 (2015)
Wouldn’t it be nice if the rules, agreements, and guidelines designed to prevent online harassment were sufficient to curb improper behavior? As if. Wrongdoers are not always so easily deterred. Sometimes these approaches are about as effective as attacking tanks with toothpicks. As Danielle Citron contends in her critically important work, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, […]
A New Taxonomy for Online Harms
Kate Klonick
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 53 (2015)
The Internet’s powerful amplifying effects on this type of harmful behavior are also seen with cyber bullying. Bullying is generally understood among academics and educators as having to meet three criteria: (1) it must be verbal or physical aggression; (2) it must be repeated over time; and (3) it must involve a power differential. When […]
Online Harassment and Intermediary Immunity
William McGeveran
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 57 (2015)
I admire Citron for listening to all sides and adopting a nuanced position that recognizes the thin line separating a cyber cesspool from a public-spirited open forum like Reddit or Wikipedia. But I am also pleased that in some ways her defensiveness is already a tad dated. Attitudes are changing—partly because of scholarship by […]
Censoring Women
Mary Anne Franks
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 61 (2015)
To anyone who truly cares about the value of free speech, this history of silencing and exclusion should be an outrage. To defend the First Amendment is to defend equal access to its principles and its protections. To truly believe in the “marketplace of ideas” means to reject speech monopolies and speech cartels, to challenge […]
For Whom the Bell Trolls
Ryan Calo
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 67 (2015)
My comments amount to a simple observation: not all trolls are alike. Citron pays appropriately significant attention to the victims of online hate, treating these individuals in all their depth and variety. Her portrait of the perpetrator is thin by comparison. Chapter Two (pages 56-72) discusses the various forces that foster and exacerbate cruelty online […]
How Citron Changes the Conversation
Andrew Koppelman
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 69 (2015)
The internet has been a great gift to humanity, but it has pathologies. Perhaps the best-known instance of the cyberharassment that Citron describes is what has been called “revenge pornography”—the online posting of sexually explicit photographs without the subject’s consent, usually by rejected ex-boyfriends. The photos are often accompanied by the victim’s name, address, […]
Hate Crimes at the Front and Back End of Free Speech Law
Mark A. Graber
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 73 (2015)
Contemporary free speech law is pushing Professor Danielle Citron and other proponents of banning hate crimes on the internet to concentrate their efforts of the back end of First Amendment law when regulating utterances and publications that ought to be excluded at the front end. The front end of constitutional free speech rights concerns what […]
A Comment on Danielle Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
Robin West
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 77 (2015)
First, Citron convincingly catalogues the range of harms, and their profundity, done to many women and some men by the sexual threats, the defamation, the revenge pornography, the stalking, and the sexual harassment and abuse, all of which is facilitated by the internet. The second contribution, and the bulk of the book—the middle third […]
Amplifying Abuse: The Fusion of Cyberharassment and Discrimination
Ari Ezra Waldman
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 83 (2015)
Cyberharassment devastates its victims. Anxiety, panic attacks, and fear are common effects; post-traumatic stress disorder, anorexia and bulimia, and clinical depression are common diagnoses. Targets of online hate and abuse have gone into hiding, changed schools, and quit jobs to prevent further abuse. Some lives are devastated in adolescence and are never able to […]
The Liberal Divide and the Future of Free-Speech Law
Ronald K.L. Collins
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 87 (2015)
It is now obvious: When it comes to the First Amendment, liberals are badly divided. Some liberals are more attracted to the equality side of the constitutional divide than they are to the liberty side, and vice-versa. This has real consequences for those of us caught in the liberal crossfire of a war over words […]
Cyberharassment and Workplace Law
Helen Norton
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 93 (2015)
First, Professor Citron’s work and related developments invite us to broaden our understanding of the universe of actors who shape access to job opportunities, as well as our understanding of how they can use speech to expand or constrain those opportunities. Although employment law has traditionally focused on regulating the relationship between “employers” and their […]
Online Engagement on Equal Terms
Danielle Keats Citron
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 97 (2015)
In 2007, when the media started covering the phenomenon of cyber harassment, the public’s reaction was disheartening. Although the abuse often involved threats, defamation, and privacy invasions, commentators dismissed it as “no big deal.” Harassment was viewed as part of the bargain of online engagement. If victims wanted to enjoy the Internet’s benefits, they had […]
Online Harassment, Profit Seeking, and Section 230
Ann Bartow
Online Symposium: Danielle Keats Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
95 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 101 (2015)
Liberals, to paint with a very broad brush, generally believe that government regulation will give us a better world than a free market will. For example, the environment will be cleaner if there are restrictions on how much factories can pollute the land, air and water. And working conditions will be better if employers must […]