Technologically Enabled Surrender Under the Law of Armed Conflict

This Essay unpacks the scope of ICCPR Article 20(1)’s prohibition on war propaganda, providing an overview of existing interpretations and then proposing a way to reconcile the ICCPR’s ban on propaganda for war with the treaty’s otherwise broad protections for freedom of expression.

This Essay uses the still-unfolding Iranian Women-Life-Freedom Movement to examine the consequences of internet deprivation.

This Essay is a critical reflection on the impact of the digital revolution and the internet on three topics that shape the contemporary world: democracy, social media, and freedom of expression.

The overwhelming majority of digital and physical attacks on journalists are done with impunity. The international human rights law concept of transitional justice could bolster collective will and inform legal mechanisms to combat such impunity.

Relying on a comparison between the cases of Brazil and the U.S. (both facing recent democratic erosion), this Essay shows how Brazilian courts responded to challenges to democracy and how, in the U.S., content moderation generally depends on private actors.

The EU’s latest regulation of social media platforms—the Digital Services Act (DSA)—will create tension and conflict with the U.S. speech regime applicable to social media platforms. The DSA, like prior EU regulations of social media platforms, will further instantiate the Brussels Effect, whereby EU regulators wield powerful influence on how social media platforms moderate content on the global scale.

This Essay discusses the Digital Services Act, the new regulation enacted by the EU to combat hate speech and misinformation online, focusing on the major challenges its application will entail.

The WGAD can serve as a critical forum for protecting free expression—particularly for individuals whose free expression rights may be violated by states not parties to the ICCPR or its Optional Protocol I. This Essay describes the contributions of the WGAD’s recent free speech jurisprudence to the understanding of protected free expression in international law.

Since the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Google Spain in 2014, the global legal discourse on the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) has accelerated the RTBF’s establishment as a right to informational privacy. But international courts have varied in their interpretations and applications of the RTBF, with some embracing it and others being wary of balancing the right with freedom of expression.

Law enforcement efforts to respond to cybercrime through cyber sting operations call into question the degree to which individuals are protected by the entrapment defense. This Comment proposes that the international community modify the Budapest Convention to establish a “minimum floor” of entrapment rights. This approach would require countries, at a minimum, to consider entrapment as grounds for mitigation at sentencing or discretionary exclusion of evidence.

Sand sustains the foundations of modern economies, but almost nothing exists in the way of global sand regulation and governance. This Comment argues that possible governance solutions will need to come from what we currently have in the legal toolbox.