Rob Kahn | University of St. Thomas, Minnesota (original) (raw)

Papers by Rob Kahn

International journal for the semiotics of law, May 22, 2024

R. Kahn et al. speech in print and online, pointing to its role in social discrimination, stigmat... more R. Kahn et al. speech in print and online, pointing to its role in social discrimination, stigmatization and exclusion, and highlighting the need for a new, less negatively connoted, language to talk at various levels about this group of people. The original article has been corrected. Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, Dec 6, 2023

Florida Journal of International Law, 2021

The past two decades have seen an explosion of memory laws, especially in Eastern Europe, and an ... more The past two decades have seen an explosion of memory laws, especially in Eastern Europe, and an explosion of objections to them. According to critics, memory laws (1) violate freedom of speech; (2) create an official history; and (3) foster a narrow, particularistic politics. This Essay evaluates these competing arguments. The free speech objection lumps all memory laws together-regardless of content-and runs the risk of becoming an objection to hate speech bans more generally, something that limits its appeal outside of the United States. Opposing memory laws as official history is narrower, but it privileges the national history and historians who guard it. Furthermore, neither objection gets to the deeper, political threat posed by a newer generation of nationalistic memory laws arising in Eastern Europe. To highlight this threat, memory law opponents should object to the narrow, exclusionist politics that underlay many memory laws. In this regard, opponents should link memory laws to laws that seek to shape the nation by restricting immigration and indoctrinating immigrants. At the same time, the political objection will not generally appeal to the nationalists themselves, especially if it comes from those seen as liberals. Therefore, it is helpful for memory law opponents to supplement the political argument with arguments based on free speech and official history.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

When the Seventh Circuit upheld the First Amendment right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois i... more When the Seventh Circuit upheld the First Amendment right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, the protection of mask wearers was not far behind. Since then, doctrinal paths have diverged. While the Supreme Court continues to protect hate speech, mask wearing has been increasingly placed outside First Amendment protection. This Article seeks to get to the bottom of this doctrinal divergence by addressing the symbolic purposes of mask bans-rooted in repudiating the Ku Klux Klan-as well as the doctrinal steps taken over the past forty years to restrict the First Amendment claims of mask wearers. It also highlights the dangers posed by the current, state-friendly mask law doctrine in an age of technological growth, mass surveillance, and a move to anoint Antifa as the new Ku Klux Klan. The Article ends with a call for courts to restore mask wearing to its rightful place in the First Amendment pantheon. I. INTRODUCTION: THE DECLINE OF MASK BAN DOCTRINE...72

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2022

Denialism and Human Rights

University of St. Thomas law journal, 2010

stm (recording reaction of a spokesperson for the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown that "British ... more stm (recording reaction of a spokesperson for the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown that "British laws should be based on British values.").

In this essay, I respond to an argument raised by some of the sources in Professor Chris Roederer... more In this essay, I respond to an argument raised by some of the sources in Professor Chris Roederer’s Editor-in-Chief Lecture, namely that a major reason speech is under assault on college campuses is that college students have been coddled by parents, teachers, and now by university administrators. I refer to this as the anti-coddling narrative. In what follows, I argue that the anti-coddling narrative is problematic for two reasons: (1) it does not accurately depict the challenges facing this generation of college students, and indeed ignores other groups that demand coddling; and (2) it will not convince college students to adopt free speech values. Instead, we should replace the anti-coddling narrative with a perspective that treats campus protests for safe spaces and trigger warnings as speech acts just as worthy of protection as the speech acts they oppose. I. The Anti-Coddling Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 R II. Is The Coddling Label Acc...

International and Comparative Law Review

Summary Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Qu... more Summary Should democracies punish hate speech? Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, has written an important new book on this subject, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship. At the center of Heinze’s book is a revolutionary idea: Instead of debating whether democracies per se can or cannot legitimately ban hate speech (which assumes all democracies are the same), we should only condemn hate speech as illegitimate in those democracies that are longstanding, stable and prosperous. In this essay, I show how Heinze’s idea frees the debate over hate speech regulation from the Europe vs. America dichotomy that has haunted it for years, while carrying a special poignancy for the United States in the age of Trump.