On March 6, 2024, Just Security and the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law co-hosted an all-star panel of experts to discuss the issue of government “jawboning” – a practice of informal government efforts to persuade, or strong-arm, private platforms to change their content-moderation practices. Many aspects of jawboning remain unsettled but could come to a head later this month when the Supreme Court hears arguments in a case called Murthy v. Missouri on March 18.

Murthy poses several questions that defy easy answer, driving at the heart of how we wish to construct and regulate what some consider to be the modern public square.

The expert panel consists of Jameel Jaffer, the Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and an Executive Editor at Just Security; Kathryn Ruemmler, the Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs and former White House Counsel to President Barack Obama; and Colin Stretch, the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Etsy and the former General Counsel of Facebook (now Meta). Just Security’s Co-Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Goodman, moderated the discussion.

This NYU Law Forum was sponsored by the law firm Latham & Watkins.

Show Notes:

Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer)
Kathryn Ruemmler
Colin Stretch
Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw)
Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law
Just Security’s First Amendment coverage
Just Security’s Content Moderation coverage
Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

Social Media, Government Jawboning, and the First Amendment at the Supreme Court