The Knight First Amendment Institute is a non-profit established in 2016 by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. ^[1] In its mission statement, the Institute states that it works to promotes a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government. ^[2]

Notable litigation

Public officials and social media blocking ^[3]

• Knight Institute v. Trump — A challenge to President Trump's practice of blocking critics from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that President Trump’s practice violated the First Amendment. ^{[4] [5] [6]} On April 5, 2021, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment and instructed the Second Circuit to dismiss the case as moot. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [11]}
• Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Paxton — A lawsuit challenging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s blocking of critics from his official Twitter. ^[12]
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Collins — A lawsuit challenging government health agencies’ practice of blocking social media comments containing keywords associated with viewpoints critical of animal testing. ^[13]
• Davison v. Randall — A lawsuit challenging a local government official’s blocking of a critic on Facebook, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit became the first federal appellate court in the country to address whether public officials’ social media accounts can be “public forums” under the First Amendment. ^{[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]}

Other free speech & social media

• NetChoice LLC v. Attorney General, State of Florida — Amicus brief filed in an Eleventh Circuit case challenging a Florida law that regulates social media platforms. ^[20]
• NetChoice, LLC, v. Paxton — Amicus brief filed in a Fifth Circuit case challenging a Texas law that limits the power of social media companies to moderate speech on their platforms, while arguing that some of the law’s transparency provisions should be reviewed under a more deferential First Amendment framework. ^{[21] [22]}
• City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Austin, Inc. — Amicus brief filed in a Supreme Court case challenging a city sign code that permits on-premises but not off-premises signs to be digitized. ^[23]

Privacy and surveillance

• Doc Society v. Blinken — A challenge to the State Department’s social media registration requirements. ^{[24] [25]}
• Knight Institute v. DHS — A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records relating to searches of electronic devices at the U.S. border. ^[26]
• Knight Institute v. DHS — A FOIA lawsuit seeking records on ideological screening at the border. ^[27]
• Knight Institute v. Federal Bureau of Prisons — A FOIA lawsuit seeking records concerning the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ digitization and surveillance of mail. ^[28]
• Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA — A lawsuit challenging the NSA’s “Upstream” surveillance. ^{[29] [30]}

Transparency and democracy

• Edgar v. Haines — A lawsuit challenging the government's system of "prepublication review." ^{[31] [32]}
• National Association of Immigration Judges v. Neal — A lawsuit challenging a government policy silencing immigration judges. ^[33]
• ACLU v. United States — A motion asserting a right of access to opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. ^{[34] [35]}

The Office of Legal Counsel and secret law

• Campaign for Accountability v. DOJ and Francis v. DOJ — A FOIA lawsuit seeking proactive disclosure of the Office of Legal Counsel’s secret legal opinions, and a FOIA lawsuit, settled on August 13, 2021, seeking disclosure of OLC opinions issued over 25 years ago. ^{[36] [37]}
• OLC Reading Room: A Knight Institute project housing the most comprehensive, searchable public database of legal opinions written by the OLC, helping shed light on the body of “secret law” produced by the OLC and long-withheld from the public. ^{[38] [39]} The Reading Room contains the approximately 1,400 opinions published by the OLC in its online database and the approximately 350 opinions produced to date in FOIA litigation that the Institute has brought on behalf of historians and other researchers. In January 2022, the Institute also launched @OLCforthepeople, a Twitter account that alerts followers whenever the OLC posts a new legal opinion to its reading room. ^[40]

Notable research

Free speech & social media

• " Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech," by Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor64 and editor of the Techdirt blog (21 August 2019), on altering the internet's economic and digital infrastructure to promote free speech, cited by Electronic Frontier Foundation as a "crucial contribution to the discussion about accountability, choice and competition in social media." ^{[41] [42] [43] [44]}
• " Is the First Amendment Obsolete?" by Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu (1 September 2017), on new free expression challenges from “troll armies,” “flooding,” and propaganda robots that aim to distort or drown out disfavored speech. The essay was credited with being "largely responsible for pushing the [debate] onto center stage." ^[45]
• " Amplification and Its Discontents," by the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's Daphne Keller (8 June 2021), on why regulating the reach of online content is hard. ^[46]
• " An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media," by Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci & Ethan Zuckerman (14 May 2021), on alternative logics for social media. ^[47]
• " The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure," by Ethan Zuckerman (17 January 2020), on harnessing past successes in public broadcasting to build community-oriented digital tools. ^{[48] [49]}
• " How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media," by Yale Law School's Jack Balkin (25 March 2020), on creating incentives for social media companies to be responsible and trustworthy institutions. ^[50]
• " The Rise of Content Cartels," by evelyn douek (11 February 2020), urging transparency and accountability in industry-wide content removal decisions. ^[51]

Privacy & surveillance

• " From Private Bads to Public Goods: Adapting Public Utility Regulation for Informational Infrastructure," by Brooklyn Law School's K. Sabeel Rahman & Fordham Law School's Zephyr Teachout, on dismantling surveillance-based business models. ^[52]
• "Why Rely on the Fourth Amendment To Do the Work of the First?" by Knight Institute's Alex Abdo, on how the First Amendment might become a bulwark against overreaching government surveillance. ^[53]

Transparency & democracy

• " A Safe Harbor for Platform Research," by Knight Institute's Alex Abdo et al. (19 January 2022), on a proposal for legal protection for certain research and newsgathering projects focused on platforms.
• " A Standard for Universal Digital Ad Transparency," by Laura Edelson et al. (9 December 2021), on a proposal spelling out criteria that trigger transparency requirement, with ad data to be collected by government agency. ^[54]
• " The Democratic Regulation of Artificial Intelligence," by Carnegie Endowment President Mariano-Florentino Cuellar and the University of Chicago's Aziz Z. Huq (31 January 2022), on a case for focusing on forward-looking policy considerations rather than a rights framework in regulating “AI systems.”
• " What We Owe Whistleblowers," by Jameel Jaffer, adapted from an essay published in National Security, Leaks & Freedom of the Press (Lee C. Bollinger & Geoffrey R. Stone, eds. 2021).

Notable public education activities

Research symposia

Recent public events include the Reimagine the Internet virtual conference exploring what the internet could become over the next decade (2021) ^[55]; the Data and Democracy symposium considering how big data is changing our system of self-government (2020); The Tech Giants, Monopoly Power, and Public Discourse, a symposium examining free speech implications of "breaking up" today's giant online platforms, (2019) ^[56]; Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age, a series of events examining the role of the First Amendment in assessing the lawfulness of government surveillance (2018); and A First Amendment for All? Free Expression in an Age of Inequality, a symposium on the future of the First Amendment (2018).

Other events

• "Roads Not Taken" (with Elisa Massimino, former president and CEO of Human Rights First; Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU; Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch; Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March and former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; and Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute) on reflections on the 9/11 anniversary (Sept. 9, 2021). ^[57]
• "How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart" (with Jamal Greene, author, and Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; and Katy Glenn Bass of the Knight First Amendment Institute) on why our obsession with rights is tearing America apart (May 6, 2021). ^[58]
• "A Conversation with Edward Snowden" (with Snowden, Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute and Amy Davidson Sorkin of The New Yorker) about secrecy, surveillance, security, and the role of whistleblowers in exposing government wrongdoing (Oct. 29, 2019). ^[59]

Reading Room

• The OLC's Opinions: Opinions published by the Office of Legal Counsel, including those released in response to a Knight Institute FOIA lawsuit. ^[60]

Press Freedom Work

• Julian Assange Case ^{[61] [62] [63] [64] [65]}. Testimony of Executive Director Jameel Jaffer in Assange extradition proceeding.

• Reading Room for Press-related prosecutions under the Espionage Act: Legal filings in Espionage Act prosecutions of individuals accused of disclosing information to the press and public. ^{[66] [67]}

Books

• The Perilous Public Square ( Columbia University Press, 2020): A volume of essays exploring new or intensifying threats to the system of free expression, edited by Knight Institute inaugural Senior Visiting Research Scholar David Pozen of Columbia Law School. ^{[68] [69]}

Executive director and board

Jameel Jaffer is the inaugural executive director. Board members are Lee C. Bollinger, Alberto Ibargüen, Eve Burton, Steve Coll, Nicholas Lemann, Gillian Lester, Theodore Olson, and Gerald Rosberg.

References