It’s merely coincidence that recent posts about cyberpaths are followed up by an AALS conference on Cyber-Stalking, to be run by the Section on Women in Legal Education.  The title of the panel discussion will be “The First Amendment Meets Cyber-Stalking Meets Character and Fitness,” and much to my surprise, includes Danielle Citron on the panel.

For those who don’t recall, Citron, a University of Maryland Law School law professor, is the leading proponent of cyber-stalking being a gender discrimination issue, which she would redefine as Cyber-Civil Rights.  By doing so, the issue changes from one focused on free speech rights to one focused on gender discrimination, the latter specific concern perpetually trumping the former, less specific right, amongst many in the academic community.

The write-up on the conference spells it out:

Is there a problem with law students using websites to make outrageous gender– or race-specific comments (often about other students or faculty members)? (See lawvibe.com/the-autoadmit-scandal-xoxoth/ .) Is this conduct beyond question as free speech or does this conduct raise character and fitness issues that law schools must address?

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene has been asked to alert readers to this panel.  He’s done so, but to his credit, includes a caveat.

But I should also express my worries about the proposals that the panel appears to be aimed at contemplating.

If the panel were just planned to discuss the possibility that schools and state bars consider criminal and constitutionally unprotected conduct by students — such as making threats — that might be one thing. But the reference to “outrageous gender– or race-specific comments” suggests that the proposals would likely go considerably further.

There are many familiar problems with such general codes — but the “outrageous gender– or race-specific comments” focus suggests that this code is aimed at suppressing offensive viewpoints, and not just uncivil ways of expressing all viewpoints. The rationale for that can’t just be that rude law students make rude lawyers, who might browbeat witnesses, make life hard for litigants, opposing counsel, and judges, and so on. (That rationale would itself be insufficient to justify denying someone a license to practice law based on otherwise constitutionally protected speech, but I set that aside for now.) The rationale must be that people who “outrageous[ly]” express racist or sexist views are unfit to be lawyers, presumably because they’ll act on those views in the future.

While Eugene’s focus, as is the panel based on the title of the program, appears to be on the imposition of a “political correctness” litmus test on law students, extrapolating from their speech that they would make unfit lawyers,   From my seat, there are additional fears that extend in two opposite directions, both of which are disturbing to free speech rights.

On the broader side, I believe this panel is part of the broader agenda to turn cyber-stalking into cyber-civil rights, and that the purported question of whether this bears only upon law students and law schools is a subterfuge to bring lawprofs together under the neo-feminist umbrella that would make speech subject to their brand of approval.  While Eugene’s concern is that it be limited to “rude law students,” it seems almost impossible for the same views to be so arbitrarily limited.

On the narrower side, the idea that the thought police will be ever-vigilant within law schools in order to decide the fitness of any bar applicant’s views is shocking.  Not many lawprofs are bold enough to challenge the cyber-civil rights crowd, and as Citron’s pursues her agenda with those opposing facing the likelihood of being branded a misogynist, she could end of the Czar of gender propriety for the next generation of lawyers.

No one is denying, or disagrees, that this is a problem or an issue, though the alleged focus on law students seems a bit too facile.  But it’s a problem because cyber-stalking, if not general rudeness (as is the nature of narcissistic and entitled Slackoisie), is inherently an issue that permeates online communities.  It’s not owned by either gender, and it’s not up to Danielle Citron to decide that everyone’s free speech rights must give way to her gender-based myopia.

Of course, nobody asked me to be on this AALS panel.  Who will present the contrary view?