On April 19, the 8th Wuhan University International Law Forum 2018 was successfully held in Room 323 of Law School. The speaker was Post-Doctor Wang Zheng from Wuhan University Institute of International Law. She gave a speech with the theme of The review of freedom of expression in the US and the declining principle of public forum while the host is Prof. NIE Jianqiang.
Dr. Wang has graduated from the Washington University in St. Louis, her research during the PhD mainly includes the review system of freedom of expression, cyber space in the US and the application of The First Amendment.
In this lecture, Dr. Wang Wei made an in-depth analysis of the American review system of censorship. First of all, Dr. Wang introduced the theme of this lecture from the “Knapping 101” forum involved in the “Zhang Yingying Case” in the United States. Secondly, Dr. Wang Wei made a concrete analysis of the freedom of speech in the United States, that is, the basis of the freedom of speech established by the First Amendment of the US Constitution is the principle of public forum. The US Supreme Court has long used a systematic approach to identify different situations and occasions, namely traditional public forums, designated public forums, non-public forums, and non-forums to balance the relationship between government functions, social order, and personal freedom of speech. At the same time, there are three different modes of review in practice: strict review based on content restrictions, intermediate review based on content neutrality, and rationality based review. Moreover, Dr. Wang specifically explained the four major problems faced by the public forum principles: one is that the type classification causes confusion; the second is the government-designated forum who will monitor the gatekeeper in the future; the third is that the judicial is more dependent on the content. The limitation of time, place and manner of neutrality; fourth is the principle of government speech. Finally, Dr. Wang pointed out that racism, sexism, nationality and other factors will affect the expression and transmission of speech.
In the Q&A session, she responded all the questions raised by the participants include the US review of online speech, the nature of Twitter published by the US President, the difference between commercial speech and general speech, etc. Later, the host Nie Jianqiang fully affirmed the post-doctoral speech of Dr. Wang and expressed his sincere gratitude to Dr. Wang's wonderful speech.
Writer: Sang Yuanke
