Cyberbullying/Cyberboorishness

If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If you’re a law professor, every social problem seems to call for a legal solution.  “Cyberbullying” is this decade’s hate speech.  Like “hate speech,” "cyberbullying" is a label, not a legal definition.  The inherently pejorative label carries the implication that “cyberbullying” is a new and serious problem that the law should address.  Of course, the law already does address “cyberbullying.”  Online threats, stalking, and hacking are crimes.  Online defamation  is libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress is tortious whether it takes place online or off.   

But what, you might ask, can be done about cyberbullies whose bad conduct isn’t proscribed by existing law?  For example, what should be done about law students who make sexist or racist or demeaning remarks about their classmates online, gaining the courage to speak from the cloak of anonymity?  Perhaps they should be denied admission to the bar on the grounds that they lack the character and fitness necessary to be lawyers.  This is the topic for debate by an AALS panel sponsored by the Section on Women in Legal Education and the Section on Defamation and Privacy.  The title of the panel is "The First Amendment Meets Cyber-Stalking Meets Character and Fitness," and it will be held on Saturday morning at 8:30.  Full disclosure:  I'm on the panel, cast in the role of defending cyberboorishness against legal sanction.  It should be fun.