Eugene Volokh
Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and UCLA School of Law professor emeritus. A First Amendment and free-speech scholar, he hosts the Hoover-sponsored Free Speech Unmuted video podcast and founded The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog.
Spoiler Liability Turns on Borrowed Expression, Not Revealed Facts
Eugene Volokh argues that revealing a plot twist in one’s own words is generally not copyright infringement, even if it ruins the audience’s incentive to watch: copyright protects expression, not facts about a fictional story. With Jane Bambauer, he examines where that line changes—when a spoiler reproduces dialogue, detailed scenes, or footage—and how fair use, unpublished material, and participation in a leak can create more difficult legal questions.
ABC Challenges FCC Inquiry as Retaliation for Editorial Decisions
ABC argues that the FCC’s inquiry into its broadcast licenses is already inflicting the constitutional injury it fears: millions in legal costs and programming changes, including its decision to stop inviting political candidates onto The View. Stuart Benjamin, Eugene Volokh, and Jane Bambauer examine ABC’s claim that the agency is using ostensibly neutral concerns about employment practices and political-programming rules to retaliate against coverage officials dislike. The case tests whether courts must wait for final agency action when the regulatory process itself is alleged to be the punishment.
Unwanted Sexual Texts to Officials Test First Amendment Harassment Limits
Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer use an Ohio harassment dispute over sexually explicit Shrek images allegedly texted to a state senator to examine a harder First Amendment question: when offensive political speech becomes punishable direct harassment. Volokh argues that the law often distinguishes speech about a person from unwanted speech to a person, but says the doctrine is unsettled when the recipient is a government official, the channel is a phone, and the content is sexual but not obscene. Bambauer presses whether punishment should require notice to stop and whether statutes broad enough to reach unsolicited explicit images may also capture protected political criticism.
The First Amendment Leaves Privacy Torts With Narrower Reach
Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer argue that privacy is not a single counterweight to the First Amendment but a set of distinct claims, some of which protect speech and others of which restrict it. In a Hoover Institution discussion, they distinguish privacy against government surveillance or compelled identification from privacy asserted against other speakers, where claims over anonymity, hidden recording, private facts, false light, and publicity rights can become demands to limit what others may say.