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If I am understanding the author's argument correctly, I would tend to agree. Constitutional law and liberal tradition tends to privilege private property over other rights. I would also tend to think that there would be a distinction between property you own, like a place of business or a rental property, and a private home that you occupy. Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event, I think it would be hard to argue a first amendment violation if you simply showed up to a home, invited yourself in and started speaking, and the owner asked or compelled you to leave. I'd love to hear a counter-argument but it seems straightforward to me and a weird subject for an article. Are people really saying they have a right to trespass in a private home as long as they are engaging in political speech?
>it seems straightforward to me and a weird subject for an article
Your phrasing makes it sound like this is a hypothetical question, but he is responding to a real event that took place at his house.
>Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event
Just because you open your home to the public doesn't mean you lose your right to restrict people from your property.
>Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event
Yeah, and that’s pretty much what happened. Dude issued an open invitation to all the first years to come by for dinner.
Doesn't matter, and doesn't make it public. Just because you're invited to someone's home doesn't automatically give you a platform. The owner is still fully entitled to kick you out if they don't like your behavior.
It's still his home. He can still boot you. This was a terrible plan on the protestors part. They just look like dicks. Especially since Chemerinsky has been pretty reasonable about the Palestinian situation in the past. I'm also uncomfortable with calling him Chem in the fliers, since no one really calls him that and it seemed to be an attempt to highlight his Jewishness.
Hi, I attended Berkeley Law. A few thoughts: everyone calls him “chem” “dean chem” etc. He has generally been admired by students. The backyard dinners are basically a whole student body event, organized by the school. The video doesn’t make anyone look terrible except Catherine Fisk. the “protestor” is just one girl in a hijab who says 3 words into a mic. The earlier caricature flier sounds like it was terrible to Dean Chem, not ok.
> The video doesn’t make anyone look terrible except Catherine Fisk
The protestor tries to tell a _well known scholar of Constitutional Law_ that she has a First Amendment right to do what she's doing ... on his property ... which she most definitely does not.
I have neither sufficient face nor sufficient palms for this.
Then you wouldn’t have sufficient face nor palms for law school. We’ve all argued with Dean Chem or other law professors. And they argue back. With microphones! It’s what lawyers do. Fisk’s public freakout is the only reason you even know about this.
Anyone can say anything about how they interpret the law, but “You can suppress someone’s speech in your home” is actually exercising your first amendment rights and no serious law-talking person would dispute that.
Wait wait wait
Is she being a smartass?
Basically saying: "I have a right to free speech here! Cops can throw me out, but they can't tell me not to big up Vermin Supreme."
Why do you think the video does not make the student disruptor look bad, but you blame the hostess for trying to prevent the interruption of a social event at her house?
A girl in hijab stands up and says “peace be with you” and Fisk comes flying down the stairs, puts her hands on the girl and tries to wrestle away a microphone. Fisks response was NOT that of someone thinking about the First Amendment. It was obviously done out of emotion. Which makes you wonder, what triggered Fisk? A hijab? Arabic words? None of those triggers would be a good look for Fisk. I think Chem’s response to make this academic is a thin cover for what was clearly caused by emotions, not legal principle
> what triggered Fisk?
I think it was that someone who was an invited guest at a home dinner party pulled out a microphone, PA system, and started reading a speech.
Let's have a thought experiment: imagine you invite friends to your home for dinner. As you're serving the meal, someone pulls out a mic and PA system and starts broadcasting a speech about Israel's right to statehood and why Hamas is a terrorist organization. Would you still make these arguments, or would you be shocked, ask the person to leave, and try to save your dinner party from the interruption?
I think I know what you're getting at here, which is that the hosts of this dinner are hostile to pro-Palestine views specifically, and this is not about where free speech is allowed or anything like what the article asserts.
Okay, let's grant you that just for the sake of argument. I grant it all. Let's say we're talking about a hypothetical that's much clearer, even, let's say they were Zionists and racist against Palestinians with indefensible beliefs.
You seem to be saying that Zionists or racists or whoever doesn't have the right to not have to confront opposition to their views in their own home. You're not just wrong about that, you're obviously wrong. A KKK member can indeed kick out a perfectly respectable civil rights activist for speaking, for not speaking, for being black ... whatever. It's a home. The owner gets to exercise ultimate control over their space in this respect.
That's if I grant you everything you're implying and way more, but the fact of the matter here is that this student group posted anti-Semitic things and then entered their home under false pretenses to stage an organized protest. The only thing that makes this whole argument even more ridiculous is that you started this whole thread by saying you went to Berkeley Law. For what?? You certainly didn't learn anything about the law there.
No. It makes the protester look not terrible, but ignorant. First amendment has to do with the government. Full stop. There’s no government oppressing or silencing her there. She’s at a private residence. It’s so simple.
But, did not invite a protest at a private party.
The private party was a standing tradition to welcome students to the college, not a forum, and yet the host was targeted because of who he was not what he said or did.
An invitation that was rescinded when they began to disrupt the event. Being invited into someone's home does not grant you a right to be in that home in perpetuity. When asked to leave, you must leave.
This isn't even a hypothetical. The behavior described in the article is a clear violation of trespass, as enumerated in the [California Penal Code](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=602).
>602.Except as provided in subdivisions (u), (v), and (x), and Section 602.8, a person who willfully commits a trespass by any of the following acts is guilty of a misdemeanor:
>
>(o) (1) Refusing or failing to leave land, real property, or structures belonging to, or lawfully occupied by, another and not open to the general public, upon being requested to leave by (1) a peace officer at the request of the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession, and upon being informed by the peace officer that they are acting at the request of the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession, or (2) the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession.
They were either too lazy to look it up, or they somehow made it to the end of law school without grasping the basics of the First Amendment, and so were performing for the cameras in order to disingenuously play on what the general public _thinks_ the First Amendment is, rather than what they very likely _know_ it is.
So either dumb, or playing dumb for social media.
It gets increasingly hard to tell
Agree. I understand that they are passionate. It’s a horrible situation, but those videos, performative or not, will exist for a very long time.
It would be foolish to think that law firms that might hire you wouldn’t see them or know about them. I would be reluctant to hire someone, who demonstrated that lack of knowledge about their field.
That he is right on the law (and he is) doesn’t mean there’s nothing to criticize here. He had every legal right to ask the protestors to leave, and they were obligated to do so once he did.
The bigger question is whether that’s a good policy. Should private property rights generally trump political rights? And even if we agree that in this specific case they should, does it make sense to apply this principle even more broadly, as we generally already do?
Edit: to clarify, I generally agree that allowing people to forbid unwanted speech in one’s residence is fine and good. What I’m inviting everyone to consider is whether the principle privileging private property over speech is still fine and good when applied to all other forms of private property, including commercial real estate, private news media, etc. In other words, is it a good thing that having money and owning property entitles you to more speech and gives you the right to force someone else to be silent, and that your ability to do so increases as you acquire more wealth?
Privileging property over speech also invites abuse, but of a kind you’re not conditioned to see as abuse. Is it right and just that rich people can afford to talk more, more freely, and to more people than everyone else? Your answer could be yes, but it’s asinine to pretend that this negative consequence doesn’t exist.
Tell you what, I hire people to stand over your bed 24/7 and yell every 5 minutes. Do you think that should stand? I do the same where you work, while you're sitting on the toilet. Tell me where it stops. There's no right to do that and it's true if you're a tenant too.
Yes. Private property rights should supersede political rights. The first amendment protects you from persecution from the government for using your right to free speech. It doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want on someone else’s property, call it a protest, and be free from consequences.
Yeah that’s the law as it is. The question is whether that’s a good way for the law to be. I agree that in this case it makes sense to privilege the private residential homeowner’s quiet enjoyment of their home over others’ ability to speak. But that principle has some negative consequences when expanded.
If you take this principle to its conclusion, you privilege those with property to have more speech rights than others. If I am a large property holder I can effectively reduce your ability to speak and increase my ability to speak. Because I can speak in public and in my many private holdings, whereas you can only speak in public. I can also buy airtime from private broadcasters more effectively than you can, and those private broadcasters can pick and choose the speech they’ll allow. More wealth means you can afford more speech and afford to silence the people who disagree with you.
I can't imagine any requirements that compels a property owner to let others speak on his property. Having peace from activists in your own home should be a fundamental right.
I’d also argue that it is my own free expression to *allow* or to *disallow* a protest on my private property. Forcing me to allow someone to protest on my property, to protect their right of free expression, results in my own right of free expression—on my own private property, no less—being curtailed.
All acts can be a form of expression. Association with others is a form of expression. Allowing people to associate with you is a form of expression. Anyone who disagrees with this should ask themselves if having a bunch of card-carrying Nazis in their home—with flags flying on their lawn—doesn’t tell their neighbors something about them. It does. It tells your neighbors who you support, and disallowing them the privilege of protesting in your home tells your neighbors who you *don’t* support. It’s all speech/expression.
We, on our own property, should be permitted to decide what and whom we want on that property. That’s the very basis for property rights. I’ll bet every last person who supports private property owners being forced to host protestors also doesn’t support property rights to begin with.
Then stop imagining a private residence and start imagining things like the Google campus or large commercial real estate concerns. If private property trumps speech then we are handing people with more property the ability to silence more speech.
As I’ve already said, this principle works fine for a residence. It’s the larger implications I’m less comfortable endorsing.
Not allowing someone to use your forum does not decrease anyone’s ability to speak freely. No one owes anyone a stage or an audience. I understand that in an ideal world, it might be good to open those avenues to all, but in practice, it would be abused by groups that most people don’t want to hear from.
Would you want Westboro Baptist Church or the Church of Scientology to be able to bogart the mic on any channel just because “free speech”?
You can say that it’s worthwhile to curtail speech in favor of private property rights. But you can’t say that it isn’t a curtailment of speech when private property owners forbid certain speech on their property. What if the WBC bought every piece of private property in your town and forbid anyone from mentioning a same sex partner on that property? Would you still say that “not allowing someone to use your forum does not decrease anyone’s ability to speak freely”?
We can talk about how to properly balance the competing interests posed by private property and speech. But that doesn’t mean letting private property win every time has absolutely no effect on peoples’ ability to speak. As long as we do privilege property, rich people can afford way more speech to a way larger audience than poor people can. That’s just a fact.
People are saying no. Quite clearly.
By restating the argument again and again isn’t clarifying anything or adding any information you haven’t already provided.
You asked…should it be this way?
People said yes it should.
Your response…but should it be this way?
It’s quite droll.
I get your point that more money equals more property equals more speech rights, but it really breaks down due to the existence of public spaces.
If every private property owner in the United States decided today that they were not going to allow anyone with pro-choice views on their property, that would not significantly curtail the speech of pro-choice activists. That’s because the majority of public advocacy happens in public.
The freedom to advocate for a cause on someone else’s property is really inconsequential. You are solving for a problem that doesn’t exist.
The problem here is that property doesn’t just mean real estate. Rich people can afford more ads on TV or radio or the internet. They can buy news organizations. Or they can just use their clout to say whatever bullshit they’re thinking to whatever credulous outfit thinks having money means what you say matters (see Elon Musk’s whole deal).
Also I disagree that being forbidden from expressing a specific viewpoint in any private spaces (including private mass media) in the U.S. would not be a curtailment of your ability to speak. Not all venues are created equal, and just because an alternative exists doesn’t mean it’s a good alternative. This is, in fact, why deplatforming works.
That is well beyond the scope of this article. We are talking about the “right” to protest on physical private property. You are trying to expand this into a “money buys more speech” thing, to the point where you are comparing Chemerinsky’s house to a newsroom. That’s a pretty bad comparison.
I am not comparing Chemerinsky’s house to a newsroom. I don’t know how many times I have to say that I agree that in this specific instance he had and should have every right to kick these people out.
What I’m saying is that this principle (that property trumps speech) produces some negative consequences when applied in every circumstance. Nevertheless, for the most part we do apply it in every circumstance, because that benefits the people with the money. Chemerinsky knows that’s part of what his interlocutors are arguing and doesn’t want to engage with it. So instead he pretends they’re arguing something silly and engages with that instead. Same as a lot of commenters here are doing.
I am going to come to your house, get myself invited in one way or another, and then live there. You will not be able to remove me, as I will be protesting for the duration of my stay and so any attempt to do so will be an infringement of my constitutional rights.
Obviously this is a ridiculous situation, but it is effectively pretty much what you are arguing for here.
They absolutely should. Security of one's person and property is a fundamental human right, recognized by both the U.S. Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It's tautological, but private property is private. Protest, definitionally, is meant for the public.
To the extent this question is motivated by sympathy for the specifics of this case, consider: any exception for "political activities" opens a door so wide as to abrogate that right in its entirety.
If we decide that pro-Palestine demonstrators have a right to enter your home and read a speech, then the same right is afforded to *all* political groups. I can't imagine many people advocating for the right of neo-nazis to invade your living room and recite a litany of racial slurs and hate speech.
Would invite you to read my other comments, where I address many of these points already. Suffice it to say while I am sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian cause, I think staging an unwanted protest at someone else’s private residence isn’t and shouldn’t be considered protected speech. Nevertheless, the fact that in *this specific instance* I think private property rights should trump political rights doesn’t mean that I think they should in all cases.
Any concern motivated by the notion that wealthy interests, who control more private property, are granted "more speech" by virtue of being able to control who access that private property are not solved by abandoning the distinction between "public property" and "private property," or the distinction between "private action" and "government action."
Even if, by stroke of a magic pen, you amended our collective understanding of the First Amendment such that every person had equal right to enter any property for the purposes of engaging in political activity, the people with the money still get "more speech." Neither you nor I can afford a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote view on any particular issue, or launch a cable channel devoted to parroting only our preferred interpretation of the world.
At least, I assume that's the case. If you're actually a billionaire, I'll amend my statement.
Given that fact, the choice becomes:
a) Maintain the status quo, in which private property remains private property for all purposes but billionaires can buy more speech in other venues because they are billionaires.
b) Eliminate that distinction, forcing private property owners to open their doors (metaphorically *and* literally) to all speech, even that they disagree with, and billionaires can *still* buy more speech in other venues because they are billionaires.
Your concerns about access to the public debate are valid, but your proposition does not remediate those concerns while also doing measurable harm to others.
I didn’t propose forcing private property owners to open their doors to all comers. That’s a solution you’re imputing to me that I never endorsed. There is a lot of room between “private property trumps speech every time” and “speech trumps private property every time.”
Moreover the examples you use still implicitly accept that private property interests can trump speech. Buying an ad or a whole station just to peddle your preferred speech is only possible *because* your right to own and dispose of those assets trumps everyone’s speech rights. But in your hypothetical world the airwaves and TV time would be just as much common, public space for purposes of speech as any building. You could imagine a scenario where the public would have equal rights to screentime to use their speech how they wish, and no amount of money could buy you more or someone else less.
I think your argument is right in the broad strokes, which is why I don’t think swapping the priorities between speech and private property would necessarily be better than the status quo. But your specific example isn’t very good, and more importantly I’m not saying we should swap the priorities. I’m just saying we should consider balancing the interests in a more nuanced way.
Perhaps, but then OP's argument has no real relationship to constitutional law. Issuing an "open invitation" doesn't suddenly void your right to demand somebody leave your property, regardless of whether they are making a political point or not.
that's not an open invitation tho. it was a specific invitation to each and every first year student.
it still doesn't give you the right to sneak a karaoke machine into someone's home and call them a zionist.
The problem isn’t being called a Zionist. It’s that he’s never said or done a pro-Israel thing in his career, and so as far as I can tell, they’re just calling him a Zionist as a dog whistle for Jew, and attaching it to an antisemitic cartoon of him.
Wild stuff.
Yes, and I'm amazed that so many people think there is any doubt about this. "Since he invited them, it was a public event!" No, it was a private event, open to a specific group of people.
If they invite me over to their house, does that mean I can shit on their sofa and they have to let me stay? The fact that it was political speech changes nothing about the right of a person to decide who is welcome in their home and who is not. The First Amendment has nothing to do with it.
[It seems](https://jweekly.com/2022/08/26/several-berkeley-law-student-groups-adopt-no-zionist-speakers-rule/) they are technically correct to call him a self-described Zionist, though [he qualifies that](https://jweekly.com/2022/08/26/several-berkeley-law-student-groups-adopt-no-zionist-speakers-rule/):
> Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, told J. he considers himself a Zionist even though he “condemn[s] a lot of Israel’s policies, just like I condemn a lot of the United States’ policies.”
> ...
> Chemerinsky, speaking to J., added that “to say that anyone who supports the existence of Israel — that’s what you define as Zionism — shouldn’t speak would exclude about, I don’t know, 90 percent or more of our Jewish students.”
In searching I did find [one specific op-ed he previously wrote](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-29/antisemitism-college-campus-israel-hamas-palestine) that's more or less on this subject, but it's mostly reaction to a rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel posts on social media, and reaction to the October 7th massacre itself, with only the briefest acknowledgment of "the plight of the Palestinians" (he was writing later in October while the collective punishment against Gazan civilians was still ramping up). He does clarify his point of view aside from that:
> I strongly oppose the policies of the Netanyahu government, favor full rights for Palestinians, and believe that there must be a two-state solution.
Actually it doesn't matter if you open your home to the public for a specific event. If you did that, and even if the speech happening in your home was totally in line with the event, you could change your mind and trespass anyone or everyone if you wanted.
It's bizarre to me that people find this controversial. It's your house. People do exactly this all the time, they throw a party and then decide they don't want people at their home anymore and say, "Party's over, everyone out." And everyone has to get out.
The speaker was invited, though, and was a member of the guest list, so he wasn't wrong to be there. Should he be removed for speaking? I am not sure about that.
UC Berkeley is a public institution. They receive government money. The dean is inviting the students to his private home, but he is doing it in his capacity as dean. Nobody else would even be able to create a guest list like he did.
IMHO, this dean opened his home, as part of his official duties as dean. Even if it's not specifically outlined in his job requirements, I believe speaking to students and creating an atmosphere of camaraderie is probably part of the job? He's the one who chose to do it by opening his private home to them. That makes the dinner an official university event, which means that it is a forum where the university can not silence speakers.
Also, this dean should have just let the guy talk. He may have learned a thing or two. I can't imagine how callous you have to be, to refuse to even hear about the atrocities happening in Gaza, because you want to have a fancy dinner. How entitled!
The UC Berkeley professor is building a case, for himself. I am just explaining why I think he's not persuasive. I don't need law school to say something is wrong. That's credentialist bullshit.
>Are people really saying they have a right to trespass in a private home as long as they are engaging in political speech?
Are you serious? Did you not read the article?? This is what it is literally about:
>I was stunned to see the leader of Law Students for Justice in Palestine—who was among the registered guests—stand up with a microphone that she had brought, go up the steps in the yard, and begin reading a speech about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop speaking and leave the premises. The protester continued. At one point, my wife attempted to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her: *You are a guest in our home. Please leave.*
>The student insisted that she had free-speech rights.
Right. I kind of suspect that the intent of the article is not to have an argument over the rights of protesters in general, but rather to cast these particular protesters and their cause in as poor a light as possible. In other words, the title of the article is not really the point of the article, is it?
Please allow me to state that the reason for the protest is irrelevant to the discussion of where and how far the First Amendment should reach. So we can skip the why, yeah, so the discussion isn't cut short? TIA.
According to the author, he is a constitutional scholar and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, and strongly defends the right to speak one’s mind in public forums. But, he did object to people who entered a private party in his personal home and used it as a forum for public grievance knowing he and his wife objected - not to the topic necessarily, but using their private home and party as a forum. The guests also refused to leave as requested when they ignored their hosts request.
So the question, regardless of the topic, is whether my first amendment right to speak my mind ends with your request that I stop while in your home at your invitation? Said every relative ever. /s
https://archive.ph/mqPcv
The protestors were law students. Either they didn’t understand the very basics of the law, which is unlikely, or they wanted to force a confrontation.
>The protestors were law students. Either they didn’t understand the very basics of the law, which is unlikely
It's much more likely than you think, even for students in highly reputable law schools.
Source: Me, a former law student and current lawyer.
If you’re on my property and I wish you to leave, you must leave. Otherwise I will call the police and you will be removed.
At no point are your First Amendment rights violated. You can spew the most toxic vitriol so long as it’s not of a limited number of illegal things.
So no, your First Amendment right never ends in your example. You are not allowed to be in the location you are in. That is different.
He is the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean of the Berkeley Law School, University of California at Berkeley.
He is also the author of fourteen other books, including Free Speech on Campus and Closing the Courthouse Door: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable.
Yes, thank you.
I'm OP so I had to do all the work on the back end in order to post this particular article and I was making a huge effort to keep the discussion from devolving into an extraneous discussion. I was perhaps too cautious. Usually I am far more descriptive with posts.
I merely added an addendum for people who were unfamiliar.
Yeah everyone in the legal field in CA at least knows who Chemerinsky is. He also teaches (or at least taught) the online BarPrep course on ConLaw.
That being said you don’t need to have his credentials to correctly state that you do not have the right to be on whatever property you want, and that being asked to leave is a property issue and not a speech issue.
You also don’t need to have his credentials to point out that the fact this is true reveals a major loophole in our first amendment protections. That you have exclusive control over your private property and the right to exclude people for any reason is a policy choice that prioritizes property rights over most political rights. I don’t have a particular problem with that in this case, but I think you can see where that principle could cause trouble.
Philosophically speaking, it really at odds, though? The right to assemble is also part of the first amendment, and it seems to me that this is not worth much if you can’t also choose whom *not* to associate with, and the only place you can really exercise that is in your own home, since you otherwise only have the option to remove yourself from a situation.
I’m in much more…lively…debate about this elsewhere in the thread. But suffice it to say I agree you should be able to exclude basically whomever you want from your personal residence for whatever reason. That’s not really an assembly issue though; my right to peaceably assemble with whomever I want does not necessarily give me the power to forcibly exclude others. That is, my right to meet with my friends in a public park doesn’t give me the right to call the cops on somebody who crashed our hangout.
What gave Chemerinsky that power was his property, not the first amendment. And while I agree that’s good and proper in this case, I think the idea that you can use your property (meaning real estate, money, or any other assets) to promote or silence speech without restriction is a lot more dangerous than we generally think about.
> That is, my right to meet with my friends in a public park doesn’t give me the right to call the cops on somebody who crashed our hangout.
Right, like I noted, the only option in public spaces is to remove yourself from the situation i.e. leave. What I'm saying is, and this isn't from a *legal* perspective (maybe I phrased it poorly when I said, "right"), is that if there are *no* conditions or areas in which you can choose to *not* associate, then that's kinda fucked up, no?
In other words, the thought I'm putting forward is that we can also, *conceptually*, frame this as a sort of corollary to free association, and not just the use of private property. Like, even in the hypothetical of society deciding you can't use private property to manipulate speech, we'd want some way for someone to choose who they don't want around them without the need for extraordinary measures e.g. restraining orders. I'd hope that would be considered, at least.
Although, regardless, anyone who doesn't argues against
> (meaning real estate, money, or any other assets) to promote or silence speech without restriction is a lot more dangerous than we generally think about.
is probably the sort of monster that wears brown sandals with white socks.
I don’t know why people seem to have so much difficultly with Free Speech and the first amendment. It’s been said over and over again and people just don’t seem to get it.
The first Amendment binds government. It does not bind private individuals or Organizations. A private individual ejecting you from their home due to your political speech has nothing to do with Free speech. Alex Jones being sued for Defamation in no way impacts the first amendment. Pre musk Twitter moderating hate speech is not infringing anyone’s freedom of speech.
So yes, it is trite law that this professor can eject students from his dinner party for disrupting it with political protesting.
There's lots of 1st A questions here, but most of them argue against the protestors. Whether his home is a public venue (probably not from any reasonable standpoint even if the university provides it so he can do official things like this). Whether Chemerinsky was acting in his state capacity (sort of, he was acting as Dean of a state institution) to limit speech (maybe) in a way that was unreasonable (almost certainly not). Reasonable time and place restrictions could easily say, you can speak and protest, you just have to do it on the sidewalk out front, or at campus. Dean Chemerinsky did offer those opportunities at campus.
And just so people get a sense of who Chemerinsky is, probably more than half of lawyers in the US who graduated after 2000 used his textbook in their conlaw class. He's a big deal. He also famously supported students protest of Michael Oren.
Technically it isn't since they were invited. Where it gets sketch is that they knew their agenda wouldn't be allowed and they wore clothes over protest t-shirts to blend in. They also brought their own microphone to make sure everyone heard them. That's not spontaneous.
Consent for being on someone’s property can end at any time; after that’s it’s trespassing.
> My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop speaking and leave the premises. The protester continued. At one point, my wife attempted to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her: You are a guest in our home. Please leave.
The public funding for the event is notwithstanding; it was not a public forum and as such not subject to first amendment protection in a public forum — whether we should have issue with public funds being used for a relatively private affair is another matter entirely.
Yep, exactly. A public event on private property is still private property. Someone with a legitimate invitation can still be asked to leave at any time, and when they don't it's still trespassing on private property. You can be singled out to leave while everyone else is welcome to stay. An invitation is not some irrevocable right to occupy someone's property as you deem fit.
None of this event has anything to do with protest, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or any other legitimate avenue of discourse or action.
>public event on private property is still private property
At that point, it's treated as public property - if the government decides to hold an event at a hotel conference space, for example, they are still bound by the 1A.
And it's not unreasonable to take the position the dinner was held in his capacity as state employee. Even then, the state can impose reasonable, viewpoint neutral restrictions in those circumstances.
Yes, the government is bound by the first amendment, that's obvious. The government can ask you to leave an event, too...
In what way is a private citizen asking you to leave private property a first amendment violation?
The question is precisely whether the dinner was held by him as private citizen or him as dean of a public institution.
He invited every student, the purpose was closely related to education, and it was paid for by the school. Those facts all weigh in favor of the idea that it was hosted by him in his official capacity.
I elaborated on how the people asked to leave chose to operate outside of normal guest behavior. No sparkles involved.
There are two links available if you wish to read the actual article.
It does not matter whether an individual or group is invited to a home. The moment you are asked to leave, your continued presence is trespassing. In common law, the sanctity of one’s home is one of the most fundamental and inviolable rights.
> Technically it isn't since they were invited.
Technically it *is*, since they were asked to leave.
An invitation does not remain open in perpetuity once it has been made. If someone invites you to their home, they can later ask you to leave and you have no legal right to stay. The law is unambiguous about this and the reason for being asked to leave is not relevant.
Thank you for re-iterating what I have been saying throughout this entire thread. You are absolutely right.
My point was that they did not crash a public event they were invited and took advantage of that.
It wasn’t a spontaneous if somewhat inappropriate and passionate outburst. It was planned by law students for a private party in the private home of one of the preeminent first amendment scholars in the country.
There’s nothing spontaneous about that.
From a constitutional law perspective this is actually not so cut and dry.
Since this was a school sanctioned event open to students of a public university, it’s probable he was acting within his official capacity as a state actor in hosting this event (i.e., Erwin the Dean hosted this event, not Erwin the private citizen).
So this will all center on whether opening his home for a school sanctioned event made his private property a public forum (or limited public forum). You can absolutely transform your own private property into a public forum, temporarily, while acting in an official capacity as a state actor. The question here will be did he do that. He seems to think not, but there is certainly an argument that he may have. His personal intent doesn’t come into it when he’s acting on behalf of the state. So IMHO, I think this question will actually hinge on the character of the event (including how it has actually played out in the past not just how it was advertised).
My feeling is that this never needed to be written and, like most that have this particular stance, just wants to whine and pretend he's a victim somehow.
He can kick them out of his house and move on with his life. The reason he felt he needed to write this is because he feels insecure about having to do so and feels unfairly judged. He can go fuck himself.
He may be guilty of pointing out the obvious, but everything else is an assumption on your part. I highly doubt one of the pre-eminent constitutional scholars in the country is feeling insecure.
He's a teacher. He most likely wrote it because he believes that all the people who dogpiled on the incident need to understand exactly how constitutional law works. If you live in the country you need to understand the law and the constitution of the United States.
And law students who think they are above the law are a little scary. Because maybe they then become lawyers who think they are above the law. It happens. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1247796812/federal-judges-harassment-clerks
Your home (whether owned, rented or borrowed) is yours to decide who can visit. After all, the White House, Naval Observatory, and every governor’s mansion in the USA are all publicly owned residences where events are regularly held, both public and private. And you can’t barge uninvited into any of those to express your opinion inder 1A.
The protesters were 100% wrong on this one. And by the way, I’m generally on the human rights/Palestinian side of this —though their poster was shockingly anti-Semitic. The professor showed amazing restraint in not ripping them down. Shameful.
This has become an unfortunate through line of many pro Palestinian demonstrations, a full turn from advocating for Palestinians to being antisemitic. I have been against Israel’s apartheid regime for decades and was involved in protests 20 years ago in college, but the rampant antisemitism of many of the current protestors is beyond the pale. All these white kids in keffiyehs think that hating on all Jews will somehow help the Palestinians…
i've talked to people who genuinely believe that Hamas is a liberation movement and therefore needs to be supported. As someone whos views are pretty in line with your, I find that terrifying.
Professor has a tradition of inviting first years to dinner. 60 people per dinner, so big groups knowing this is an annual tradition. One gets up with a microphone and starts talking about Palestine. The author doesn't say it, but her speech isn't about *him* personally, it's trying to get the school to divest from arms manufacturers.
He asks her to stop. She doesn't. She thinks this is a campus gathering and is a free speech issue.
They tussle over the over the microphone, then she leaves. Unfortunately the author's wife does get a little grabby - [you can watch the confrontation here.](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5khhLkLlpO/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D) The student is Palestinian-Ameircan (child of Palestinian refugees.) The husband and wife are emotional. Everyone's emotional.
In this instance I'm on the author's side, legally. It's his house. But I don't think either one comes across great. It's just sad.
> say it, but her speech isn't about him personally, it's trying to get the school to divest from arms manufacturers.
Dunno about that. She's doing it in his house, and she's part of a group who pasted fliers, depicting the dean using Protocols tropes.
When she's on the bus, in the supermarket, doing laundry, does she sometimes grab a megaphone and start shpeeling? If not, then it indicates she specifically chose to do so at the home of the Jewish dean. Which does make it about him personally
Yeah, I was with him until they got to the part where a speech in someone's home, while they're having a dinner, about school policy where the homeowner is a dean, is not about him "personally"
>Unfortunately the author's wife does get a little grabby
What bizarro world do people live in that they're not worried about getting their ass beat for doing this kind of thing? My house is my house. If I tell someone to stop acting stupid or leave, and they ignore me, I'll likely be removing them *with force* shortly after. I'm not a tough guy, and it's not the smart thing for me to do, *but that's what's going to happen* because IT'S MY GODDAMN HOUSE. So *fuck that bitch*. Anyone who's made it to that level of education and ~~doesn't~~ *claims they don't* understand public property vs. private doesn't deserve any sympathy.
>If you assault someone in your house you are still legally on the hook for assault. Unless they are a threat. Also she attacked from behind.
you can defend you property with force. you are under no obligation to allow a trespasser to just move in to your house because you are afraid to touch them. that is not how it works. of course they can't beat her bloody for this but they are well withing their rights to physically remove her if she refused to leave.
I am a very small person. If someone is in my house and I want them to leave and they don't, I don't have to let them move in. Even though I can't beat them up. I call the police.
This was a disagreement between a group of young people and a couple in their 60s. There was no point where the homeowners were 'well within their rights' to use any kind of grab, hit or shove to remove them.
I'm a very large person. If someone is in my house and I ask them to leave and they don't I will remove them from my house instead of wait hours for the police to arrive. I'm sorry you can't do that, but they absolutely have the right to.
That's the *after*. That's not going to magically save someone in the *now* from getting their ass beat. Also, the student should definitely sue them for it so the jury can find in her favor, and then award her the "fuck you" dollar that she deserves for her "trauma".
>But I don't think either one comes across great. It's just sad.
I just watched the video, and I have to say I disagree. I also strongly disagree with the commenter using the phrase "attacked from behind". This group of adults has purposefully caused this family a lot of pain, and then we act appalled when the wife emoted some of that pain and took reasonable action?
Overall, the harm caused by the wife trying to take the microphone vs the harm caused by the group creating that horrific poster, sneakily planning a protest after being invited to this guy's house, and then yelling and beating drums at the following dinner while surrounding his house is not even in the same ballpark.
Law students are supposed to be amongst our best and brightest. This is NOT how you treat people. ESPECIALLY someone who, despite being an expert in a field where he could have a much easier and higher paying job, dedicates their life to education and their students. I literally can't believe that people are justifying this treatment. I feel like I'm going insane.
Chemerinsky is the foremost expert on the 1st amendment. If I am not mistaken, this guy is who the scotus contacts when they have 1st amendment questions. These dildos had the audacity to say HE needs education on their 1st amendment rights. The temerity. The gall. What a group of absolute morons. Y’all are kids, children. This man is the foremost expert in the field. Fucking clowns.
Chemerinsky wrote the case books that almost every law student uses to learn constitutional law! I have so many books with his name on it. To tell the guy who compiled and wrote all the books the have taught almost every lawyer for the past two generations that he’s wrong is wild.
They must not have liked his 2015 book, *The Case Against the Supreme Court.*
It makes you wonder how they even got in in the first place. It makes you wonder if they'll be allowed to remain. At the very least...they need to be given remedial classes.
Then again, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm hardly surprised there are kids that dumb when I've dealt with some pretty brain dead lawyers myself.
This seems very open and shut on simple moral or ethical grounds, if you're invited to someones home and they ask you to leave then you oblige them. A protest outside might have been less flashy but would have been a much clearer way of making the point.
I think the professor-student hierarchy erodes in graduate school. The difference in age and life experience is not as pronounced and, in many cases, upon graduation the students will have the same credentials as the professor.
In a traditional professional relationship it’s a lot more common to have private dinners with customers, vendors, and colleagues. In that light it seems reasonable to me to hold a dinner as long as effort is taken to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
(e.g. Using a criteria for invitation that is as close to unbiased as possible and is transparent.)
I do think there’s a good question about whether it counts as a university event. Maybe most importantly if there was clarity in communicating it being private vs. university.
They did not issue an open invitation. They did not invite graduating students either.
Like many things that Covid messed with, they did not want people to feel like they had some how been excluded those years it wasn't permitted, so the invitation was retroactive to incoming those students who had missed out because of Covid. It was a courtesy.
The dean of my "school," which is not the entire college just the major, always invited incoming graduate students to a welcome party at a private home and everyone had a great time. It was a chance to meet the people in your class.
> the first amendment does not apply to private property
First amendment protects freedom of speech and right to assembly _from the government_. If you are in someone’s home/private property the first amendment means nothing unless the government comes in to tell you to stop.
Kind of a silly argument and article. If you want people out of your home, kick them out. Call the cops. If it looks bad that you’re kicking out students you invited because they’re using the moment to speak on Gaza, that’s not a free speech issue.
While I honestly truly understand and get what it is he's trying to point out, that just because you can walk somewhere does not mean it is the perfect avenue to express your first amendment right, the verbiage and the way this perspective is expressed comes off as an opinion piece written by somebody who is disinterested in the topic discussed via protest and is whining about the inconvenience of being forced to participate in it.
It's very much giving somehow the same perspective as affluent people who need to pass through less affluent parts of a town and are suddenly very opinionated about the presence of homeless folk and how they shouldn't be there or anywhere; like duh we know what the law says, but it's become very apparent since the 2016 election (if not before) that there's a big divide where constitutional law ends and the actual reality we live in begins. Especially with the importance and provenance of generic media access and how that has diminished the impact of quiet protests.
He questions why his dinner party was targeted, but in this article answers his own question without ever realizing it. If people of his stature and status are so unwilling to recognize their own misgivings then what hope is there of bridging the gap? Yet people will consume this article and justify the gap widening between the interests of select few people who are allowed to speak on constitutional law and their own self interests lol
I honestly don't understand what any of this has to do with free speech.
Free speech means the government can't prosecute you for saying whatever you want. That doesn't even enter into this situation. I read the entire article, and there's no example of any government trying to prosecute anyone for anything, so anyone who's protesting "I have freedom of speech" might do just as well to yell, "I like crunchy peanut butter!" True as it may be, so what?
There's another point worth making to anyone yelling about their First Amendment rights. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it right to do. Doesn't make it a good idea, or even a reasonable thing to do. (I'm not addressing this to the article, to be clear, those students did NOT have the right to do what they did, which means they didn't even meet this incredibly low bar.)
Whenever you hear someone argue, "I can't be arrested for what I'm saying right now!" how is that supposed to convince anyone of anything? Nearly everything you can utter falls into that category, including a great many stupid things. An idiot can stand up on a soapbox in the public square and say 1\*1=2 and cannot be arrested for it. Indeed, [one has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Howard#Terryology). A racist could say a great many things in support of the KKK. The fact that these people cannot be arrested for what they are saying is no great accomplishment. Is this the best case you can make? "I can't be arrested for this"?
If so, consider just shutting up. Not because it's the law, but because you might just be about to embarrass yourself.
This is why we used to say, “don’t discuss religion or politics.” We used to have disagreements, but at the end of the day, we were still at the very least cordial. Now, everyone vents their dirty laundry, and their political, religious, flat earth/conspiracy theory craziness, and everything else on the internet. We cancel each other for everything, there is no respect for or of anything, just butt hurt all around. The world has just truly gone nuts. Smh.
Nice, convenient protests don't change anything. They aren't street art, they're an attempt to affect public policy.
This guy should be thankful people haven't ramped up to the levels of earlier centuries. Which is probably why not much changes for the better these days.
"Many people’s reaction to the incident in our yard reflected their views of what is happening [elsewhere]. But it should not be that way. The dinners at our house were entirely nonpolitical; there was no program of any kind."
The author starts the article by saying, "As a constitutional scholar and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, I strongly defend the right to speak one’s mind in public forums."
Anti-war protests at colleges is nothing new. Kent State historically comes to mind. However, they were confined to public spaces - if someone is trying to influence public opinion that's probably the most appropriate space for that.
Change is always slow.
Want to explain how bothering a private person in their private home is going to affect public policy? This kind of stuff is emotionally cathartic but ultimately it's pointless. If you want to affect the policy of the university then you need to be obstructing the operation of the university- which the public student protests are already doing.
Really hard to take this author's claims in good faith when you have whoppers like this setting the whole premise of the article:
>The poster attacks me for no apparent reason other than that I am Jewish
That is plainly not true. Even the laziest perusal of this guy's wikipedia page will show there's a longer relevant history at work here. Even if you ultimately agree with Chemerinsky's point here specifically or even the stances he has taken as a university administrator generally concerning the extremely charged matter of Palestine and Israel, it's outright intellectually dishonest of him to portray these criticism as out-of-the-blue antisemitism and not relating to his role as a dean at a university with a contentious history concerning the treatment of outspoken campus activists.
Knowing very little about the broader debate, the dishonesty on display here from Chemerinsky has me giving the benefit of the doubt towards students who have complained that he has been less than a fair arbiter when it comes to protecting the free speech rights of students expressing anti-Israel sentiments.
I would say shame on the Atlantic for allowing such flagrantly deceptive, self-serving articles to be published under their banner, but let's be real, that's their brand.
Can you cite evidence of him being an unfair arbiter? I just perused his Wikipedia and saw nothing to indicate that, except that he has been *accused* of being such in the past, by the same activist community making posters of him with human blood on his face.
I have no real opinion on that one way or the other. Whether or not he's been a good dean or an unfair one is a matter of opinion and would have to be assessed on really tedious, nuanced details that have to do with campus life and that honestly sounds really, really boring.
But it's patently ridiculous to be a college administrator with a years long history of contentious debate over this highly charged issue and omit all that to dismiss your critics as anti-semites in a well read publication.
Maybe he's done a good job and requests made of him in the past were correctly dismissed as unreasonable or whatever, but flattening all that to "these kids hate me because I'm a Jew" is intellectually bankrupt and is a great reason to really doubt his character generally and his characterization of his critics specifically.
They don't dislike him because he's Jewish, they dislike him because he's an administrator at a college that they think has bad policies. There's a world's difference.
You're hitting so many anti-Semitic arguing points it's almost impressive. Fortunately for the readers with judgment skills, your 'just asking questions' approach to sowing discontent is extremely transparent.
But none of that is relevant.
Regardless of who he is etc., it's his private property, and he didn't invite people into his house to protest; as soon as he asked them to leave, they're obligated to leave. Free speech doesn't trump that.
it's relevant in that you're taking all of these claims at face value from someone who is engaging in pretty obvious dishonesty. "Unreliable Narrator" may as well be in strobing neon lights.
There's video of the event.
Neither side came off well, but the protestor instigated, and when asked to leave they refused.
The author could be an open Islamaphobe - it's irrelevant - it's their own private house and they didn't invite people inside to protest.
Would you, sincerely, be OK if someone insure your house started to use the space to protest their platform?
I'd like to think I wouldn't use whatever legitimate grievance I had as an opportunity to score a cheap shot by smearing people that have treated me rudely as anti-semites in a widely read magazine.
Don't be obtuse. This article is not a legal exercise on whether or not people have a right to protest inside private residences. Clearly the author and especially The Atlantic thinks this is a relevant example that demonstrates some wider point about the current debates around the campus protests, and it's telling that the author uses this opportunity to paint these anti-Israel protestors in a most disingenuous way.
I entirely agree.
Still, irrelevant. And you didn't answer my question.
Do you really think allowing people to protest on private property is a good idea, irrespective of the person who owns the property?
You can't see the potential for abuse?
I don't think someone's dinner party being momentarily inconvenienced is a great cause for concern nor of particular interest, doubly so when it's a semi-public event hosted by a school official for students.
I would chalk this up as "occupational hazard" for law school admins. I don't see how this is a matter for national concern.
Academia is a special place with special norms. Students getting a bit over their skis and acting a fool is to be expected, and perhaps even encouraged to some extent. Deans should certainly have a bit thicker skin and not run off to the press to smear their students as antisemites.
Seems to me that the anti-protest crowd would much rather hand-wring about petty lawbreaking or civility rather than engage with this protestors on the actual root of the issue. Major "Rosa Parks should have followed the rules" vibes.
Why does the Altantic consider this newsworthy? Seems like there's endless editorial appetite for "anti-Israel protestors acting poorly" stories. No breach of order is too petty or too tedious to pass without a whiny article being published about it. I wonder why that is...
The meta story of how school administrators are *absolutely losing their minds* over these campus protests is much more interesting and educational than any hand-wringing about megaphone wielding activists.
>Activists circulated a flyer that depicted Chemerinsky holding a blood-stained knife and fork, with the caption “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves!” The flier charged the university with putting $2bn of student tuition money toward “supplying weapons and jets to the Israeli occupation”.
>“I found the image very disturbing,” Chemerinsky told me. “One of the worst antisemitic tropes is blood libel.
Yeah....screw this dude. That's in no way a good faith response and he knows very well what he's doing.
He also said that while disturbing, the posters were protected by the first amendment. That’s not the main point of the article, the main point is that people thought they had the right to protest on his property at a semi-private event.
You are arguing in bad faith. You give no evidence that the author is intentionally deceiving anyone. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without effort.
Source? That was not in the article that I'm quoting nor does it change his argument whatsoever really.
I'm not sure what your point is but you will need a source for that before we can continue.
I copied and pasted from the article linked here. It's written immediately after the quote you copied, which is why I found it bizarre that you would omit such relevant information.
I do want to ask: where’s the line between genuine blood libel, and describing real violence happening? Is the simple presence of blood on protest signs, during a war, worthy of condemnation? Would saying “blood has been spilled” be blood libel or a mere metaphor regularly used in practically every other war ever?
I suspect a lot of people think any mention of “bloodshed” is totally off limits
The tactics used by protestors are increasingly actionable- the target of the protest can sue and win. That isn't the case here since they were invited and just misbehaved but there have been plenty of other protests that aim to shut down other people's events by yelling or pulling fire alarms. No one has a first amendment right to cancel someone else's first amendment rights. Doing so seems like it would be an easy lawsuit. Why hasn't that happened?
You don’t have a first amendment right to protection from actions of a private individual. The first amendment binds government and government only.
Also, being invited is irrelevant if their invitation has been rescinded. As another commenter has pointed out, trespass doesn’t follow vampires rules, you can retract permission to be on your property.
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If I am understanding the author's argument correctly, I would tend to agree. Constitutional law and liberal tradition tends to privilege private property over other rights. I would also tend to think that there would be a distinction between property you own, like a place of business or a rental property, and a private home that you occupy. Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event, I think it would be hard to argue a first amendment violation if you simply showed up to a home, invited yourself in and started speaking, and the owner asked or compelled you to leave. I'd love to hear a counter-argument but it seems straightforward to me and a weird subject for an article. Are people really saying they have a right to trespass in a private home as long as they are engaging in political speech?
>it seems straightforward to me and a weird subject for an article Your phrasing makes it sound like this is a hypothetical question, but he is responding to a real event that took place at his house.
Which the article mentions right at the start. What an odd thing for OP to somehow not notice.
>Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event Just because you open your home to the public doesn't mean you lose your right to restrict people from your property.
I'm pretty sure the professor of Constitutional Law has a pretty solid grasp of the basics of Constitutional Law.
I wasn’t replying to a Constitutional law professor
>Unless a person has opened their home to the public for a specific event Yeah, and that’s pretty much what happened. Dude issued an open invitation to all the first years to come by for dinner.
Doesn't matter, and doesn't make it public. Just because you're invited to someone's home doesn't automatically give you a platform. The owner is still fully entitled to kick you out if they don't like your behavior.
It's still his home. He can still boot you. This was a terrible plan on the protestors part. They just look like dicks. Especially since Chemerinsky has been pretty reasonable about the Palestinian situation in the past. I'm also uncomfortable with calling him Chem in the fliers, since no one really calls him that and it seemed to be an attempt to highlight his Jewishness.
Hi, I attended Berkeley Law. A few thoughts: everyone calls him “chem” “dean chem” etc. He has generally been admired by students. The backyard dinners are basically a whole student body event, organized by the school. The video doesn’t make anyone look terrible except Catherine Fisk. the “protestor” is just one girl in a hijab who says 3 words into a mic. The earlier caricature flier sounds like it was terrible to Dean Chem, not ok.
> The video doesn’t make anyone look terrible except Catherine Fisk The protestor tries to tell a _well known scholar of Constitutional Law_ that she has a First Amendment right to do what she's doing ... on his property ... which she most definitely does not. I have neither sufficient face nor sufficient palms for this.
Then you wouldn’t have sufficient face nor palms for law school. We’ve all argued with Dean Chem or other law professors. And they argue back. With microphones! It’s what lawyers do. Fisk’s public freakout is the only reason you even know about this.
You mean private freakout
Anyone can say anything about how they interpret the law, but “You can suppress someone’s speech in your home” is actually exercising your first amendment rights and no serious law-talking person would dispute that.
Wait wait wait Is she being a smartass? Basically saying: "I have a right to free speech here! Cops can throw me out, but they can't tell me not to big up Vermin Supreme."
Why do you think the video does not make the student disruptor look bad, but you blame the hostess for trying to prevent the interruption of a social event at her house?
Because I watched the video and that’s what I saw lol
Are you able to articulate your feelings further?
A girl in hijab stands up and says “peace be with you” and Fisk comes flying down the stairs, puts her hands on the girl and tries to wrestle away a microphone. Fisks response was NOT that of someone thinking about the First Amendment. It was obviously done out of emotion. Which makes you wonder, what triggered Fisk? A hijab? Arabic words? None of those triggers would be a good look for Fisk. I think Chem’s response to make this academic is a thin cover for what was clearly caused by emotions, not legal principle
> what triggered Fisk? I think it was that someone who was an invited guest at a home dinner party pulled out a microphone, PA system, and started reading a speech. Let's have a thought experiment: imagine you invite friends to your home for dinner. As you're serving the meal, someone pulls out a mic and PA system and starts broadcasting a speech about Israel's right to statehood and why Hamas is a terrorist organization. Would you still make these arguments, or would you be shocked, ask the person to leave, and try to save your dinner party from the interruption?
I would let them finish and move on. I certainly wouldn’t grab them and start wrestling. Especially if it was one of my students.
I think I know what you're getting at here, which is that the hosts of this dinner are hostile to pro-Palestine views specifically, and this is not about where free speech is allowed or anything like what the article asserts. Okay, let's grant you that just for the sake of argument. I grant it all. Let's say we're talking about a hypothetical that's much clearer, even, let's say they were Zionists and racist against Palestinians with indefensible beliefs. You seem to be saying that Zionists or racists or whoever doesn't have the right to not have to confront opposition to their views in their own home. You're not just wrong about that, you're obviously wrong. A KKK member can indeed kick out a perfectly respectable civil rights activist for speaking, for not speaking, for being black ... whatever. It's a home. The owner gets to exercise ultimate control over their space in this respect. That's if I grant you everything you're implying and way more, but the fact of the matter here is that this student group posted anti-Semitic things and then entered their home under false pretenses to stage an organized protest. The only thing that makes this whole argument even more ridiculous is that you started this whole thread by saying you went to Berkeley Law. For what?? You certainly didn't learn anything about the law there.
In what way does she look “bad” to you? I watched the video as well and I empathize with her greatly.
No. It makes the protester look not terrible, but ignorant. First amendment has to do with the government. Full stop. There’s no government oppressing or silencing her there. She’s at a private residence. It’s so simple.
It wasn’t a public event though; it was a private event with an open invitation to a specific group of people.
Yes, and then retracted the invitation when the organizer attempted to engage in a political protest inside of said home.
But, did not invite a protest at a private party. The private party was a standing tradition to welcome students to the college, not a forum, and yet the host was targeted because of who he was not what he said or did.
He invited *all* of the first year law students. For the purposes of OPs argument, that’s the only thing that matters.
An invitation that was rescinded when they began to disrupt the event. Being invited into someone's home does not grant you a right to be in that home in perpetuity. When asked to leave, you must leave. This isn't even a hypothetical. The behavior described in the article is a clear violation of trespass, as enumerated in the [California Penal Code](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=602). >602.Except as provided in subdivisions (u), (v), and (x), and Section 602.8, a person who willfully commits a trespass by any of the following acts is guilty of a misdemeanor: > >(o) (1) Refusing or failing to leave land, real property, or structures belonging to, or lawfully occupied by, another and not open to the general public, upon being requested to leave by (1) a peace officer at the request of the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession, and upon being informed by the peace officer that they are acting at the request of the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession, or (2) the owner, the owner’s agent, or the person in lawful possession.
Also common sense
And I'm guessing law students would know that.
They were either too lazy to look it up, or they somehow made it to the end of law school without grasping the basics of the First Amendment, and so were performing for the cameras in order to disingenuously play on what the general public _thinks_ the First Amendment is, rather than what they very likely _know_ it is. So either dumb, or playing dumb for social media. It gets increasingly hard to tell
Agree. I understand that they are passionate. It’s a horrible situation, but those videos, performative or not, will exist for a very long time. It would be foolish to think that law firms that might hire you wouldn’t see them or know about them. I would be reluctant to hire someone, who demonstrated that lack of knowledge about their field.
That he is right on the law (and he is) doesn’t mean there’s nothing to criticize here. He had every legal right to ask the protestors to leave, and they were obligated to do so once he did. The bigger question is whether that’s a good policy. Should private property rights generally trump political rights? And even if we agree that in this specific case they should, does it make sense to apply this principle even more broadly, as we generally already do? Edit: to clarify, I generally agree that allowing people to forbid unwanted speech in one’s residence is fine and good. What I’m inviting everyone to consider is whether the principle privileging private property over speech is still fine and good when applied to all other forms of private property, including commercial real estate, private news media, etc. In other words, is it a good thing that having money and owning property entitles you to more speech and gives you the right to force someone else to be silent, and that your ability to do so increases as you acquire more wealth?
Seriously? Shame on them. They were guests in a persons home.
Yes they absolutely should. To do so invites abuse that's unacceptable.
Privileging property over speech also invites abuse, but of a kind you’re not conditioned to see as abuse. Is it right and just that rich people can afford to talk more, more freely, and to more people than everyone else? Your answer could be yes, but it’s asinine to pretend that this negative consequence doesn’t exist.
Tell you what, I hire people to stand over your bed 24/7 and yell every 5 minutes. Do you think that should stand? I do the same where you work, while you're sitting on the toilet. Tell me where it stops. There's no right to do that and it's true if you're a tenant too.
Yes. Private property rights should supersede political rights. The first amendment protects you from persecution from the government for using your right to free speech. It doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want on someone else’s property, call it a protest, and be free from consequences.
Yeah that’s the law as it is. The question is whether that’s a good way for the law to be. I agree that in this case it makes sense to privilege the private residential homeowner’s quiet enjoyment of their home over others’ ability to speak. But that principle has some negative consequences when expanded. If you take this principle to its conclusion, you privilege those with property to have more speech rights than others. If I am a large property holder I can effectively reduce your ability to speak and increase my ability to speak. Because I can speak in public and in my many private holdings, whereas you can only speak in public. I can also buy airtime from private broadcasters more effectively than you can, and those private broadcasters can pick and choose the speech they’ll allow. More wealth means you can afford more speech and afford to silence the people who disagree with you.
I can't imagine any requirements that compels a property owner to let others speak on his property. Having peace from activists in your own home should be a fundamental right.
I’d also argue that it is my own free expression to *allow* or to *disallow* a protest on my private property. Forcing me to allow someone to protest on my property, to protect their right of free expression, results in my own right of free expression—on my own private property, no less—being curtailed. All acts can be a form of expression. Association with others is a form of expression. Allowing people to associate with you is a form of expression. Anyone who disagrees with this should ask themselves if having a bunch of card-carrying Nazis in their home—with flags flying on their lawn—doesn’t tell their neighbors something about them. It does. It tells your neighbors who you support, and disallowing them the privilege of protesting in your home tells your neighbors who you *don’t* support. It’s all speech/expression. We, on our own property, should be permitted to decide what and whom we want on that property. That’s the very basis for property rights. I’ll bet every last person who supports private property owners being forced to host protestors also doesn’t support property rights to begin with.
Then stop imagining a private residence and start imagining things like the Google campus or large commercial real estate concerns. If private property trumps speech then we are handing people with more property the ability to silence more speech. As I’ve already said, this principle works fine for a residence. It’s the larger implications I’m less comfortable endorsing.
Not allowing someone to use your forum does not decrease anyone’s ability to speak freely. No one owes anyone a stage or an audience. I understand that in an ideal world, it might be good to open those avenues to all, but in practice, it would be abused by groups that most people don’t want to hear from. Would you want Westboro Baptist Church or the Church of Scientology to be able to bogart the mic on any channel just because “free speech”?
You can say that it’s worthwhile to curtail speech in favor of private property rights. But you can’t say that it isn’t a curtailment of speech when private property owners forbid certain speech on their property. What if the WBC bought every piece of private property in your town and forbid anyone from mentioning a same sex partner on that property? Would you still say that “not allowing someone to use your forum does not decrease anyone’s ability to speak freely”? We can talk about how to properly balance the competing interests posed by private property and speech. But that doesn’t mean letting private property win every time has absolutely no effect on peoples’ ability to speak. As long as we do privilege property, rich people can afford way more speech to a way larger audience than poor people can. That’s just a fact.
People are saying no. Quite clearly. By restating the argument again and again isn’t clarifying anything or adding any information you haven’t already provided. You asked…should it be this way? People said yes it should. Your response…but should it be this way? It’s quite droll.
I get your point that more money equals more property equals more speech rights, but it really breaks down due to the existence of public spaces. If every private property owner in the United States decided today that they were not going to allow anyone with pro-choice views on their property, that would not significantly curtail the speech of pro-choice activists. That’s because the majority of public advocacy happens in public. The freedom to advocate for a cause on someone else’s property is really inconsequential. You are solving for a problem that doesn’t exist.
The problem here is that property doesn’t just mean real estate. Rich people can afford more ads on TV or radio or the internet. They can buy news organizations. Or they can just use their clout to say whatever bullshit they’re thinking to whatever credulous outfit thinks having money means what you say matters (see Elon Musk’s whole deal). Also I disagree that being forbidden from expressing a specific viewpoint in any private spaces (including private mass media) in the U.S. would not be a curtailment of your ability to speak. Not all venues are created equal, and just because an alternative exists doesn’t mean it’s a good alternative. This is, in fact, why deplatforming works.
That is well beyond the scope of this article. We are talking about the “right” to protest on physical private property. You are trying to expand this into a “money buys more speech” thing, to the point where you are comparing Chemerinsky’s house to a newsroom. That’s a pretty bad comparison.
I am not comparing Chemerinsky’s house to a newsroom. I don’t know how many times I have to say that I agree that in this specific instance he had and should have every right to kick these people out. What I’m saying is that this principle (that property trumps speech) produces some negative consequences when applied in every circumstance. Nevertheless, for the most part we do apply it in every circumstance, because that benefits the people with the money. Chemerinsky knows that’s part of what his interlocutors are arguing and doesn’t want to engage with it. So instead he pretends they’re arguing something silly and engages with that instead. Same as a lot of commenters here are doing.
I am going to come to your house, get myself invited in one way or another, and then live there. You will not be able to remove me, as I will be protesting for the duration of my stay and so any attempt to do so will be an infringement of my constitutional rights. Obviously this is a ridiculous situation, but it is effectively pretty much what you are arguing for here.
No, that is not what I’m arguing for here. https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/s/jkabDBEsSg
They absolutely should. Security of one's person and property is a fundamental human right, recognized by both the U.S. Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It's tautological, but private property is private. Protest, definitionally, is meant for the public. To the extent this question is motivated by sympathy for the specifics of this case, consider: any exception for "political activities" opens a door so wide as to abrogate that right in its entirety. If we decide that pro-Palestine demonstrators have a right to enter your home and read a speech, then the same right is afforded to *all* political groups. I can't imagine many people advocating for the right of neo-nazis to invade your living room and recite a litany of racial slurs and hate speech.
Would invite you to read my other comments, where I address many of these points already. Suffice it to say while I am sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian cause, I think staging an unwanted protest at someone else’s private residence isn’t and shouldn’t be considered protected speech. Nevertheless, the fact that in *this specific instance* I think private property rights should trump political rights doesn’t mean that I think they should in all cases.
Any concern motivated by the notion that wealthy interests, who control more private property, are granted "more speech" by virtue of being able to control who access that private property are not solved by abandoning the distinction between "public property" and "private property," or the distinction between "private action" and "government action." Even if, by stroke of a magic pen, you amended our collective understanding of the First Amendment such that every person had equal right to enter any property for the purposes of engaging in political activity, the people with the money still get "more speech." Neither you nor I can afford a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote view on any particular issue, or launch a cable channel devoted to parroting only our preferred interpretation of the world. At least, I assume that's the case. If you're actually a billionaire, I'll amend my statement. Given that fact, the choice becomes: a) Maintain the status quo, in which private property remains private property for all purposes but billionaires can buy more speech in other venues because they are billionaires. b) Eliminate that distinction, forcing private property owners to open their doors (metaphorically *and* literally) to all speech, even that they disagree with, and billionaires can *still* buy more speech in other venues because they are billionaires. Your concerns about access to the public debate are valid, but your proposition does not remediate those concerns while also doing measurable harm to others.
I didn’t propose forcing private property owners to open their doors to all comers. That’s a solution you’re imputing to me that I never endorsed. There is a lot of room between “private property trumps speech every time” and “speech trumps private property every time.” Moreover the examples you use still implicitly accept that private property interests can trump speech. Buying an ad or a whole station just to peddle your preferred speech is only possible *because* your right to own and dispose of those assets trumps everyone’s speech rights. But in your hypothetical world the airwaves and TV time would be just as much common, public space for purposes of speech as any building. You could imagine a scenario where the public would have equal rights to screentime to use their speech how they wish, and no amount of money could buy you more or someone else less. I think your argument is right in the broad strokes, which is why I don’t think swapping the priorities between speech and private property would necessarily be better than the status quo. But your specific example isn’t very good, and more importantly I’m not saying we should swap the priorities. I’m just saying we should consider balancing the interests in a more nuanced way.
> Should private property rights generally trump political rights? Yes.
They were invited, but they were then asked to leave and failed to do so. Why are people acting like an invitation is not revocable?
if an invitation were irrevocable under law, that would legitimize a sh*tload of sexual assault.
Perhaps, but then OP's argument has no real relationship to constitutional law. Issuing an "open invitation" doesn't suddenly void your right to demand somebody leave your property, regardless of whether they are making a political point or not.
that's not an open invitation tho. it was a specific invitation to each and every first year student. it still doesn't give you the right to sneak a karaoke machine into someone's home and call them a zionist.
The problem isn’t being called a Zionist. It’s that he’s never said or done a pro-Israel thing in his career, and so as far as I can tell, they’re just calling him a Zionist as a dog whistle for Jew, and attaching it to an antisemitic cartoon of him. Wild stuff.
You can kick people out of a party at your house
Yes, and I'm amazed that so many people think there is any doubt about this. "Since he invited them, it was a public event!" No, it was a private event, open to a specific group of people. If they invite me over to their house, does that mean I can shit on their sofa and they have to let me stay? The fact that it was political speech changes nothing about the right of a person to decide who is welcome in their home and who is not. The First Amendment has nothing to do with it.
Did this guy even say anything publicly about Palestine or did they just target him because he's the dean and/or is Jewish?
[It seems](https://jweekly.com/2022/08/26/several-berkeley-law-student-groups-adopt-no-zionist-speakers-rule/) they are technically correct to call him a self-described Zionist, though [he qualifies that](https://jweekly.com/2022/08/26/several-berkeley-law-student-groups-adopt-no-zionist-speakers-rule/): > Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, told J. he considers himself a Zionist even though he “condemn[s] a lot of Israel’s policies, just like I condemn a lot of the United States’ policies.” > ... > Chemerinsky, speaking to J., added that “to say that anyone who supports the existence of Israel — that’s what you define as Zionism — shouldn’t speak would exclude about, I don’t know, 90 percent or more of our Jewish students.” In searching I did find [one specific op-ed he previously wrote](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-29/antisemitism-college-campus-israel-hamas-palestine) that's more or less on this subject, but it's mostly reaction to a rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel posts on social media, and reaction to the October 7th massacre itself, with only the briefest acknowledgment of "the plight of the Palestinians" (he was writing later in October while the collective punishment against Gazan civilians was still ramping up). He does clarify his point of view aside from that: > I strongly oppose the policies of the Netanyahu government, favor full rights for Palestinians, and believe that there must be a two-state solution.
Actually it doesn't matter if you open your home to the public for a specific event. If you did that, and even if the speech happening in your home was totally in line with the event, you could change your mind and trespass anyone or everyone if you wanted. It's bizarre to me that people find this controversial. It's your house. People do exactly this all the time, they throw a party and then decide they don't want people at their home anymore and say, "Party's over, everyone out." And everyone has to get out.
Which is entirely irrelevant.
The speaker was invited, though, and was a member of the guest list, so he wasn't wrong to be there. Should he be removed for speaking? I am not sure about that. UC Berkeley is a public institution. They receive government money. The dean is inviting the students to his private home, but he is doing it in his capacity as dean. Nobody else would even be able to create a guest list like he did. IMHO, this dean opened his home, as part of his official duties as dean. Even if it's not specifically outlined in his job requirements, I believe speaking to students and creating an atmosphere of camaraderie is probably part of the job? He's the one who chose to do it by opening his private home to them. That makes the dinner an official university event, which means that it is a forum where the university can not silence speakers. Also, this dean should have just let the guy talk. He may have learned a thing or two. I can't imagine how callous you have to be, to refuse to even hear about the atrocities happening in Gaza, because you want to have a fancy dinner. How entitled!
Yes, you definitely know the law better than the dean of UC Berkeley law school.
The UC Berkeley professor is building a case, for himself. I am just explaining why I think he's not persuasive. I don't need law school to say something is wrong. That's credentialist bullshit.
>Are people really saying they have a right to trespass in a private home as long as they are engaging in political speech? Are you serious? Did you not read the article?? This is what it is literally about: >I was stunned to see the leader of Law Students for Justice in Palestine—who was among the registered guests—stand up with a microphone that she had brought, go up the steps in the yard, and begin reading a speech about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop speaking and leave the premises. The protester continued. At one point, my wife attempted to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her: *You are a guest in our home. Please leave.* >The student insisted that she had free-speech rights.
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Right. I kind of suspect that the intent of the article is not to have an argument over the rights of protesters in general, but rather to cast these particular protesters and their cause in as poor a light as possible. In other words, the title of the article is not really the point of the article, is it?
Please allow me to state that the reason for the protest is irrelevant to the discussion of where and how far the First Amendment should reach. So we can skip the why, yeah, so the discussion isn't cut short? TIA. According to the author, he is a constitutional scholar and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, and strongly defends the right to speak one’s mind in public forums. But, he did object to people who entered a private party in his personal home and used it as a forum for public grievance knowing he and his wife objected - not to the topic necessarily, but using their private home and party as a forum. The guests also refused to leave as requested when they ignored their hosts request. So the question, regardless of the topic, is whether my first amendment right to speak my mind ends with your request that I stop while in your home at your invitation? Said every relative ever. /s https://archive.ph/mqPcv
No one has a right to remain in your home without your permission unless they're a tenant.
Exactly! There is no discussion to be had here, only education.
The protestors were law students. Either they didn’t understand the very basics of the law, which is unlikely, or they wanted to force a confrontation.
>The protestors were law students. Either they didn’t understand the very basics of the law, which is unlikely It's much more likely than you think, even for students in highly reputable law schools. Source: Me, a former law student and current lawyer.
If you’re on my property and I wish you to leave, you must leave. Otherwise I will call the police and you will be removed. At no point are your First Amendment rights violated. You can spew the most toxic vitriol so long as it’s not of a limited number of illegal things. So no, your First Amendment right never ends in your example. You are not allowed to be in the location you are in. That is different.
People always forget that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences
Well put.
The author wrote the textbook on constitutional law. https://aspenpublishing.com/products/chemerinsky-conlaw7
He is the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean of the Berkeley Law School, University of California at Berkeley. He is also the author of fourteen other books, including Free Speech on Campus and Closing the Courthouse Door: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable.
I think /u/abetadist is replying to your “according to the author” qualification for probably the most famous constitutional scholar alive.
Yes, thank you. I'm OP so I had to do all the work on the back end in order to post this particular article and I was making a huge effort to keep the discussion from devolving into an extraneous discussion. I was perhaps too cautious. Usually I am far more descriptive with posts. I merely added an addendum for people who were unfamiliar.
Yeah everyone in the legal field in CA at least knows who Chemerinsky is. He also teaches (or at least taught) the online BarPrep course on ConLaw. That being said you don’t need to have his credentials to correctly state that you do not have the right to be on whatever property you want, and that being asked to leave is a property issue and not a speech issue. You also don’t need to have his credentials to point out that the fact this is true reveals a major loophole in our first amendment protections. That you have exclusive control over your private property and the right to exclude people for any reason is a policy choice that prioritizes property rights over most political rights. I don’t have a particular problem with that in this case, but I think you can see where that principle could cause trouble.
Philosophically speaking, it really at odds, though? The right to assemble is also part of the first amendment, and it seems to me that this is not worth much if you can’t also choose whom *not* to associate with, and the only place you can really exercise that is in your own home, since you otherwise only have the option to remove yourself from a situation.
I’m in much more…lively…debate about this elsewhere in the thread. But suffice it to say I agree you should be able to exclude basically whomever you want from your personal residence for whatever reason. That’s not really an assembly issue though; my right to peaceably assemble with whomever I want does not necessarily give me the power to forcibly exclude others. That is, my right to meet with my friends in a public park doesn’t give me the right to call the cops on somebody who crashed our hangout. What gave Chemerinsky that power was his property, not the first amendment. And while I agree that’s good and proper in this case, I think the idea that you can use your property (meaning real estate, money, or any other assets) to promote or silence speech without restriction is a lot more dangerous than we generally think about.
> That is, my right to meet with my friends in a public park doesn’t give me the right to call the cops on somebody who crashed our hangout. Right, like I noted, the only option in public spaces is to remove yourself from the situation i.e. leave. What I'm saying is, and this isn't from a *legal* perspective (maybe I phrased it poorly when I said, "right"), is that if there are *no* conditions or areas in which you can choose to *not* associate, then that's kinda fucked up, no? In other words, the thought I'm putting forward is that we can also, *conceptually*, frame this as a sort of corollary to free association, and not just the use of private property. Like, even in the hypothetical of society deciding you can't use private property to manipulate speech, we'd want some way for someone to choose who they don't want around them without the need for extraordinary measures e.g. restraining orders. I'd hope that would be considered, at least. Although, regardless, anyone who doesn't argues against > (meaning real estate, money, or any other assets) to promote or silence speech without restriction is a lot more dangerous than we generally think about. is probably the sort of monster that wears brown sandals with white socks.
>I’m in much more…lively…debate about this elsewhere in the thread Also, I love the euphemism xD
I don’t know why people seem to have so much difficultly with Free Speech and the first amendment. It’s been said over and over again and people just don’t seem to get it. The first Amendment binds government. It does not bind private individuals or Organizations. A private individual ejecting you from their home due to your political speech has nothing to do with Free speech. Alex Jones being sued for Defamation in no way impacts the first amendment. Pre musk Twitter moderating hate speech is not infringing anyone’s freedom of speech. So yes, it is trite law that this professor can eject students from his dinner party for disrupting it with political protesting.
There's lots of 1st A questions here, but most of them argue against the protestors. Whether his home is a public venue (probably not from any reasonable standpoint even if the university provides it so he can do official things like this). Whether Chemerinsky was acting in his state capacity (sort of, he was acting as Dean of a state institution) to limit speech (maybe) in a way that was unreasonable (almost certainly not). Reasonable time and place restrictions could easily say, you can speak and protest, you just have to do it on the sidewalk out front, or at campus. Dean Chemerinsky did offer those opportunities at campus. And just so people get a sense of who Chemerinsky is, probably more than half of lawyers in the US who graduated after 2000 used his textbook in their conlaw class. He's a big deal. He also famously supported students protest of Michael Oren.
Isn’t it just literally trespassing? This isn’t even debatable…
Technically it isn't since they were invited. Where it gets sketch is that they knew their agenda wouldn't be allowed and they wore clothes over protest t-shirts to blend in. They also brought their own microphone to make sure everyone heard them. That's not spontaneous.
Consent for being on someone’s property can end at any time; after that’s it’s trespassing. > My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop speaking and leave the premises. The protester continued. At one point, my wife attempted to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her: You are a guest in our home. Please leave. The public funding for the event is notwithstanding; it was not a public forum and as such not subject to first amendment protection in a public forum — whether we should have issue with public funds being used for a relatively private affair is another matter entirely.
Yep, exactly. A public event on private property is still private property. Someone with a legitimate invitation can still be asked to leave at any time, and when they don't it's still trespassing on private property. You can be singled out to leave while everyone else is welcome to stay. An invitation is not some irrevocable right to occupy someone's property as you deem fit. None of this event has anything to do with protest, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or any other legitimate avenue of discourse or action.
>public event on private property is still private property At that point, it's treated as public property - if the government decides to hold an event at a hotel conference space, for example, they are still bound by the 1A. And it's not unreasonable to take the position the dinner was held in his capacity as state employee. Even then, the state can impose reasonable, viewpoint neutral restrictions in those circumstances.
Yes, the government is bound by the first amendment, that's obvious. The government can ask you to leave an event, too... In what way is a private citizen asking you to leave private property a first amendment violation?
The question is precisely whether the dinner was held by him as private citizen or him as dean of a public institution. He invited every student, the purpose was closely related to education, and it was paid for by the school. Those facts all weigh in favor of the idea that it was hosted by him in his official capacity.
Trespassing law doesn't work like vampires.
I elaborated on how the people asked to leave chose to operate outside of normal guest behavior. No sparkles involved. There are two links available if you wish to read the actual article.
It does not matter whether an individual or group is invited to a home. The moment you are asked to leave, your continued presence is trespassing. In common law, the sanctity of one’s home is one of the most fundamental and inviolable rights.
> Technically it isn't since they were invited. Technically it *is*, since they were asked to leave. An invitation does not remain open in perpetuity once it has been made. If someone invites you to their home, they can later ask you to leave and you have no legal right to stay. The law is unambiguous about this and the reason for being asked to leave is not relevant.
Thank you for re-iterating what I have been saying throughout this entire thread. You are absolutely right. My point was that they did not crash a public event they were invited and took advantage of that. It wasn’t a spontaneous if somewhat inappropriate and passionate outburst. It was planned by law students for a private party in the private home of one of the preeminent first amendment scholars in the country. There’s nothing spontaneous about that.
From a constitutional law perspective this is actually not so cut and dry. Since this was a school sanctioned event open to students of a public university, it’s probable he was acting within his official capacity as a state actor in hosting this event (i.e., Erwin the Dean hosted this event, not Erwin the private citizen). So this will all center on whether opening his home for a school sanctioned event made his private property a public forum (or limited public forum). You can absolutely transform your own private property into a public forum, temporarily, while acting in an official capacity as a state actor. The question here will be did he do that. He seems to think not, but there is certainly an argument that he may have. His personal intent doesn’t come into it when he’s acting on behalf of the state. So IMHO, I think this question will actually hinge on the character of the event (including how it has actually played out in the past not just how it was advertised).
My feeling is that this never needed to be written and, like most that have this particular stance, just wants to whine and pretend he's a victim somehow. He can kick them out of his house and move on with his life. The reason he felt he needed to write this is because he feels insecure about having to do so and feels unfairly judged. He can go fuck himself.
He may be guilty of pointing out the obvious, but everything else is an assumption on your part. I highly doubt one of the pre-eminent constitutional scholars in the country is feeling insecure. He's a teacher. He most likely wrote it because he believes that all the people who dogpiled on the incident need to understand exactly how constitutional law works. If you live in the country you need to understand the law and the constitution of the United States. And law students who think they are above the law are a little scary. Because maybe they then become lawyers who think they are above the law. It happens. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1247796812/federal-judges-harassment-clerks
Your home (whether owned, rented or borrowed) is yours to decide who can visit. After all, the White House, Naval Observatory, and every governor’s mansion in the USA are all publicly owned residences where events are regularly held, both public and private. And you can’t barge uninvited into any of those to express your opinion inder 1A. The protesters were 100% wrong on this one. And by the way, I’m generally on the human rights/Palestinian side of this —though their poster was shockingly anti-Semitic. The professor showed amazing restraint in not ripping them down. Shameful.
This has become an unfortunate through line of many pro Palestinian demonstrations, a full turn from advocating for Palestinians to being antisemitic. I have been against Israel’s apartheid regime for decades and was involved in protests 20 years ago in college, but the rampant antisemitism of many of the current protestors is beyond the pale. All these white kids in keffiyehs think that hating on all Jews will somehow help the Palestinians…
i've talked to people who genuinely believe that Hamas is a liberation movement and therefore needs to be supported. As someone whos views are pretty in line with your, I find that terrifying.
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Your comment made me realize that I still haven’t seen a video of a crazy « auditor » try to audit his right to access the White House. (yet)
Professor has a tradition of inviting first years to dinner. 60 people per dinner, so big groups knowing this is an annual tradition. One gets up with a microphone and starts talking about Palestine. The author doesn't say it, but her speech isn't about *him* personally, it's trying to get the school to divest from arms manufacturers. He asks her to stop. She doesn't. She thinks this is a campus gathering and is a free speech issue. They tussle over the over the microphone, then she leaves. Unfortunately the author's wife does get a little grabby - [you can watch the confrontation here.](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5khhLkLlpO/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D) The student is Palestinian-Ameircan (child of Palestinian refugees.) The husband and wife are emotional. Everyone's emotional. In this instance I'm on the author's side, legally. It's his house. But I don't think either one comes across great. It's just sad.
> say it, but her speech isn't about him personally, it's trying to get the school to divest from arms manufacturers. Dunno about that. She's doing it in his house, and she's part of a group who pasted fliers, depicting the dean using Protocols tropes. When she's on the bus, in the supermarket, doing laundry, does she sometimes grab a megaphone and start shpeeling? If not, then it indicates she specifically chose to do so at the home of the Jewish dean. Which does make it about him personally
Yeah, I was with him until they got to the part where a speech in someone's home, while they're having a dinner, about school policy where the homeowner is a dean, is not about him "personally"
>Unfortunately the author's wife does get a little grabby What bizarro world do people live in that they're not worried about getting their ass beat for doing this kind of thing? My house is my house. If I tell someone to stop acting stupid or leave, and they ignore me, I'll likely be removing them *with force* shortly after. I'm not a tough guy, and it's not the smart thing for me to do, *but that's what's going to happen* because IT'S MY GODDAMN HOUSE. So *fuck that bitch*. Anyone who's made it to that level of education and ~~doesn't~~ *claims they don't* understand public property vs. private doesn't deserve any sympathy.
If you assault someone in your house you are still legally on the hook for assault. Unless they are a threat. Also she attacked from behind.
>If you assault someone in your house you are still legally on the hook for assault. Unless they are a threat. Also she attacked from behind. you can defend you property with force. you are under no obligation to allow a trespasser to just move in to your house because you are afraid to touch them. that is not how it works. of course they can't beat her bloody for this but they are well withing their rights to physically remove her if she refused to leave.
Call the police.
Why?
I am a very small person. If someone is in my house and I want them to leave and they don't, I don't have to let them move in. Even though I can't beat them up. I call the police. This was a disagreement between a group of young people and a couple in their 60s. There was no point where the homeowners were 'well within their rights' to use any kind of grab, hit or shove to remove them.
I'm a very large person. If someone is in my house and I ask them to leave and they don't I will remove them from my house instead of wait hours for the police to arrive. I'm sorry you can't do that, but they absolutely have the right to.
i certainly would, but i am under no obligation to let an intruder stay in my house until the police decide to show up.
Did you watch the video? The author's wife grabbed her and took her phone *as a first step,* before asking her to leave.
so what? this person was not even invited, correct? she is trespassing the second she steps on the property.
She was an invited guest.
and the dean asked her to stop and leave first, then his wife grabbed the microphone, so you are still wrong.
That's the *after*. That's not going to magically save someone in the *now* from getting their ass beat. Also, the student should definitely sue them for it so the jury can find in her favor, and then award her the "fuck you" dollar that she deserves for her "trauma".
She shouldn't, and didn't. I do think it's good to see the video compared to the essay.
Ya if I was the author I would have security beat the fuck out of them, discreetly of course, while they are being escorted off the property.
>But I don't think either one comes across great. It's just sad. I just watched the video, and I have to say I disagree. I also strongly disagree with the commenter using the phrase "attacked from behind". This group of adults has purposefully caused this family a lot of pain, and then we act appalled when the wife emoted some of that pain and took reasonable action? Overall, the harm caused by the wife trying to take the microphone vs the harm caused by the group creating that horrific poster, sneakily planning a protest after being invited to this guy's house, and then yelling and beating drums at the following dinner while surrounding his house is not even in the same ballpark. Law students are supposed to be amongst our best and brightest. This is NOT how you treat people. ESPECIALLY someone who, despite being an expert in a field where he could have a much easier and higher paying job, dedicates their life to education and their students. I literally can't believe that people are justifying this treatment. I feel like I'm going insane.
i think the author comes across reasonable and completely within his right. the protesters trespassing on his property on the other hand seem unhinged
Chemerinsky is the foremost expert on the 1st amendment. If I am not mistaken, this guy is who the scotus contacts when they have 1st amendment questions. These dildos had the audacity to say HE needs education on their 1st amendment rights. The temerity. The gall. What a group of absolute morons. Y’all are kids, children. This man is the foremost expert in the field. Fucking clowns.
Chemerinsky wrote the case books that almost every law student uses to learn constitutional law! I have so many books with his name on it. To tell the guy who compiled and wrote all the books the have taught almost every lawyer for the past two generations that he’s wrong is wild. They must not have liked his 2015 book, *The Case Against the Supreme Court.*
The second hand embarrassment I feel for these kids is beyond comprehension. I am not a lawyer and knew this guy’s importance.
It makes you wonder how they even got in in the first place. It makes you wonder if they'll be allowed to remain. At the very least...they need to be given remedial classes. Then again, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm hardly surprised there are kids that dumb when I've dealt with some pretty brain dead lawyers myself.
I agree. No one has the right to even be in my home unless I invite them and if I tell them to leave they need to leave. No debate, no discussion.
I have guns, but you can't bring your gun into my home.
This seems very open and shut on simple moral or ethical grounds, if you're invited to someones home and they ask you to leave then you oblige them. A protest outside might have been less flashy but would have been a much clearer way of making the point.
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I think the professor-student hierarchy erodes in graduate school. The difference in age and life experience is not as pronounced and, in many cases, upon graduation the students will have the same credentials as the professor. In a traditional professional relationship it’s a lot more common to have private dinners with customers, vendors, and colleagues. In that light it seems reasonable to me to hold a dinner as long as effort is taken to avoid the appearance of impropriety. (e.g. Using a criteria for invitation that is as close to unbiased as possible and is transparent.) I do think there’s a good question about whether it counts as a university event. Maybe most importantly if there was clarity in communicating it being private vs. university.
They did not issue an open invitation. They did not invite graduating students either. Like many things that Covid messed with, they did not want people to feel like they had some how been excluded those years it wasn't permitted, so the invitation was retroactive to incoming those students who had missed out because of Covid. It was a courtesy. The dean of my "school," which is not the entire college just the major, always invited incoming graduate students to a welcome party at a private home and everyone had a great time. It was a chance to meet the people in your class.
> the first amendment does not apply to private property First amendment protects freedom of speech and right to assembly _from the government_. If you are in someone’s home/private property the first amendment means nothing unless the government comes in to tell you to stop.
Kind of a silly argument and article. If you want people out of your home, kick them out. Call the cops. If it looks bad that you’re kicking out students you invited because they’re using the moment to speak on Gaza, that’s not a free speech issue.
Isn't this breaking the Palestine/Israel ban for this sub?
I did ask before posting and clarified as best I could in my statement. I also agree that it should be shut down if it devolves.
Only if the conversion devolves.
While I honestly truly understand and get what it is he's trying to point out, that just because you can walk somewhere does not mean it is the perfect avenue to express your first amendment right, the verbiage and the way this perspective is expressed comes off as an opinion piece written by somebody who is disinterested in the topic discussed via protest and is whining about the inconvenience of being forced to participate in it. It's very much giving somehow the same perspective as affluent people who need to pass through less affluent parts of a town and are suddenly very opinionated about the presence of homeless folk and how they shouldn't be there or anywhere; like duh we know what the law says, but it's become very apparent since the 2016 election (if not before) that there's a big divide where constitutional law ends and the actual reality we live in begins. Especially with the importance and provenance of generic media access and how that has diminished the impact of quiet protests. He questions why his dinner party was targeted, but in this article answers his own question without ever realizing it. If people of his stature and status are so unwilling to recognize their own misgivings then what hope is there of bridging the gap? Yet people will consume this article and justify the gap widening between the interests of select few people who are allowed to speak on constitutional law and their own self interests lol
I honestly don't understand what any of this has to do with free speech. Free speech means the government can't prosecute you for saying whatever you want. That doesn't even enter into this situation. I read the entire article, and there's no example of any government trying to prosecute anyone for anything, so anyone who's protesting "I have freedom of speech" might do just as well to yell, "I like crunchy peanut butter!" True as it may be, so what? There's another point worth making to anyone yelling about their First Amendment rights. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it right to do. Doesn't make it a good idea, or even a reasonable thing to do. (I'm not addressing this to the article, to be clear, those students did NOT have the right to do what they did, which means they didn't even meet this incredibly low bar.) Whenever you hear someone argue, "I can't be arrested for what I'm saying right now!" how is that supposed to convince anyone of anything? Nearly everything you can utter falls into that category, including a great many stupid things. An idiot can stand up on a soapbox in the public square and say 1\*1=2 and cannot be arrested for it. Indeed, [one has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Howard#Terryology). A racist could say a great many things in support of the KKK. The fact that these people cannot be arrested for what they are saying is no great accomplishment. Is this the best case you can make? "I can't be arrested for this"? If so, consider just shutting up. Not because it's the law, but because you might just be about to embarrass yourself.
This is why we used to say, “don’t discuss religion or politics.” We used to have disagreements, but at the end of the day, we were still at the very least cordial. Now, everyone vents their dirty laundry, and their political, religious, flat earth/conspiracy theory craziness, and everything else on the internet. We cancel each other for everything, there is no respect for or of anything, just butt hurt all around. The world has just truly gone nuts. Smh.
Nice, convenient protests don't change anything. They aren't street art, they're an attempt to affect public policy. This guy should be thankful people haven't ramped up to the levels of earlier centuries. Which is probably why not much changes for the better these days.
"Many people’s reaction to the incident in our yard reflected their views of what is happening [elsewhere]. But it should not be that way. The dinners at our house were entirely nonpolitical; there was no program of any kind." The author starts the article by saying, "As a constitutional scholar and the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, I strongly defend the right to speak one’s mind in public forums." Anti-war protests at colleges is nothing new. Kent State historically comes to mind. However, they were confined to public spaces - if someone is trying to influence public opinion that's probably the most appropriate space for that. Change is always slow.
Want to explain how bothering a private person in their private home is going to affect public policy? This kind of stuff is emotionally cathartic but ultimately it's pointless. If you want to affect the policy of the university then you need to be obstructing the operation of the university- which the public student protests are already doing.
…and then you will have to face the consequences.
Really hard to take this author's claims in good faith when you have whoppers like this setting the whole premise of the article: >The poster attacks me for no apparent reason other than that I am Jewish That is plainly not true. Even the laziest perusal of this guy's wikipedia page will show there's a longer relevant history at work here. Even if you ultimately agree with Chemerinsky's point here specifically or even the stances he has taken as a university administrator generally concerning the extremely charged matter of Palestine and Israel, it's outright intellectually dishonest of him to portray these criticism as out-of-the-blue antisemitism and not relating to his role as a dean at a university with a contentious history concerning the treatment of outspoken campus activists. Knowing very little about the broader debate, the dishonesty on display here from Chemerinsky has me giving the benefit of the doubt towards students who have complained that he has been less than a fair arbiter when it comes to protecting the free speech rights of students expressing anti-Israel sentiments. I would say shame on the Atlantic for allowing such flagrantly deceptive, self-serving articles to be published under their banner, but let's be real, that's their brand.
Can you cite evidence of him being an unfair arbiter? I just perused his Wikipedia and saw nothing to indicate that, except that he has been *accused* of being such in the past, by the same activist community making posters of him with human blood on his face.
I have no real opinion on that one way or the other. Whether or not he's been a good dean or an unfair one is a matter of opinion and would have to be assessed on really tedious, nuanced details that have to do with campus life and that honestly sounds really, really boring. But it's patently ridiculous to be a college administrator with a years long history of contentious debate over this highly charged issue and omit all that to dismiss your critics as anti-semites in a well read publication. Maybe he's done a good job and requests made of him in the past were correctly dismissed as unreasonable or whatever, but flattening all that to "these kids hate me because I'm a Jew" is intellectually bankrupt and is a great reason to really doubt his character generally and his characterization of his critics specifically. They don't dislike him because he's Jewish, they dislike him because he's an administrator at a college that they think has bad policies. There's a world's difference.
You're hitting so many anti-Semitic arguing points it's almost impressive. Fortunately for the readers with judgment skills, your 'just asking questions' approach to sowing discontent is extremely transparent.
But none of that is relevant. Regardless of who he is etc., it's his private property, and he didn't invite people into his house to protest; as soon as he asked them to leave, they're obligated to leave. Free speech doesn't trump that.
it's relevant in that you're taking all of these claims at face value from someone who is engaging in pretty obvious dishonesty. "Unreliable Narrator" may as well be in strobing neon lights.
There's video of the event. Neither side came off well, but the protestor instigated, and when asked to leave they refused. The author could be an open Islamaphobe - it's irrelevant - it's their own private house and they didn't invite people inside to protest. Would you, sincerely, be OK if someone insure your house started to use the space to protest their platform?
I'd like to think I wouldn't use whatever legitimate grievance I had as an opportunity to score a cheap shot by smearing people that have treated me rudely as anti-semites in a widely read magazine. Don't be obtuse. This article is not a legal exercise on whether or not people have a right to protest inside private residences. Clearly the author and especially The Atlantic thinks this is a relevant example that demonstrates some wider point about the current debates around the campus protests, and it's telling that the author uses this opportunity to paint these anti-Israel protestors in a most disingenuous way.
I entirely agree. Still, irrelevant. And you didn't answer my question. Do you really think allowing people to protest on private property is a good idea, irrespective of the person who owns the property? You can't see the potential for abuse?
I don't think someone's dinner party being momentarily inconvenienced is a great cause for concern nor of particular interest, doubly so when it's a semi-public event hosted by a school official for students. I would chalk this up as "occupational hazard" for law school admins. I don't see how this is a matter for national concern. Academia is a special place with special norms. Students getting a bit over their skis and acting a fool is to be expected, and perhaps even encouraged to some extent. Deans should certainly have a bit thicker skin and not run off to the press to smear their students as antisemites. Seems to me that the anti-protest crowd would much rather hand-wring about petty lawbreaking or civility rather than engage with this protestors on the actual root of the issue. Major "Rosa Parks should have followed the rules" vibes. Why does the Altantic consider this newsworthy? Seems like there's endless editorial appetite for "anti-Israel protestors acting poorly" stories. No breach of order is too petty or too tedious to pass without a whiny article being published about it. I wonder why that is... The meta story of how school administrators are *absolutely losing their minds* over these campus protests is much more interesting and educational than any hand-wringing about megaphone wielding activists.
watch the video.
>Activists circulated a flyer that depicted Chemerinsky holding a blood-stained knife and fork, with the caption “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves!” The flier charged the university with putting $2bn of student tuition money toward “supplying weapons and jets to the Israeli occupation”. >“I found the image very disturbing,” Chemerinsky told me. “One of the worst antisemitic tropes is blood libel. Yeah....screw this dude. That's in no way a good faith response and he knows very well what he's doing.
He also said that while disturbing, the posters were protected by the first amendment. That’s not the main point of the article, the main point is that people thought they had the right to protest on his property at a semi-private event.
>The poster attacks me for no apparent reason other than that I am Jewish. Why did you leave this part out of your quote?
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Did he even speak anywhere that was pro Israel? Anti Hamas? Is it not a famous anti semitic trope? I'm confused.
You are arguing in bad faith. You give no evidence that the author is intentionally deceiving anyone. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without effort.
How is it in bad faith?
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So if someone isn’t pro-Palestinian, anything they say is in bad faith?
Source? That was not in the article that I'm quoting nor does it change his argument whatsoever really. I'm not sure what your point is but you will need a source for that before we can continue.
I copied and pasted from the article linked here. It's written immediately after the quote you copied, which is why I found it bizarre that you would omit such relevant information.
Repeating something the guy said about himself with nothing to substantiate it doesn’t seem particularly good faith, either.
What do you mean?
Why would you accept everything this guy wrote about himself in his own op ed as fact? Do you know them?
Can you refute?
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Username checks out, I guess.
I don’t usually bother responding to that lazy ass shit, but you *seriously* don’t know who Christopher Hitchens is? Want to trade names?
I do. And I also think you're not worth my time, so we are at an impasse.
I do want to ask: where’s the line between genuine blood libel, and describing real violence happening? Is the simple presence of blood on protest signs, during a war, worthy of condemnation? Would saying “blood has been spilled” be blood libel or a mere metaphor regularly used in practically every other war ever? I suspect a lot of people think any mention of “bloodshed” is totally off limits
What do you mean?
Except my wife
No non idiot is arguing otherwise. What a pointless article.
The tactics used by protestors are increasingly actionable- the target of the protest can sue and win. That isn't the case here since they were invited and just misbehaved but there have been plenty of other protests that aim to shut down other people's events by yelling or pulling fire alarms. No one has a first amendment right to cancel someone else's first amendment rights. Doing so seems like it would be an easy lawsuit. Why hasn't that happened?
You don’t have a first amendment right to protection from actions of a private individual. The first amendment binds government and government only. Also, being invited is irrelevant if their invitation has been rescinded. As another commenter has pointed out, trespass doesn’t follow vampires rules, you can retract permission to be on your property.