The Supreme Court Decides: A Final Word on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh with Anupam Chander

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service. Last week, the Supreme Court released decisions in Gonzalez v. Google, LLC, and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh. In this episode we’ll discuss what it tells us about how the Court is thinking about social media and intermediary liability, and what it might tell us about future cases the Court may hear. I’m joined by someone who follows these issues closely, and has shared his expertise with us on this podcast before: Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion. Justin Hendrix: Anupam, you have been following this set of Supreme Court cases very closely. You were one of the people who wrote a brief in favor of Google v. Gonzalez. Are you at all surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision, or do you feel happy about the outcome, since it more or less came out the way that you would’ve liked? Anupam Chander: I’m surprised that the outcome was so unanimous. By a nine-zero vote, the Supreme Court, after reviewing these complicated cases and after maybe a hundred amicus briefs in the two cases, concluded strongly that Google, Facebook and Twitter could not be held liable for terrorism occurring across the world. Justin Hendrix: Digging into that 9-0 decision… there had been a lot of concern about the possibility that the entire internet would essentially have to be kind of re-conceived if the Supreme Court took a more extreme…The Supreme Court Decides: A Final Word on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh with Anupam Chander