Alan Dershowitz says the Supreme Court may start to hear free speech cases regarding social media

Dershowitz says it's dangerous for the private and public sector to be working together to censor Americans.
Alan Dershowitz, New York City, 2017

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz predicted Monday that the Supreme Court of the United States may start to hear free speech cases in regard to Big Tech and the government. 

"Private companies have their own First Amendment right to censor," Dershowitz said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "But when you combine that with the government particularly trying to put the thumb on the scale, you get the worst of all possible worlds."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been making news recently for releasing "Twitter Files" about the previous leadership at the social media company and how they were involved in censoring stories and people, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story.

"I think we have to have some lawsuits, perhaps some congressional hearings, about the entire issue of the relationship between government actors and the private sector particularly when the private sector determines what people can see and hear in so many cases today," Dershowitz said. 

Dershowitz, who was speaking from Israel, said that there is currently a lot of debate there as well about the legitimacy of the courts, just like there is in the United States.

"The right wing is trying to delegitimize the court in Israel," he explained. "Because they think it's too far left. Now the left in America is trying to delegitimize the court because they think it's too far right."

"Supreme Courts with judicial review are going to make half the people unhappy," Dershowitz concluded. "But it's really important to have a Supreme Court that gets the last word when it comes to the Constitution. So I would hope both countries both great countries  would maintain the power of the Supreme Court to decide important constitutional issues."