Individual Academic Freedom and The Current Forces of Economics and Technology

There are always a number of cultural constraints on higher education institutions. Such cultural constraints always matter. But sometimes, as in our day, such constraints are especially severe. These constraints are broadly economic; more specifically market-based; and technological in nature.

They operate on public and private universities and on law schools in particular. Our concern herein is for such constraints in the many cases in which a faculty member’s speech on some matter of public interest arguably impairs a legitimate interest of the employer-university or law school. The weight of the educational institution’s interests in such academic speech cases is, for several reasons, increasing. Any balancing of the relevant individual professorial interests and the educational institutional interests in such cases should take these increasing institutional constraints into proper account.