Social Media, Fundamental Rights and Courts

Book excerpt: This volume examines European and national higher-court decisions on social media from the perspective of fundamental rights and judicial dialogue. While the challenges social media poses for public policy and regulation have been widely discussed, the role of courts in this evolving legal area, especially from a fundamental-rights standpoint, has hitherto remained largely underexplored. This volume probes the contribution of national and European judiciaries to the protection of fundamental rights in a social media setting and delves into patterns of dialogue and interaction between domestic courts, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and between the CJEU and the ECtHR. The book specifically examines the extent and ways in which national and European judges incorporate fundamental rights reasoning in their social media rulings. It also investigates the nature and breadth of the use of European supranational case law in domestic judicial assessment and analyses the engagement of the CJEU and the ECtHR with the other’s case law. In doing so, the book instils jurisprudential dynamics into the study of social media law and regulation, exploring in particular the effects of European constitutionalism on the shaping and enforcement of fundamental rights in a social media context. Written by emerging and established experts in the field, this book will be essential reading for scholars of comparative, European and constitutional law, as well as those with a particular interest in digital technologies and social media.