Thomas Keck, a political science professor at Syracuse University, will be spending the next three years studying free speech constitutional decisions around the world.

Keck was awarded a $400,000 grant over the summer to conduct the three-year study. The project will be based out of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Keck, the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, will work with a series of collaborators from other universities in the U.S. as well as universities abroad.

The study will look into about 24 national high courts and will focus on several thousand free speech decisions over a period of three years. However, not all of the courts have records of these cases readily available.

One of the many goals of the project, Keck said, is to create a centralized location where scholars could go to look at the results of free speech cases from different courts and study them in a user-friendly way.

The main component of the project will essentially be to analyze these cases, Keck said. He added that the biggest question being examined is — using free speech as an example — to find out who benefits from judicial power.

Keck said he is particularly interested in the concept of free speech because, “It is a constitutional principle that gets invoked by a wide variety of political actors.”

All types of people, whether they fall on the right or the left or are members of majority or minority groups, allegedly have their free speech rights infringed upon, Keck said. The study will look at a broad range of cases in order to try to determine patterns and examine who benefits from these cases.

Keck explained that the concept of freedom of speech is something that exists — at least in theory; 184 national constitutions have a free speech provision — all over the world, and it is something that gets invoked by a diverse range of people across the globe.

Keck and his team are interested in studying the patterns in particular cases because this information could “not only advance our understanding of free speech, but it would also advance our understanding of the political effects of judicial empowerment more broadly,” he said.

The project will bring in many scholars to SU and aims to create public events and conferences that could be available to the general student body, Keck added. Some students will also have the opportunity to work alongside Keck as he conducts his research.

“It is great whenever we can look at these international issues and bring them back to the SU campus,” said Roy Gutterman, the director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at SU.

Gutterman said he thinks that Keck’s research can “help give (students) a global perspective and will help students know about things that are going on in other parts of the world.”

There are plans being discussed to have a series of annual events hosted at Maxwell with scholars, faculty and graduate students to talk about the diverse issues of free speech, Keck said.

Keck said he is already thinking about a follow-up grant proposal in order to expand the project in the coming years.

Published on October 20, 2015 at 10:07 pm

Contact Nina: nsleeds@syr.edu