Communication Law Review

From the Editor

I hope you enjoy our latest issue (Volume 23, Issue 2) featuring essays on the intersection of Cancel Culture and Law.

The idea for this issue is credited to Dr. Elizabeth Thorpe and Dr. Juliet Dee (both of whom have essays in the issue). A failed attempt to put together a panel for a conference became much more - a call for essays that explore who has the right to say what. The selection of six essays exploring this very modern concept (or is it?) from a rich set of perspectives has been enjoyable to put together. Is cancel culture censorship and erosion of free speech, or is it a modern version of accountability? Enjoy the journey from the classroom to pop culture, from rhetorical and racial rhetorical to economic perspectives. These essays interrogate cancel culture’s relationship to freedom of expression legally, societally, and theoretically. 

You may have noticed that Communication Law Review has an updated look this year. Thanks to Dr. Dave Dewberry, our devoted webmaster, for the design and the behind-the-scenes work in moving our site to a new location and updating our style.

I also need to thank Hanna Salas for her continued work as our proofreader, who catches errors, missing citations, and other debris that authors and this editor have missed while putting together the journal.

The most exciting news is that in 2024 I will be co-editing with the incoming editor, Dr. Elizabeth Thorpe. She will officially take over in January 2025 for a two-year editorship. I look forward to her fresh ideas, energy, and connections. We continue to use the journal email (commlaw@iu.edu) but we also welcome direct contact from you. Meet Dr. Thorpe:

Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe grew up in the deserts of west Texas and got her B.A in English from Baylor University. 

Then she went on to get her M.A. in English from Texas A&M and her PhD in Rhetoric and Public Affairs in the Communication Studies Department at A&M, as well. 

She moved to New York with her family in 2010. She has been there ever since, teaching in the communication department at SUNY Brockport. 

Her research focuses on legal rhetoric, free speech, and constitutive rhetoric. 

She can be reached at ethorpe@brockport.edu