Week 0 - Who is Nathan N.?

Welcome to my blog, Free Speakers!

Let me tell you a little about myself, why I chose to research the issue I did, and how the project came to be. 

I began with an externship with the Superior Court of California during my Sophomore & Junior year. Last summer, I did an internship at the Public Defender’s Office. Throughout my professional experiences, I talked about the law with many judges and attorneys. In each one of these conversations, a lawyer had sparked within me an interest in a piece of law I was unfamiliar with. Over the summer, I shared a conversation with an attorney that lingered in my mind for a while. In that conversation, we talked about the first and fourth amendments—specifically the intersection of our constitutional rights with technology. The interaction spurred me to jump down a rabbit hole of Supreme Court cases having to do with free speech & expression, and it was then that my infatuation with the Court—and its justices’ intellectually meaty questions—began. 

I revisited the court cases that I summarized back in my freshman year, now with a newly developed understanding of the court system in which they operated. I listened to oral arguments, trying to understand the myriad avenues a case could follow; or the farfetched, yet simultaneously relevant hypotheticals. Before I knew it, I fell fast and hard for our judicial system.

I continued to pursue my academic passion through podcasts on my way to school. In a business-law podcast, I came across a conversation with my soon-to-be external advisor, Tyler Whitmer. I reached out to him, indicating my interest in his work, and we scheduled a meeting to chat. I shared my intent to do a senior project on something related to the first amendment. It was then that he introduced me to the star of this project: Garcia v. Character Technologies. 

I won’t get too ahead of myself here, but the meat of the findings in this project will be—at least ancillary—connected to that case. I read a bit about the case, then set my mind on answering the guiding question that now steers my project: to what extent does A.I. carry First Amendment rights?

I know you’re just itching to ask: what do you mean by “A.I.?” What’s the First Amendment? And what does Garcia v. Character Technologies have to do with any of this? And don’t you worry, I’ll tell you all about it in my next post!