(USA Features) Legal expert Alan Dershowitz said Saturday that critics should not dismiss former President Donald Trump’s lawsuits against three big tech companies.
The Harvard Law School professor emeritus said that not only are critics “wrong” about the merits of the case, but they are also making a mistake to simply blow it off because it likely will decide legal precedent for decades to come regardless of whether it’s heard or not, he told Newsmax.
“All bets are off; this is a very important case; we don’t know how it will be decided,” Dershowitz told “Saturday Report.”
“But whatever way it is decided, it will frame the law for the rest of the 21st century in the age of high tech. That’s why it’s so important,” he continued.
Dershowitz, author of “: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities,” said that originalist Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas views today’s mainstream social media platforms as “common carriers, and they should be subject to the rules of common carriers.”
“Look, opponents of Trump, who will oppose everything he does, think there’s nothing to this case, and they’ve attacked me, and they’ve attacked him, and they’ve attacked everybody,” Dershowitz told host Carl Higbie.
“And they say there’s nothing to it and it’s not an important case,” he continued. “No, they’re wrong. It is an important case. But they’re right it’s an unpredictable case.”
Trump has filed a class-action suit against the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, alleging all three unfairly and illegally censor certain content, mostly conservatives.
Dershowitz speculated that the legal construct of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which declares that social media platforms are not publishers and therefore protected from certain liabilities, may be determined just by whether or not the nation’s highest court agrees to hear the case if it reaches that far.
If the case is dismissed, it’s likely to further enshrine Section 230 as precedent moving forward, giving them immunity from civil lawsuits.
Dershowitz also blasted fellow Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe, who has been clear he opposes everything Trump stands for. He has also offered up criticism of Dershowitz’s own legal arguments as political matters.
Both men are liberals but they have vastly different views of constitutional law.
Having Tribe argue on your behalf is not a good sign regarding the merits of a case, Dershowitz noted.
“That’s all you need is to get Tribe on your side,” Dershowitz said.
“If you’re against Trump, he’s on your side. If you’re doing something that in any way favors Trump, he calls you crazy and bonkers and all of that name-calling, which is inappropriate for a professor,” he added.