Maryland Law Review Volume 75 | Issue 4 Article 4 Re-Shaming the Debate: Social Norms, Shame, and Regulation in an Internet Age Kate Klonick Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr Part of the Internet Law Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation 75 Md. L. Rev. 1029 (2016) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Journals at DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maryland Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. RE-SHAMING THE DEBATE: SOCIAL NORMS, SHAME, AND REGULATION IN AN INTERNET AGE * KATE KLONICK Advances in technological communication have dramatically changed the ways in which social norm enforcement is used to constrain behavior. Nowhere is this more powerfully demonstrated than through current events around online shaming and cyber harassment. Low cost, anonymous, instant, and ubiquitous access to the Internet has removed most—if not all—of the natural checks on shaming. The result is norm enforcement that is indeterminate, uncalibrated, and often tips into behavior punishable in its own right—thus generating a debate over whether the state should intervene to curb online shaming and cyber harassment. A few years before this change in technology, a group of legal scholars debated just the opposite, discussing the value of harnessing the power of social norm enforcement through shaming by using state shaming sanctions as a more efficient means of criminal punishment. Though the idea was discarded, many of their concerns were prescient and can inform today’s inverted new inquiry: whether the state should create limits on shaming and cyber bullying.