Dr. Hawley Johnson has been with Columbia Global Freedom of Expression (CGFoE) for 10 years and is currently at the initiative’s helm. She has been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States and is a proud Columbia University alumna. In addition to earning her Ph.D. in Communications at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, she is a recipient of a Harriman Certificate and was an International Fellow at the School of International and Public Affairs under the late Ambassador Warren Zimmermann, the last U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia. Before joining CGFoE, she implemented a series of media development programs in Southeastern Europe and North Africa under grants from the U.S. Department of State, The Middle East Partnership Initiative, and USAID.

Marija Šajkaš, our Communications Specialist, spoke with Dr. Johnson about the development of CGFoE and her vision for its future.

CGFoE was conceived by its first director, Dr. Agnes Callamard, and Columbia University’s then president, Lee C. Bollinger, and you were the first hire. What attracted you to the job?

Dr. Johnson: I was working in Southeastern Europe for NYU on various media development projects in 8 countries, with a focus on building professional and democratic norms to protect freedom of the press. One such project was establishing the Center for Investigative Journalism in Sarajevo in partnership with the Journalism Development Group, which eventually evolved into the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). During that time, I met many international lawyers working on legal reform. They wrote new laws for post-conflict and post-communist countries, giving them some of the most progressive laws in the world. However, these laws were just paper without a legal culture to support them. They needed to train judges and legal professionals and work to cultivate the norms and practices to uphold international standards. This is similar to what we are doing with our database, promoting international norms on freedom of expression.

Developing the global case law database interested me after working with OCCRP on the redesign of their Investigative Dashboard (ID), which launched at the Google Ideas Summit in 2014. The ID hosted over 400 different databases with important documents and resources to support the work of investigative reporters and connect them with a professional network of researchers around the world. That project demonstrated the power of access to information when brought together with technology and international networks to expose corruption and defend democratic governance. Similarly, the Global Case Law Database relies on a close network of legal professionals to make court documents and information on important cases accessible to a wider audience and thus support best practices and flag negative trends. 

There is a strong connection between CGFoE, our flagship project the Global Case Law database, and UNESCO. How important are partnerships for CGFoE’s work and growth?

Dr. Johnson: They are essential and have significantly shaped our growth. When the database was under development, UNESCO’s Judges’ Initiative had just launched the previous year. Discussions between CGFoE’s then-director, Agnes Callamard, and Guilherme Canela of UNESCO revealed synergies and opportunities to cooperate on developing training resources for the Judges’ Initiative based on a shared vision of the judiciary’s power to expand protections for fundamental rights and for those defending democracy, such as journalists, whistleblowers, and human rights defenders. UNESCO has been a pillar of support since those early beginnings, leading to the linguistic and thematic expansion of the database over the last decade.

Thematically, our partnership with Mehdi Benchelah, UNESCO’s Senior Project Officer for Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists Section, has added standard-setting case law relating to freedom of expression and privacy, elections, COVID-19, mis- and disinformation, and Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), among others. This partnership, along with the leadership of our former interim consulting director, Catalina Botero, has further enabled our cooperation with the Inter-American Commission and Court, and the African Commission and Court, ensuring the database now hosts all freedom of expression-related case law from those regional systems, as well as from the Grand Chamber of the European Court.

The case law highlights best practices that UNESCO can use for their judges’ training programs in Latin America and Africa. Last year, we also partnered with Brazilian Judge Fernando Biolcati to contribute to a course for the São Paulo School of Judges on freedom of expression issues.

You are also deeply committed to CGFoE’s biennial Prizes. What makes these awards unique?

Dr. Johnson: They are important because they recognize the extraordinary efforts of those involved in strategic litigation and advocacy to defend human rights and reinforce or establish international standards of protection. Litigation is a slow and expensive process requiring dedication, tenacity, and a conviction that change is possible. The Prizes also recognize courts for courageous or novel decisions that expand or uphold international standards on freedom of expression.

Another strong component of CGFoE is educating young professionals. So far, this work is mostly done internationally. 

Dr. Johnson: This has been a key component from the beginning and has really flourished. We hosted an experts meeting back in 2015 with law professors from around the world to discuss how freedom of expression is taught in law schools and how it could be improved. Those discussions and connections eventually led to the development of our Teaching Portal, “Regardless of Frontiers,” as well as our Massive Open Online Course on the EdEx Platform. 

We have also been cooperating with the Price Media Moot Court and Media Policy Summer Institute at Oxford University for nearly a decade, leading to our current cooperation with the MENA Rounds coordinator at Ain Shams Law School in Cairo. We have been contributing to the class on international human rights law at the University of Buenos Aires, hoping this may lead to greater cooperation with law clinics internationally.

You recently submitted an expert opinion to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In your statement, you said that the court should urge states to foster a better environment for freedom of expression and prevent the proliferation of hate speech regulations. Why do you think this is important?

Dr. Johnson: To understand this, it is enough to consult our database! It is an essential tool for understanding how courts and legal systems can be misused to restrict speech. Many states in recent years have passed criminal hate speech laws, cybercrime laws, and laws against disinformation or “fake news.” On their face, they sound like they will protect people from discrimination, online harassment, and other harmful content, but too often, they are abused by states or politicians to protect “national security” or the rights or reputations of others unnecessarily and without sufficient justification, which can chill speech. More restrictive laws are not the answer, and legal action should be a last resort.

You’ve been with CGFoE for 10 years, effectively leading it this past year. What is your vision for the future?

Dr. Johnson: The database and our programs have grown and developed so much over the last decade that I feel we are at a “tipping point.” CGFoE is now positioned to offer significant resources to the legal community internationally.

We have many more partnerships now, some thanks to the fact that the database is evolving to meet the needs of our colleagues and other stakeholders, not only thematically but also technically. For instance, we work with Access Now to add case analyses of internet shutdown-related jurisprudence, for which we designed a filter to facilitate searches. They also peer-reviewed our Special Collection Paper on Internet Shutdowns.

We are cooperating with various organizations working on SLAPPs, including the American Bar Association, CASE, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, and the International Bar Association, to track how they are manifesting in different countries. To effectively do this, we have developed a SLAPP research methodology and are introducing changes to the database to make it more precise and useful for those working on strategic litigation. ARTICLE 19 also authored our Special Collection Paper on SLAPPs.

Recently, we teamed up with a Dutch technology company, SASHA Safe Share, that created an app to prevent image abuse. They approached us to help track how courts are addressing image abuse so that they can better advise their clients. Over the next few months, we will be working on a range of cases that have established standards on a variety of forms of image abuse.

CGFoE is also a partner in the Cyrilla Collaborative, a global initiative funded by the U.S. State Department, which has designed an open, federated online database that facilitates the sharing, comparison, visualization, and interoperability of legal information on digital rights. This cooperation has allowed us to significantly expand our coverage of legal trends relating to digital rights. 

In addition, CGFoE is a proud member of the Internet for Trust Global Knowledge Network, and we are excited to explore how we can contribute to monitoring legal developments relating to internet and platform regulation tied to elections taking place in 2024. UNESCO has also agreed to be an International Observer for a project CGFoE is organizing with the University of Groningen, funded by the Dutch Research Council, entitled “Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence and Content Moderation.” 

Finally, but equally important, we hope to broaden and deepen our cooperation with courts and the judiciary. We already have established relationships with the Inter-American Commission and the African Court and Commission and have limited connections with the European Court. I hope we will continue to foster those relationships and even expand them to cooperate with the sub-regional courts in Africa. With the support of our former consulting director, Catalina Botero, we established cooperation with the Facebook Oversight Board. Those connections ensure we get rapid access to the most important freedom of expression-related jurisprudence and ensure our case analyses are accurate and thorough.