Assistant Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University Law School
Francesca Procaccini researches and writes about federal courts and constitutional law, particularly First Amendment law. She joined the Vanderbilt Law faculty in 2022 after teaching at Harvard Law School for two years as a Climenko Fellow, where her scholarship focused on constitutional political rights. Before that, she was a fellow with the Yale Law School Information Society Project, where she researched modern applications of First Amendment law to digital political speech and taught courses on free speech law and media law. Prior to entering the legal academy, Professor Procaccini was an appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she litigated civil rights cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Professor Procaccini earned her law degree cum laude at Harvard Law School, and she is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College. After law school, she was a law clerk for Judge Jerome Farris, then of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Her scholarly articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Fordham Law Review, and Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Additionally, her legal analysis regularly appears in media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, LA Times, and The Atlantic. In both of her two years teaching at Vanderbilt, Professor Procaccini won the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor award.
For more works by Professor Francesca L. Procaccini, please visit her SSRN page.
Vanderbilt Law School | January 25, 2024
Faculty Profile: Francesca Procaccini
An introduction to Francesca Procaccini, Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School.
source: YouTube online database
Open to Debate | February 21, 2024
Debate: Has Citizens United Undermined Democracy?
In a high-stakes presidential election year, in partnership with the Newt and Jo Minow Debate Series at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Open to Debate is taking a look at more than a decade of the Citizens United Supreme Court case. The 2010 landmark decision that ruled the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofits, labor unions, and other associations, changed the landscape of political spending in the U.S. This gave rise to Super PACS and an increase in election campaign spending. Since then, there have been questions about whether the decision has harmed our democratic process. Those who support the decision argue it upholds free speech, allowing diverse voices in the political arena, and broadens the range of discourse by enabling groups to freely express their views and support candidates or policies. Those against it argue that it allows a disproportionate influence from corporations and special interest groups, and leaves the voices of ordinary citizens overshadowed by the financial resources of a few, eroding the principles of equality and fair representation.
With this context, we debate the question: Has Citizens United Undermined Democracy?
For The Motion:
Francesca Procaccini
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
Against The Motion:
Eric Wang
Floyd Abrams
source: YouTube online database
Knight First Amendment Institute | April 25, 2022
Sociological Conditions for the Production of Truth (Lies, Free Speech, and the Law)
The fourth-panel discussion at the Lies, Free Speech, and Law symposium.
Lies do not occur in a vacuum. Particular institutional and cultural contexts can encourage and enable the production of falsehoods—or the production of truth. This panel will explore some of the sociological facts that encourage, or limit, the dissemination of untruths and the legal structures that enable them, as well as how law can support the production and dissemination of knowledge.
Panelists Adam M. Enders, the University of Louisville Heidi Kitrosser, the University of Minnesota Law School Artur Pericles Lima Monteiro, Yale Law School Joseph Uscinski, University of Miami
Moderator Francesca Procaccini, Harvard Law School
source: YouTube online database
Yale ISP | December 14, 2020
News & Information Disorder (6/6): Law and Policy to Resolve the Information Disorder
The sixth session of the workshop on News and Information Disorder in the 2020 US Presidential Election discusses law and policy to resolve the information disorder. The specific questions considered during these panel discussions will include the following: How can (or should) law and policy be shaped over the next four years in order to resolve the information disorder created and aggravated by algorithms? Are there First Amendment problems with the regulation of information disorder, and if so, how should they be addressed? Yochai Benkler (Professor of Law and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University) Guy-Uriel Charles (Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law at Duke) Amélie Heldt (Researcher and Doctoral Candidate at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research) Ari Ezra Waldman (Professor of Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University)
Moderator: Francesca Procaccini (Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School)
source: YouTube online database
FIRE | February 12, 2020
First Amendment Salon: “Trump, Twitter & The First Amendment”
Jameel Jaffer & Noah Feldman
Moderated by Francesca Procaccini
This salon features a discussion between Jameel Jaffer, who is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. He successfully argued Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump (2nd Cir. 2019), which will be the focus of this Salon’s discussion. Noah Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School. He is the author of “The Courts Still Don’t Understand Trump’s Twitter Feed,” an op-ed on the Second Circuit’s ruling in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump. Francesca Procaccini is a Clinical Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and was previously an attorney in the Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, of the Department of Justice.
source: YouTube online database
For more works by Professor Francesca L. Procaccini, please visit her SSRN page.