We must embrace, as a rule of construction or interpretation, a principal one might call the “cyberspace corollary” … The 27th Amendment, to be proposed for at least serious debate in 1991 and beyond, would read simply: “This Constitution’s protections for the freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due processes of law, shall be construed as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or medium through which information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted, or controlled.”
Predictor: Tribe, Laurence H.
Prediction, in context:The 1997 book “Computers, Ethics, and Society,” edited by M. David Ermann, Mary B. Williams and Michele S. Shauf, carries a reprint of the Sept./Oct. 1991 The Humanist magazine article “The Constitution in Cyberspace” by Laurence H. Tribe. Tribe, a Constitutional scholar, suggests a Constitutional amendment that would clarify the relationship between new technologies and fundamental constitutional protections. He writes: ”We must embrace, as a rule of construction or interpretation, a principal one might call the ‘cyberspace corollary.’ It would make a suitable 27th Amendment to the Constitution, one befitting the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Whether adopted all at once as a constitutional amendment or accepted gradually as a principle of interpretation that I believe should obtain even without any formal change in the Constitution’s language, the corollary I would propose would do for technology in 1991 what I believe the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment, adopted in 1791, was meant to do for text. The 27th Amendment, to be proposed for at least serious debate in 1991 and beyond, would read simply: ”This Constitution’s protections for the freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due processes of law, shall be construed as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or medium through which information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted, or controlled.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Democracy
Name of publication: Computers, Ethics, and Society (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: The Constitution in Cyberspace
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 219, 220
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne