University of Georgia School of Law Professor Sonja R. West presented “The History and Tradition of Press Freedom” as part of the Comparative Media Law Workshop hosted by University College London during July. 

West holds the Otis Brumby Distinguished Professorship in First Amendment Law, a post shared by the law school and Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She specializes in constitutional law, media law and the U.S. Supreme Court. In recognition of her scholarship, West was awarded the School of Law’s 2022 Faculty Research Award in Public Law, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s 2022 and 2017 Harry W. Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research on Media Law and Policy, and the National Communication Association’s 2016 Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression. Her work has been published in numerous law reviews and journals including the Harvard Law Review, the California Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Michigan Law Review and the Northwestern Law Review. She also was selected to serve as a 2023-2024 Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.