press freedom

Georgia Law Professor Sonja R. West presents at University College London

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.

Georgia Law Professor Sonja R. West presents in panel discussion hosted by the University of Sheffield

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Sonja R. West presented as part of an online panel titled “The Future of Press Freedom” at the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Freedom of the Media during January 2026.

The discussion featured panelists RonNell Andersen Jones (University of Utah College of Law) and Christina Koningisor (University of California-San Francisco School of Law). They focused on the edited volume by Jones and West, The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Time, and discussed press freedom in the United States and evolving threats to the press.

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.

Georgia Law Professor Sonja R. West presents at Oxford’s Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Sonja R. West participated in two events hosted by the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford in June. First, she was part of a Comparative Media Law Workshop; then, she presented as part of a panel titled “The Future of Press Freedom” at the Democracy, Law, and Independent Journalism conference.

The Bonavero Institute is dedicated to fostering world-class research and scholarship in human rights law, to promoting public engagement in and understanding of human rights issues, and to building valuable conversations and collaborations between human rights scholars and human rights practitioners.

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.