Summary
Due to its elusive and subjective nature, humor is often at the center of complex legal cases revolving around freedom of expression. How can judges and regulatory bodies strike a fair balance between satire and defamation, provocative jokes and hate speech, or parody and copyright violation? These questions – as well as analogous online content moderation issues – have recently been addressed in multiple interdisciplinary studies on humor and the law (e.g. HUMOR’s special issue ‘The Difficulty of Judging Jests,’ 35.3, 2022).
The fruitful exchanges generated by the ‘Humor and the Law’ panels at ISHS 2022 and 2023, alongside the rapid growth of the international platform ForHum: Forum for Humor and the Law, confirm the increasing interest in these topics. Building on this existing network, our Special Interest Group aims to promote collaborative research and outreach activities bridging humor studies with legal scholarship and practice. Our focus is not limited to legal issues concerning humorous expression, but also extends to the analysis of humor within and about the law.