UCLA School of Law

The constitutional guarantee that citizens have access to public streets, sidewalks, and parks in order to speak and assemble is essential to a free and vibrant democratic culture. This note argues that understanding how this role should evolve in the Internet age requires attention to the spatial relationships between public forums and those places, whether in private or government hands, in which we go about daily life. Paradigmatic public forums perform their function in our constitutional order not so much because of what happens inside them as because of what happens outside or, more precisely, alongside them. As trips to the clothing store, motor vehicle administration, or community center increasingly shift from the physical environment of our cities and towns to the electronic environment of cyberspace, we must create "places in between" that enable ordinary citizens to engage one another as they move about. In particular, we must preserve the ability to contest what transpires in non-public places by ensuring communicative access to individuals as they enter stores, workplaces, government buildings, or family planning clinics. In short, we need sidewalks in cyberspace.