What the U.S. Constitution Teaches About Drafting Social Media Policies

I was a history major in college, and I learned to value lessons from our past. When I read that Supreme Court Justice Breyer was the first US Supreme Court justice to participate in a live streaming social media event this past July, I noted that one of our most historic institutions, the Supreme Court, was taking a giant step forward into the future. I was even more struck when I heard what the event was about. Justice Breyer was teaching Tunisian scholars about drafting a constitution for their fledgling democracy, and he was using the American constitution as the lesson book. Powerful lessons from history indeed!

As I read Justice Breyer’s commentary on the merits of our Constitution, I discovered parallel lessons for drafters of social media policies. First, be brief. Second, draft flexible language that can adapt to change.

Justice Breyer also described the 5 sections of the Constitution, and indeed, the topics could be the skeleton for a social media policy.

1.  Democracy: The Constitution’s preamble outlines the foundations of our democracy. So too, a social media policy should contain a strong preamble declaring its values.

2.  Human rights: Just as the Constitution’s Bill of Rights enumerates our inalienable rights, a well written social media policy should protect employees’ freedom of speech and rights under the NLRB to discuss their workplace.

3.  Division of Powers: Our Founding Fathers wisely balanced the workload in our government, giving equal power and responsibilities to the different branches. A social media policy should enumerate the responsibilities of the different players in an organization. Who is empowered to speak as a brand representative? Who is responsible for media inquiries? How should employees’ divide their personal speech from their professional speech?

4.  Equality: The Constitution recognizes the equality of all citizens and each person’s capacity to make contributions to our democracy. In the world of social media, a policy should  allow customers input to contribute to the evolution of a brand.

5.  Rule of law: The Constitution establishes the “supreme Law of the Land.”  A brand’s social media policy should establish rules of conduct for employees. Appropriate rules of law include guidelines for truthful, respectful language and protecting confidential and proprietary information from public disclosure.

I have written about these issues in more depth in my guest blog post at socialmediabusiness.com.

And if you need a refresher on US Constitution, see this School House Rock video.