On Monday, May 4th, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired 61 rounds of bullets into the Kent State University students protesting about the invasion of Cambodia. This work develops the ideas of the first symposium on American democracy established to commemorate the tragedy.
European Convention on Human Rights – Article 10 – Freedom of expression 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises. 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. In the context of an effective democracy and respect for human rights mentioned in the Preamble to the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression is not only important in its own right, but it also plays a central part in the protection of other rights under the Convention. Without a broad guarantee of the right to freedom of expression protected by independent and impartial courts, there is no free country, there is no democracy. This general proposition is undeniable. This handbook is a practical tool for legal professionals from Council of Europe member states who wish to strengthen their skills in applying the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in their daily work.
A commitment to free speech is a fundamental precept of all liberal democracies. However, democracies can differ significantly when addressing the constitutionality of laws regulating certain kinds of speech. In the United States, for instance, the commitment to free speech under the First Amendment has been held by the Supreme Court to protect the public expression of the most noxious racist ideology and hence to render unconstitutional even narrow restrictions on hate speech. In contrast, governments have been accorded considerable leeway to restrict racist and other extreme expression in almost every other democracy, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. This book considers the legal responses of various liberal democracies towards hate speech and other forms of extreme expression, and examines the following questions: What accounts for the marked differences in attitude towards the constitutionality of hate speech regulation? Does hate speech regulation violate the core free speech principle constitutive of democracy? Has the traditional US position on extreme expression justifiably not found favour elsewhere? Do values such as the commitment to equality or dignity legitimately override the right to free speech in some circumstances? With contributions from experts in a range of disciplines, this book offers an in-depth examination of the tensions that arise between democracy's promises.
This volume considers whether it is possible to establish carefully tailored hate speech policies that recognize the histories and values of different countries.
The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in Schenck vs. the United States is one of the most important free speech cases in American history. Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is most famous for first invoking the phrase "clear and present danger." Although the decision upheld the conviction of an individual for criticizing the draft during World War I, it also laid the foundation for our nation's robust protection of free speech. Over time, the standard Holmes devised made freedom of speech in America a reality rather than merely an ideal. In The Free Speech Century, two of America's leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars--Cass Sunstein, Lawrence Lessig, Laurence Tribe, Kathleen Sullivan, Catherine McKinnon, among others--to evaluate the evolution of free speech doctrine since Schenk and to assess where it might be headed in the future. Since 1919, First Amendment jurisprudence in America has been a signal development in the history of constitutional democracies--remarkable for its level of doctrinal refinement, remarkable for its lateness in coming (in relation to the adoption of the First Amendment), and remarkable for the scope of protection it has afforded since the 1960s. Over the course of The First Amendment Century, judicial engagement with these fundamental rights has grown exponentially. We now have an elaborate set of free speech laws and norms, but as Stone and Bollinger stress, the context is always shifting. New societal threats like terrorism, and new technologies of communication continually reshape our understanding of what speech should be allowed. Publishing on the one hundredth anniversary of the decision that laid the foundation for America's free speech tradition, The Free Speech Century will serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First Amendment transformed over time and why it is so critical both for the United States and for the world today.
This book examines the changes in the governance of human expression as a result of the development of the Internet. It tells the story of the emergence of a global regime that almost completely lacks institutions, and develops a concept of ‘expression governance’ that focusses on the governance practices of key actors in Europe and North America. The book illuminates the increased disciplinary capacity of the Internet infrastructure that has become apparent to the public following Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013, and provides a theoretical frame within which such changes can be understood. It argues that the Internet has developed a ‘global default’ of permissible speech that exists pervasively across the globe but beyond the control of any one actor. It then demonstrates why the emergence of such a ‘global default’ of speech is crucial to global conflict in the international relations of the Internet. The book concludes with an elaboration of the regulatory practices and theatrical performances that enable a global regime as well as the three key narratives that are embedded within it.
A compilation of essays and commentary delivered at the second annual Kent State University Symposium on Democracy, this work recognizes and considers the differences that arise when the competitive forces of commerce clash with the demand for the open availability of information in a democratic society. The conflicting roles of advocate-initiator and objective reporter for journalists who cover community politics; the role of the news media in forming public attitudes toward things political and their role in affecting voter nonparticipation; the role of financial considerations in the news media's attempt to provide citizens with needed news and perspective on political affairs; and particularly the role of the conglomeration of ownership of news media organizations are a few of the topics discussed in this volume.