Free Speech. Jonathan Seglow

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      ‘Speech’ in the phrase ‘free speech’ is a term of art and does not actually refer to all speech. For one thing, beyond the public square and people’s homes, all institutions police free speech norms that enable them to achieve their purposes. Thus a political party can expel a member who failed to honour its basic ideological commitments; a company can reprimand an employee who helped the competition; or a church can refuse to recognise a worshipper who rejected its central religious tenets. (This aspect will become especially relevant when we discuss free speech in universities in Chapter 6.)

      In general, the kind of speech that free speech advocates regard as most important to protect is that of people who express themselves on moral, political, cultural, religious, historical, literary, scientific and similarly weighty issues, especially within a public or an associational setting – as opposed to speech among friends, family and other intimates that states are not generally interested in regulating (though there are exceptions). The former is often called ‘high-value’ speech. By contrast, ‘low-value’ speech is public or associational speech that has implications for people in that it can affect their interests in ways that might be normatively troubling. Examples of this kind of speech are libel, slander and defamation; invasion of privacy; commercial advertising; abusive, insulting and offensive speech; hate speech; and pornography. But, although the high-value–low-value distinction is often invoked in free speech debates and we will employ it ourselves later on, it is important to remember that this is not a stable distinction either. One person’s serious artistic expression may be another person’s pornography, for example.

In this book we elaborate on these sorts of considerations in order to address the complex dimensions of free speech. In Chapter 1 we examine the three ‘classic’ theories of free speech, grounded in the values of truth, autonomy and democracy. We identify different strands within each theory, consider some of the main criticisms that have been raised against each one of them and comment on their relationship to one another. This three-part framework informs our analysis throughout the subsequent chapters by providing some normative guidelines for assessing when the regulation of free speech may be morally permissible, or even obligatory.

      Chapter 2 examines the much debated topic of hate speech. As well as asking what hate speech is, we consider various contexts in which this kind of speech manifests itself and illustrate some different ways in which it is regulated in different jurisdictions. We discuss what implications the truth, autonomy and democracy arguments have for hate speech, then go on to consider further arguments in favour of hate speech regulation. We also examine the complex issues surrounding the design of laws that restrict hate speech and we consider non-regulatory responses to such laws, including counterspeech.

      In Chapter 3 we focus on Holocaust denial as an exemplary case of speech whose limitations are often subject to debate. While often considered a form of hate speech, Holocaust denial presents distinctive challenges. Given the central role that epistemic historical claims play in it, we consider in some detail the implications of the truth argument for its regulation. Yet Holocaust denial also raises important questions regarding individual autonomy and democracy. We explore the former especially in relation to educational settings and online platforms, and the latter by considering the role of Holocaust denial within broader political worldviews.

      Chapter 4 examines offensive speech. Although it is sometimes conflated with hate speech, more often than not offensive speech is considered a much less harmful kind of speech. But what, if anything, is wrong with it? After sketching a brief account of the origins of offence in blasphemy law, we address this question by identifying moral, conventional and raw offence and by analysing the first two categories in relation to the truth, autonomy and democracy arguments for free speech. We conclude by discussing Joel Feinberg’s (1985) influential defence of regulating offensive speech and point to some problems with it.

In Chapter 5 we consider the question of whether and why pornography, as a mode of speech, should be regulated. After briefly examining the view that pornography might possess some social value, we consider different types of harms that pornography is often accused of inflicting on women. These include harms to women involved in the pornography industry; the sexual violence or discrimination encouraged by the consumption of pornographic materials; and the view that pornography harms women in society more generally, by inherently subordinating or silencing them. We show why, though pornography might in principle advance the values of autonomy and democracy, it is more often likely to undermine them.

      Chapter 6 tackles three pressing issues at the forefront of contemporary public debate on contemporary free speech. The first concerns the policy of no-platforming, adopted by university students in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. This is a policy of denying controversial speakers external to the university a platform to speak from in that university – which makes it another case of policing free speech norms. We consider the complex relationship between academic debate and free speech, and examine whether there is a case for no-platforming on the basis of the values that universities exist to promote. The other two issues examined in the chapter are, both, related to free speech in online environments. One is fake news: ‘the deliberate presentation of (typically) false or misleading claims as news, where the claims are misleading by design’ (Gelfert 2018, pp. 85–6). The other is online public shaming: the use of social sanctions through speech in order to criticise those who have allegedly done or said something wrong (another example of speech as conduct). We examine recent work in political theory that has begun to address fake news and online public shaming and investigate ways in which the three arguments for free speech can help us to make sense of them.

      We conclude with some brief reflections on free speech and liberalism’s self-understanding.

In a short book like this one we have had to leave out much material that is interesting and relevant to the debate on free speech. Rather than examine in detail every new development that affects the frontiers of free speech – children’s unfiltered online access, cyberbullying, the heated debate between some feminists and the trans community, the replacement of mainstream media by personalised social media in the delivery of news and current affairs, for instance – we have opted for explaining long-standing debates about the nature, value and limits of speech (though in Chapter 6 and elsewhere we say a little about some new controversies, too). In this way we can at least understand how established theories of free speech might address such developments. We hope to show why and how free speech matters – but also why other values sometimes matter more.

      We are grateful to George Owers and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this book. We would also like to thank Julia Davies and Manuela Tecusan for all their support and advice throughout the production process.

Notes

      1  1 Visit https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1269382518362509313%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Fj-k-rowling-accused-transphobia-after-mocking-people-who-menstruate-n1227071.

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