Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the
freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation,
censorship, or legal sanction. The
right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a
human right in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
international human rights law by the
United Nations. Many countries have
constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.
Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the
ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of
national security or public order (ordre public), or of public health or
morals". (Full article...)
Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) is an organization devoted to assisting researchers with assembling information related to
freedom of speech,
media democracy, and
copyright, and advocating for these issues.
Civil liberties lawyer
Marjorie Heins founded the
nonprofit organization in 2000. Based in
Manhattan,
New York, it was initially associated with the
National Coalition Against Censorship, and subsequently operated as part of the Democracy Program of the
Brennan Center for Justice at
New York University Law School. The FEPP conducted a survey in 2001 which revealed that online monitoring software including
Net Nanny,
SurfWatch, and Cybersitter cast too broad a net and often blocked legitimate educational websites in their attempts to censor material from youths. In 2003, the organization assisted 33 academics in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in a challenge to a law which restricted the sale of violent video games to minors. In coordination with the Brennan Center for Justice of New York University Law School, the FEPP released a public policy report in 2006 on the inefficiency of
Internet filtering; the report concluded freedom of expression was harmed by such online censorship activity. In 2007, the FEPP became independent of its prior supportive organizations: National Coalition Against Censorship and New York University Law School. The New Walford Guide to Reference Resources praised the FEPP website for its links to resources on freedom of expression and censorship. FEPP has been characterized by the Austin American-Statesman as a
think tank devoted to researching the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Denver Post described the organization as a censorship
watchdog organization, and a separate article from the same newspaper called it a
left-of-center politically aligned group which advocated for both
intellectual freedom and
artistic freedom.
Image 5George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the
BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from
George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
Image 6Restriction of apostasy by country (2020) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 16Orthodox priest
Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in
Brno,
Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 25Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (from Freedom of speech)
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856 – 1941) was an
Associate Justice on the
Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. He was born in
Louisville,
Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a
secular mode. He enrolled at
Harvard Law School, graduating at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the college’s history. In 1916, President
Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. However, his nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as
JusticeWilliam O. Douglas wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible. . . [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court." He was eventually confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22 on June 1, 1916, and became one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the “greatest defenses” of
freedom of speech and the
right to privacy ever written by a member of the high court.
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.
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