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The good, the bad, and the ugly of free speech

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The Insoluble Problem of Free Speech

Michael p. zuckert.

The problem of free speech is once again upon us. On college campuses across America in recent years, there have been countless lectures, symposia, and impassioned demonstrations on the subject. Yet this fervor over free speech is nothing new. From time to time throughout American history, challenges to free speech have sparked heated and prolonged debate, with no obvious resolution. Indeed, the nature of speech itself may make it impossible to truly put such debates to rest.

In considering these debates, it must be noted that the norms guiding speech in America have not emerged solely from our Constitution or laws, but have developed in different ways in different institutional settings. Even constitutionally permissible violations of those norms can yield serious and damaging consequences. It is therefore worthwhile to carefully examine what the rules on speech in America consist of, and the potential ramifications of breaking those rules.

To provide some context to this discussion, we should look at another historical moment in which free speech came under scrutiny. Provoked by our national experiences in World War II and the Cold War, many people throughout the 1950s and '60s began to reconsider the nature and effects of free speech. Inspired in large part by a desire to emphasize the differences between us — a free regime — and the totalitarian Nazis and communists, there were significant developments in thinking about free speech, mostly in a libertarian direction.

Prominent liberals during that time, including Supreme Court justice Hugo Black and philosopher Sidney Hook, pushed for an expansive free-speech regime. Black often argued, for example, that the First Amendment supplies absolute protection for speech. As he wrote in his concurrence in Smith v. California , "That Amendment provides, in simple words, that 'Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.' I read 'no law...abridging' to mean no law abridging ." The Supreme Court and much of the intellectual left broadly opposed many restrictions of speech that had long been taken for granted as valid.  

As a student and young professor during those years, I witnessed the virtual abandonment of the regulation of obscenity and pornography, the rejection of laws attempting to monitor or check communist speech and organization, and the landmark 1964 Court ruling against libel laws in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan . Back then, it was conservatives who pushed back against unfettered speech. There are certain conditions that must inhere in a decent society, they argued, which would be undermined by, for example, the free distribution of pornography. They also insisted that it made no sense to simply tolerate propaganda and organizational efforts by groups that had sworn to destroy the American regime — particularly groups allied with America's most formidable international enemy. In short, conservatives took a conservative position, and resisted what appeared to be a reckless expansion of liberty. Liberals, on the other hand, were champions of liberty, and thus stalwart defenders of the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

For those of us who lived through this free-speech free-for-all, the current moment is especially striking because of the reversals we are witnessing. It is now liberals who are often dubious of the general claims of free speech. They frequently sponsor speech codes, support shutting down speakers with whom they disagree, and discourage individual students from espousing a variety of views. In an equally strange development, conservatives are now inclined to defend the First Amendment, support robust free-speech protections, and promote open debate and the uninhibited exchange of ideas.

This shift, though undeniably interesting, is unrelated to broader and more central questions about free speech, particularly why it periodically becomes the focus of national debate. Indeed, neither conservative arguments in favor of free speech nor liberal arguments in favor of curtailing speech adequately address the conflict that is inherent to this contested right.

To begin properly "solving" the problem of free speech, we will need to identify what that problem is and why it keeps surfacing. This will entail studying the hybrid nature of speech. As we will see, speech's dual character may render any "solution" seriously imperfect. Further, different institutional settings call forth different aspects of speech's hybridity, with the result being that there is no perfect free-speech regime.

THE HYBRID CHARACTER OF SPEECH

Speech is a hybrid in that it partakes of both thought and action. Thought is inward, silent, and concealed. So long as it remains purely inward, it has minimal effects on the world. Speech is the expression of thought, whether vocally or via the written word or other forms of communication. Messages in a bottle, on a t-shirt, or in a gesture are all forms of speech.

Understood this way, speech is thought made flesh  — made actual in the world, either visibly or audibly. Speech becomes a presence in the social world, and can directly affect those in it. Speech as thought made flesh is also a form of action.

The norms that govern these two elements of the hybrid are quite different. Thought is silent and concealed, but unrestrained. Since at least the Reformation, freedom of thought has been widely and deeply prized by any number of philosophers and political actors — including Benedict Spinoza, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson — who have argued that thought should not be coerced because, strictly speaking, it cannot be coerced. The norm of untrammeled freedom of thought is also based on the belief that the proper end of thought is truth, and that freedom of thought is a necessary precondition for the pursuit and acquisition of truth. To seek truth implies that we do not possess it, or at least not all of it. We cannot know in advance which paths may or may not lead to truth. Our partial truths may not hold up when we encounter a more complete truth, and so we cannot settle on our current conceptions as fixed points, never to be questioned.

Speech as action is altogether different. When speech takes the form of an action, it affects others. A classic example is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's observation that yelling "fire" in a crowded theater could lead to panic and serious harm, even death. Libelous speech can damage the reputations and prospects of those being libeled. The speech involved in hiring a hit man to kill one's rival is surely a kind of action that cannot lay claim to the absolute freedom we claim for thought.

Thus, the norms that are applied to action are quite different from those that are applied to thought. Put simply, action, specifically harmful action, is subject to restriction and control. Presumably, the thinking goes, we can differentiate between harmful and non-harmful actions.

Here is where the problem of free speech arises, however. We have established that speech is composed of both thought, which ought to be free, and action, which ought to be suppressible when harmful. But there is deep uncertainty over which set of norms should govern expression — the action of speech — and to what extent. Attempts to address this problem frequently fail to take account of the hybrid character of speech.

Consider, for example, the absolutist position associated with Justice Black. He rested much of his case for complete freedom of speech on the text of the Constitution. But did the founders actually intend the sort of absolutism Black attributed to them? It has been argued, for example, that the "freedom of speech" referred to in the First Amendment was a term of art that did not apply to all forms of expression, such as libel, pornography, or blasphemy. And if the founders had, in fact, intended for the First Amendment to be understood as Black read it, we would still be free or even duty-bound to ask whether that is a sound standard. When speech is properly understood as a combination of thought and action, the absolutist position attributed by Black to the founders fails; it abstracts away the action side of speech, treating it as if it were pure thought and thus deserving of pure freedom.

In addition to his constitutional arguments, Justice Black and his allies also propounded claims about free speech that are more philosophical. On the whole, these resemble the claims of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty . That book's long opening chapter, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion," discusses the correct scope of liberty in thought and speech. It is followed by chapters that discuss which principles ought to guide governmental and social responses to actions . That is, On Liberty presents a clear division between liberty of thought and speech on the one hand and liberty of action on the other.

Mill combined discussion and thought, distinguishing both from action. He treated speech as if it were entirely homologous with thought, and thus gave no weight to the hybrid quality of speech as sharing in both thought and action. This is significant because Mill assigned quite different norms to these two spheres. As he wrote in his opening chapter, "[T]here ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine." He later asserted that it is " imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve."

Mill then examined "whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions...without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men." Mill, who was a sane and mostly sensible fellow, did not promote quite the same absolutist norm for action that he advocated for speech. Although he is known to have favored broad liberty of action, he granted two significant exceptions. First, his well-known "harm principle" established that actions that are harmful to the interests or "rights" of others are illegitimate, and may be punished by the state (though his conception of harm appears not to have extended to potential harms wrought by various forms of speech). Second, his "fairness principle" consisted of "each person's bearing his share...of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury." This doctrine provides a basis on which a state may rightly tax its citizens or demand that they serve in the military.

In short, Black's absolutist, philosophical position on free speech appears to be drawn from Mill, yet the latter failed to adequately account for the hybrid character of speech. He viewed speech as entirely equivalent with thought and thus worthy of complete freedom — for example, by insisting that men should be free to express themselves "without reserve" — and dismissed the component of speech that is correctly understood as action.

Let us look now to the other side of the problem regarding free speech — instances where speech is treated wholly, or almost wholly, as action. In such cases, freedom of speech is not recognized or accepted. Recent examples include totalitarian or authoritarian regimes in which power is exercised on the principle that protecting the ruling person or party is paramount. In such a system, any speech that could threaten the rulers is considered to be a harmful act and can therefore be suppressed. 

In addition, leaders of totalitarian regimes frequently intend to implement some kind of large, socially transformative project — the creation of the egalitarian, classless society; the production of the master race; the bringing forth of a holy state — which might be threatened by free thought and speech. In such cases, an abstract commitment to free speech would be unthinkable for two reasons. First, the rulers of such systems proclaim a particular set of ideas as the truth, and shun the notion that further pursuit of the truth is needed. Second, any kind of speech or expression that is contrary to the official ideology could threaten the state's project.

Dictatorial governments are not alone in suppressing speech. Other types of regimes that are not strictly authoritarian or totalitarian may nonetheless be hostile to freedom of speech. In many traditional societies, free speech is rejected — or not even thought of — for quite different reasons. Take the case of Socrates. He was accused of two crimes that turned out to be very similar: corrupting the young, and either believing in gods other than those of Athens or not believing in any gods at all. Since the charge of corrupting the young consisted of bringing them to doubt the authoritative or prevailing opinions about justice and other crucial matters within the city, it amounted to provoking disobedience and thus impiety toward the city fathers. The charge regarding religious belief operated on a similar principle; the only gods that were deemed to count were the city's gods, and thus believing in anything else, or in nothing at all, was a treasonous form of disobedience or impiety. To challenge the great authorities who stood behind the dominant opinions of the city was to challenge the city itself.

Thus, there is not even a conceptual space for freedom of speech in such traditional societies; speech that does not accord with the authoritative opinions and associated institutions is ipso facto destructive. Neither is there room for a conception of freedom of thought, for the necessary truths are already known and incorporated in the authoritative opinions. Free speech necessarily constitutes a type of harmful action. 

RECONCILING THOUGHT AND ACTION 

Any meaningful solution to the problem of free speech — that it consists of both thought that should be free and action that should arguably be constrained in some cases — must take account of both the thought and action that inhere in speech. A proper orientation toward free speech must embody and be borne from reflection on the hybrid character of speech and the complex normative orders that derive from that hybrid.

There have been attempts to formulate doctrines or guidelines that govern speech while accounting for its dual nature. For example, some have suggested that regulating speech on the basis of time, manner, and place is legitimate, but regulating on the basis of a speech's content is not. This approach partially recognizes that speech is action, and focuses precisely on the act of speaking in a particular context as a behavior subject to control. But it treats the content of speech much as the absolutists do in that it fails to acknowledge that speech, precisely in its content, is a kind of action, and thus can at least potentially be subject to regulation.

Another approach that is somewhat responsive to the hybrid character of speech employs the well-known "clear and present danger" test. This test recognizes that speech can be or can produce action, and focuses on the exact moment when speech is about to become action. When the action is of a kind that authorities have a right to prevent or punish, they may step in the instant speech presents a "clear and present danger" of producing that action. While this approach is in many ways more promising than that which dismisses the content of speech as action, it too fails to note that speech, as opposed to thought, is already action and not merely a potential cause of action.

Moreover, measuring the imminence of a dangerous act is a clumsy and imprecise way to respond to the "action element" of speech. The harmful effects of speech may simply not appear in the world in the form of an immediate threat. Indeed, the dangers may be long term and subtle.

Nevertheless, the "clear and present danger" test sets us on the path we must follow if we are to sort out the complexities of free speech. In a liberal society like America, there is a presumption in favor of liberty of action as well as of thought. Naturally, only harmful action is of concern when formulating norms or guides for speech. The difficulty arises, as explained earlier, in determining what constitutes a harm resulting from speech.

Some harms are easy to identify, such as physical damage (e.g., hiring a hit man). But other claimed harms resulting from speech, many of which have featured prominently in debates on campuses, are more subtle and hence much more controversial. The ubiquitous example is offense. Many people object to certain exercises of speech because the comments in question are found to be offensive, either to individuals or to groups. However, many others refuse to recognize offense as a legitimate harm or to accord it any weight in discussions of free speech.

The institutional setting in which speech takes place can also affect the normative regime appropriate to it. Some speech — the sort we are most interested in these days — occurs on campuses, in the institutional setting of colleges or universities. Other speech takes place in the context of corporations or other organizations that have their own special aims, such as making a profit or curing an illness. Still other speech occurs in the family or in the larger public sphere we call the political society.

Each setting evokes a different aspect of the hybrid character of speech and in different ways. Accordingly, different norms for speech govern these different spheres. Speech that is perfectly acceptable in a family setting may be deemed inappropriate in a corporate environment. Because of this, it would seem that standards governing speech are highly circumstantial, making it very difficult to endorse any of the standard speech doctrines as universally valid.

To make at least some progress on the question of what norms should govern speech, then, it will be helpful to look more closely at the concrete problems that have emerged in various spheres of society. To begin, let us consider the issue of most concern today — speech on campuses.

SPEECH AND THE UNIVERSITY

For simplicity's sake, and because rather different considerations come into play when a school is state-supported, we shall consider only private educational institutions. To understand the free-speech regime that is appropriate to the campus, let us return to the thought aspect of speech. By its nature, thought is turned toward truth. As discussed above, none of us directly possesses the truth about the whole, though we may have opinions about the whole. But when confronted with opposing ideas, we may come to see that we do not have good reasons for holding certain opinions. In this way, thought is set on a quest for truth, a goal sought for both practical and theoretical reasons. The character of Western civilization has been distinguished in part by our self-conscious awareness of this quest.

From the time of Plato until now, with intermittent gaps, there have existed institutions specially dedicated to the search for and dissemination of truth. This is reflected in any number of college and university mottos, where the term veritas , truth, appears more often than any other. Harvard's motto, for example, consists simply of the word veritas , while Yale's motto, lux et veritas , light and truth, is shared by many other colleges and universities.

This orientation toward seeking truth through thought provides guidance for the proper campus policy on speech: an almost irrebuttable presumption in favor of free expression. Thus a thinker like Charles Murray, to take a not exactly random example, has a prima facie right to speak. But of course, the fact that speech in a university setting leans more toward the thought than the action side of things does not mean that speech in this context has no action dimension, nor that it can do no harm.

The institutional setting of the campus has been formed to favor freedom of speech, to the point where this freedom overrides many other considerations. This has meant that speech is primarily valued for and understood in relation to its thought dimension, while its action dimension has not been granted much weight. But the potentially harmful character of speech as action remains a reality even within the university. The harms related to speech ought to be addressed, though not, as has too often been the case recently, through blunt suppression of speech.

If there is a substantive risk of violence at a protest against a particular speaker, for instance, school authorities should provide adequate security rather than cancel the event. This solution is in keeping with the institutional setting of the campus. Of course, that is not to say it is perfect: There will always be a chance that things may get out of hand despite security measures, and adding security is expensive. Schools may also be subject to other forms of harm as a result of spending more on security — facing displeased donors, having less money on hand for other purposes, and so on. Prudent administrators may mitigate such costs, but the underlying challenges — the expense of security and the risk of violence — will remain. In other words, there is no simple fix for the problem of free speech on campus.

There are still other harms that the prevailing norms at universities may lead us to ignore or to address in some indirect way. The harm of offense, though dismissed by many, is often characterized by feelings of exclusion, alienation, or devaluation — all of which can genuinely harm individuals and undermine the university's role as a truth-seeking enterprise. Concerns regarding this harm have led many campuses to adopt speech codes or similar measures directed toward reducing offense, even though the normative standards governing speech on campus do not countenance shutting down speech.

A serious discussion exploring the morality of same-sex marriage should not be prohibited, for example, but neither should its potentially harmful effects be mocked. It is not merely "snowflakes" who may feel hurt, or even profoundly attacked or rejected, by a conversation that touches on matters of fundamental identity. Just as suppressing truth-seeking speech violates the university's norms, so does rending the spirit of community and friendship that provides the best foundation for a common inquiry into truth. In other words, while suppressing speech on campus is wrong, striving to mitigate the harms that speech can inflict is morally appropriate. Various practices that free-speech advocates today readily dismiss, such as "trigger warnings," "safe spaces," or the "right of response," are not self-evidently illegitimate responses to these harms.

The role of authorities on campus should not be to "fix" the particular problem of free speech in the university — and there is no decisive resolution. Instead, by encouraging tact, consideration, and tolerance, schools can help to regulate behavior and facilitate discussions among people who strongly disagree. In this way, they might even enhance the university's pursuit of veritas .

FAMILIES, CORPORATIONS, AND COMMUNITIES 

Of course, college campuses are just one type of institution in which speech takes place. In colleges and universities, the thought dimension of speech is predominant, and the norm of freedom of speech reigns supreme. The action dimension of speech remains almost an afterthought.

But what about other institutional settings, such as the family? While robust discussions of abortion and other sensitive topics are appropriate within the university, the family is not an institution in which the thought dimension of speech is pre-eminent. Families are charged with raising and mentoring a new generation, and not in the impersonal way of, say, a junior high. The family's role in caring for children is complex, in part because of the hybrid character of speech, but even more so because of the dual imperatives of parenting.

A family is a place for the formation of children, a means by which to help them become mature adults and thriving members of society. This formation requires a kind of direction and guidance, including the development of rational faculties and moral capacity. It depends as much or more on assertions of authority — "because I said so" — than on rational debate, especially when children are young. Parents also love their children and are thus concerned with their emotional well-being. Psychic harms that children may suffer are of much greater concern to the family than to the university, and the governing norms of these institutions differ accordingly.

The normative spirit of the family, then, is composed of parental authority combined with parental love and affirmation. This combination is necessary for children to grow into self-confident, functional adults. Expressiveness in the family tends toward the action side of speech hybridity, toward the effects of speech rather than the truth-seeking character of thought. For example, the caring and responsible parents of a gay teenager would not be likely to engage in the same sort of robust debate over gay marriage that might be welcomed on a college campus. But these norms are imperfect, too, because they may lead to affirmations that are more or less independent of the truth.

Recently, the institutional setting of the private corporation has also had to contend with fallout in relation to free speech, and it has employed yet another approach. In one example, the National Football League sought to suppress the public protest of a number of its players who had adopted the practice of kneeling while the national anthem played at the start of games. In a separate case, an offensive tweet posted by the actress Roseanne Barr caused an uproar that led the ABC network to cancel her eponymous television show. Some believe that one or both of these cases constitute an illegitimate suppression of speech, while others — myself included — argue that they demonstrate the appropriate normative standard for the institution of the corporation.

It is undeniable that both the players and Roseanne engaged in the action of speech. If they had engaged in the same type of speech on a college campus, it would likely be protected as "thought-like" and therefore free. The corporation, however, invokes a different set of norms.

The norms guiding corporations do not have an inherent direction regarding speech. Rather, their standards are almost entirely instrumental, rooted in whether speech enhances or detracts from their goals, which usually include profit-making. If customers or audiences take offense at speech that is associated with a particular organization, corporations are free — or even encouraged — to respond to that offense in ways that colleges are not. The action component of speech is dominant within the institution, and thus speech is evaluated in terms of its concrete effects.

A final example of an institutional setting in which speech is of concern is the broader political community, where the action side of speech predominates, though less completely than in the family or corporation. The norms of civic life clearly discourage, for instance, the famous Holmesian scenario in which someone cries "fire" in a crowded theater. And up until the late-18th century, it was generally thought that freedom of speech did not protect "seditious libel," which had been a crime in Britain. Criticism of the king — the fount of all political authority and the symbol of law and order in the kingdom — was considered to be harmful to the political community and therefore worthy of punishment. 

The doctrine that condemned seditious libel recognized that speech is action, and potentially very harmful action. As such, it was considered legitimate to regulate or suppress it. Thus the normative regime in England in past centuries was more or less at the opposite end of the "speech spectrum" from regimes that embrace freedom of thought and prioritize the thought component of speech.

The United States, as an heir to British legal and political norms, has a history of restricting certain types of speech. In 1798, the federal government passed the first national sedition law, aimed at protecting federal authorities from the criticism they had been receiving from the Democratic-Republican Party (led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison). The law provided that "if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government...or to bring them...into contempt or disrepute...then such person...shall be punished by a fine...and by imprisonment." This was quite similar to British sedition laws and was widely thought to be constitutional despite the First Amendment. Like British laws, it treated speech critical of the government entirely as action, and harmful action at that. Such speech therefore had no legitimate claim to freedom.

The strongest argument against this law was put forth by Madison. It consisted of two parts, and led to the idea that speech in the institutional sphere of politics has a claim to freedom, though not quite as strong a claim as that which belongs to thought or even to the sort of thought-dominant speech that prevails on campuses.

The first part of Madison's argument acknowledged one premise of the sedition law, that speech is a type of action. But he challenged the notion that speech that is critical of government constitutes harmful action. Free play of speech is necessary in a republic, he argued, in order for the people to select their leaders wisely. The ability to criticize those in power is essential to democratic politics. Well over 200 years later, this argument still makes good sense to us.

At the same time, Madison pointed to the fact that speech is not solely action. It partakes in thought's quest for truth. The point of free and robust political exchange is to discover truths about matters relevant to governance. Even more so than in the institutional setting of the university, then, the inflicting of obvious harms through speech in the political sphere — such as damage wrought to the reputations or livelihoods of political opponents — is overlooked. This is not to say that the realm of politics can quite tolerate Justice Black's version of absolutism, but it is clear that freedom of speech is the dominant normative regime for political speech. Madison's rationale shows how this broad liberty for speech is specifically tailored to political speech, and does not necessarily apply to other types of speech.

To recapitulate, the family and the corporation each emphasize the action side of speech, with very different results. Parents may conceal certain "harsh truths" from their children, or provide them with not-quite-accurate affirmations, in order to help them succeed in fairly concrete and measurable ways. In other words, they contend with the effects of their speech on others. The corporation's concern with such effects often extends mainly to their bottom line: If speech displeases their audiences or consumers, they will attempt to arrive at some solution that will maintain their profits.

The political community, in Madison's ideal sense, strives to access truths, but does so in a rougher and messier and more damaging way than the university. Politics clearly emphasizes both thought and action. Political speech has obvious consequences, but can also bring us closer to the truth.

Recognizing the hybridity of speech and its role in various institutional settings can grant us insights into the complex normative orders that derive from that hybrid. But speech's hybridity also constitutes a perennial problem. The normative orders at play in each of the above-mentioned institutions will always be imperfect. The university, family, corporation, and political spheres each offer only partial solutions to the potential harms of speech, and cannot perfectly reconcile its action and thought components. At best, these partial solutions produce general rules for behavior that do not account for every nuance of speech.

Such rules can be invaluable, and often steer us well. But free speech will always pose some type of risk — of hurting people, leading individuals to embrace false ideas, or any number of other harms. In other words, there is no single agreed-upon ideal regarding speech, and no perfect order with which to guide it. Strictly speaking, there is no solution to the problem of free speech.

Michael P. Zuckert is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. His next book will be entitled A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Problem of Democratic Sovereignty .

The Disappearing Conservative Professor

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Freedom of Speech

Argumentative Essays on Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech essay topic examples, argumentative essays.

Argumentative essays on freedom of speech require you to take a stance on a specific aspect of this topic and provide evidence to support your viewpoint. Consider these topic examples:

• 1. Argue for the importance of protecting hate speech as a form of free expression, emphasizing the principles of free speech and the potential consequences of limiting it.
• 2. Debate the ethical implications of social media platforms censoring or moderating content, exploring the balance between maintaining a safe online environment and upholding free speech rights.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democratic societies, but it often challenges our notions of what should be protected. In this argumentative essay, we will examine the importance of safeguarding hate speech as a form of free expression, exploring the principles of free speech and the potential ramifications of its restriction.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the argument for protecting hate speech within the bounds of free expression highlights the enduring principles of democracy and free speech. As we navigate these complex debates, we must remain committed to preserving the foundations of our democratic society.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays on freedom of speech involve analyzing the similarities and differences between various aspects of free speech laws, practices, or the historical development of free speech rights in different countries. Consider these topics:

• 1. Compare and contrast the approach to freedom of speech in the United States and European Union, examining the legal frameworks, historical context, and key differences in their protection of free expression.
• 2. Analyze the evolution of freedom of speech in the digital age, comparing the challenges and opportunities presented by online platforms and the traditional forms of free expression.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech varies across different countries and contexts, raising questions about the boundaries of this fundamental right. In this compare and contrast essay, we will explore the approaches to freedom of speech in the United States and the European Union, shedding light on their legal frameworks, historical backgrounds, and notable distinctions.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of freedom of speech in the United States and the European Union reveal the multifaceted nature of this fundamental right. As we examine these diverse perspectives, we gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities surrounding free expression in our globalized world.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays on freedom of speech allow you to provide detailed accounts and analysis of specific instances, historical events, or contemporary debates related to free speech. Here are some topic ideas:

• 1. Describe a landmark Supreme Court case related to freedom of speech, such as the "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District" case, and its significance in shaping free speech rights for students.
• 2. Paint a vivid picture of a recent protest or demonstration where freedom of speech played a central role, discussing the motivations of the protesters, the public's response, and the outcomes of the event.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is often tested and defined in the courtroom and in the streets. In this descriptive essay, we will delve into the landmark Supreme Court case "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District" and its profound impact on the free speech rights of students within the educational system.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the descriptive exploration of the "Tinker" case illustrates the enduring struggle to balance students' free speech rights with the need for a productive educational environment. As we reflect on this historical event, we are reminded of the ongoing challenges in preserving and defining freedom of speech in schools.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive essays on freedom of speech involve advocating for specific actions, policies, or changes related to the protection or limitations of free speech rights. Consider these persuasive topics:

• 1. Persuade your audience of the importance of enacting legislation to combat "cancel culture" and protect individuals' right to express unpopular opinions without fear of social or professional consequences.
• 2. Advocate for greater transparency and accountability in social media content moderation practices, highlighting the potential impact on free speech and the public's right to access diverse information.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom of Speech Essay: The boundaries of free speech are continually tested in our rapidly changing society. In this persuasive essay, I will make a compelling case for the necessity of legislation to combat "cancel culture" and preserve individuals' right to express dissenting views without facing severe social or professional repercussions.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument for legislation against "cancel culture" underscores the importance of safeguarding free speech in the face of societal pressures. As we advocate for change, we contribute to the preservation of a diverse and inclusive marketplace of ideas.

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays on freedom of speech allow you to share personal stories, experiences, or observations related to free speech, your encounters with debates or controversies, or the impact of free expression on your life. Explore these narrative essay topics:

• 1. Narrate a personal experience where you exercised your right to free speech, detailing the circumstances, motivations, and reactions from others, and reflecting on the significance of your actions.
• 2. Share a story of your involvement in a community or online discussion where freedom of speech played a central role, emphasizing the challenges and rewards of engaging in open dialogue.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom of Speech Essay: Freedom of speech is not just an abstract concept; it is a lived experience. In this narrative essay, I will take you through a personal journey where I exercised my right to free speech, recounting the circumstances, motivations, and the impact of my actions on those around me.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Freedom of Speech Essay: In conclusion, the narrative of my personal experience with free speech highlights the transformative power of open dialogue and individual expression. As we share our stories, we contribute to the rich tapestry of voices that define our commitment to this essential democratic principle.

Rights to Freedom of Speech and Expression

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The Abuse of The Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Press by The Media in The United States

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Controversial Points of Free Speech

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The Issue of Free Speech and Hate Speech on Campus

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Freedom of speech is the right to express one’s opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship. This fundamental human right is protected under various laws and constitutions worldwide, including the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• The right to seek information and ideas.
• The right to receive information and ideas.
• The right to impart information and ideas.

The concept of freedom of speech has deep historical roots, originating in ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome, where free expression was valued for democratic governance. During the Enlightenment, thinkers like John Locke and Voltaire advocated for free speech, influencing modern democratic societies. Key historical moments, such as the American and French Revolutions, further solidified free speech protections. Today, it is enshrined in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

• Thomas Jefferson: As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Jefferson was a staunch advocate for freedom of speech. He believed that a free exchange of ideas was vital for a democratic society and emphasized its protection in the First Amendment.
• Voltaire: A French philosopher and writer, Voltaire championed the principles of free expression and tolerance. His writings challenged oppressive regimes and promoted the idea that individuals should have the right to speak their minds without fear of persecution.
• Martin Luther King Jr.: Known for his leadership in the American civil rights movement, King passionately defended free speech as a means to advocate for social justice. His powerful speeches and peaceful protests were instrumental in promoting equality and challenging systemic racism.
• John Stuart Mill: An influential philosopher and political economist, Mill articulated the concept of the "marketplace of ideas" and argued for unrestricted freedom of speech. He believed that through open and robust debate, society could discover the truth and prevent the suppression of minority viewpoints.

Public opinion on freedom of speech varies widely due to diverse cultural, societal, and legal factors. While many uphold free speech as a fundamental right, others worry about its boundaries and consequences. Cultural norms and historical experiences shape these perspectives, influencing the balance between individual freedoms and collective well-being. Technological advancements and social media have further complicated views, raising concerns about online harassment, misinformation, and the regulation of speech. These dynamics highlight the ongoing debate over the responsible use of free speech in the digital age.

• Protection of democratic principles
• Advancement of knowledge and progress
• Promotion of individual autonomy
• Protection of minority rights
• Defense against tyranny
• Harmful and hateful speech
• Protection of vulnerable groups
• Misinformation and propaganda
• Privacy and dignity
• Societal stability and public safety
• The recognition of speech protection can be traced back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, marking an early milestone in safeguarding the freedom of expression.
• In 399 BC, the renowned Greek philosopher Socrates faced persecution for his advocacy of unrestricted speech, showcasing the historical roots of the ongoing struggle for free speech rights.
• A significant majority, approximately 70% of Americans, believe in the importance of granting individuals the right to free speech, even if their words are deemed highly offensive or controversial.
• A pivotal moment for student rights came in 1969 with the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines, which affirmed that students maintain their right to free speech even within the confines of school hours.

The topic of freedom of speech is crucial because it underpins democratic societies, allowing for open dialogue, dissent, and the exchange of ideas. Exploring freedom of speech essay topics helps understand its role in promoting individual rights and societal progress. These topics encourage critical thinking about the balance between free expression and protecting against harm, highlighting the importance of preserving this fundamental right in diverse contexts.

1. Sullivan, K. M. (2010). Two concepts of freedom of speech. Harvard Law Review, 124(1), 143-177. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788316) 2. Van Mill, D. (2002). Freedom of speech. (https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/freedom-speech/) 3. Bogen, D. (1983). The origins of freedom of speech and press. Md. L. Rev., 42, 429. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/mllr42&div=20&id=&page=) 4. Yong, C. (2011). Does freedom of speech include hate speech?. Res Publica, 17, 385-403. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11158-011-9158-y) 5. McHugh, M. R. (2004). Historiography and freedom of speech: the case of Cremutius Cordus. In Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (pp. 391-408). Brill. (https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789047405689/B9789047405689-s018.xml) 6. Milo, D. (2008). Defamation and freedom of speech. (https://academic.oup.com/book/2591) 7. Helwig, C. C. (1998). Children's conceptions of fair government and freedom of speech. Child Development, 69(2), 518-531. (https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06205.x) 8. Cheung, A. S. (2011). Exercising freedom of speech behind the great firewall: A study of judges’ and lawyers’ blogs in China. Harvard International Law Journal Online. (https://harvardilj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2011/04/HILJ-Online_52_Cheung1.pdf) 9. Nieuwenhuis, A. (2000). Freedom of speech: USA vs Germany and Europe. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 18(2), 195-214. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/092405190001800203)

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The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation

By The New York Times Magazine

Free Speech Will Save Our Democracy

The First Amendment in the age of disinformation.

By Emily Bazelon

This summer, a bipartisan group of about a hundred academics, journalists, pollsters, former government officials and former campaign staff members convened for an initiative called the Transition Integrity Project. By video conference, they met to game out hypothetical threats to the November election and a peaceful transfer of power if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, were to win. Dividing into Team Trump and Team Biden, the group ran various scenarios about counting ballots and the litigation and protests and violence that could follow a contested election result. The idea was to test the machinery of American democracy.

Describing the results in a Sept. 3 essay in The Washington Post, one of the project’s organizers, Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and Pentagon official during the Obama administration, mentioned a situation in which Biden won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College. In that hypothetical case, “desperate Democrats” on Team Biden considered encouraging California and the Pacific Northwest to threaten secession to pressure Republicans to expand the size of the Senate.

The next day, Michael Anton, a former national security adviser to President Trump, published an article about the Transition Integrity Project called “The Coming Coup?” Democrats were “laying the groundwork for revolution,” Anton wrote without evidence in The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute. He warned that ballots harvested “lawfully or not” could tip close states to Biden.

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By mid-September, Anton’s article was one of the most-shared links in extremist online communities, according to a newsletter published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank based in London. Dan Bongino, a podcaster and Trump supporter, covered Anton’s essay and the imagined coup in several videos, with one tagged, “They are telling you what they are going to do!” Just two of the videos pulled in at least six million views.

On Sept. 9, a post appeared on Revolver News, a new right-wing website. It claimed without evidence that one participant in the Transition Integrity Project, Norm Eisen, who served as a counsel for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings, was a “central operative” in a “color revolution” against Trump, a term for uprisings that have toppled governments in countries like Georgia and Ukraine. Trump tweeted in praise of Revolver News a few days later.

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Freedom of Speech

[ Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Jeffrey W. Howard replaces the former entry on this topic by the previous author. ]

Human beings have significant interests in communicating what they think to others, and in listening to what others have to say. These interests make it difficult to justify coercive restrictions on people’s communications, plausibly grounding a moral right to speak (and listen) to others that is properly protected by law. That there ought to be such legal protections for speech is uncontroversial among political and legal philosophers. But disagreement arises when we turn to the details. What are the interests or values that justify this presumption against restricting speech? And what, if anything, counts as an adequate justification for overcoming the presumption? This entry is chiefly concerned with exploring the philosophical literature on these questions.

The entry begins by distinguishing different ideas to which the term “freedom of speech” can refer. It then reviews the variety of concerns taken to justify freedom of speech. Next, the entry considers the proper limits of freedom of speech, cataloging different views on when and why restrictions on communication can be morally justified, and what considerations are relevant when evaluating restrictions. Finally, it considers the role of speech intermediaries in a philosophical analysis of freedom of speech, with special attention to internet platforms.

1. What is Freedom of Speech?

2.1 listener theories, 2.2 speaker theories, 2.3 democracy theories, 2.4 thinker theories, 2.5 toleration theories, 2.6 instrumental theories: political abuse and slippery slopes, 2.7 free speech skepticism, 3.1 absoluteness, coverage, and protection, 3.2 the limits of free speech: external constraints, 3.3 the limits of free speech: internal constraints, 3.4 proportionality: chilling effects and political abuse, 3.5 necessity: the counter-speech alternative, 4. the future of free speech theory: platform ethics, other internet resources, related entries.

In the philosophical literature, the terms “freedom of speech”, “free speech”, “freedom of expression”, and “freedom of communication” are mostly used equivalently. This entry will follow that convention, notwithstanding the fact that these formulations evoke subtly different phenomena. For example, it is widely understood that artistic expressions, such as dancing and painting, fall within the ambit of this freedom, even though they don’t straightforwardly seem to qualify as speech , which intuitively connotes some kind of linguistic utterance (see Tushnet, Chen, & Blocher 2017 for discussion). Still, they plainly qualify as communicative activity, conveying some kind of message, however vague or open to interpretation it may be.

Yet the extension of “free speech” is not fruitfully specified through conceptual analysis alone. The quest to distinguish speech from conduct, for the purpose of excluding the latter from protection, is notoriously thorny (Fish 1994: 106), despite some notable attempts (such as Greenawalt 1989: 58ff). As John Hart Ely writes concerning Vietnam War protesters who incinerated their draft cards, such activity is “100% action and 100% expression” (1975: 1495). It is only once we understand why we should care about free speech in the first place—the values it instantiates or serves—that we can evaluate whether a law banning the burning of draft cards (or whatever else) violates free speech. It is the task of a normative conception of free speech to offer an account of the values at stake, which in turn can illuminate the kinds of activities wherein those values are realized, and the kinds of restrictions that manifest hostility to those values. For example, if free speech is justified by the value of respecting citizens’ prerogative to hear many points of view and to make up their own minds, then banning the burning of draft cards to limit the views to which citizens will be exposed is manifestly incompatible with that purpose. If, in contrast, such activity is banned as part of a generally applied ordinance restricting fires in public, it would likely raise no free-speech concerns. (For a recent analysis of this issue, see Kramer 2021: 25ff).

Accordingly, the next section discusses different conceptions of free speech that arise in the philosophical literature, each oriented to some underlying moral or political value. Before turning to the discussion of those conceptions, some further preliminary distinctions will be useful.

First, we can distinguish between the morality of free speech and the law of free speech. In political philosophy, one standard approach is to theorize free speech as a requirement of morality, tracing the implications of such a theory for law and policy. Note that while this is the order of justification, it need not be the order of investigation; it is perfectly sensible to begin by studying an existing legal protection for speech (such as the First Amendment in the U.S.) and then asking what could justify such a protection (or something like it).

But of course morality and law can diverge. The most obvious way they can diverge is when the law is unjust. Existing legal protections for speech, embodied in the positive law of particular jurisdictions, may be misguided in various ways. In other words, a justified legal right to free speech, and the actual legal right to free speech in the positive law of a particular jurisdiction, can come apart. In some cases, positive legal rights might protect too little speech. For example, some jurisdictions’ speech laws make exceptions for blasphemy, such that criminalizing blasphemy does not breach the legal right to free speech within that legal system. But clearly one could argue that a justified legal right to free speech would not include any such exception. In other cases, positive legal rights might perhaps protect too much speech. Consider the fact that, as a matter of U.S. constitutional precedent, the First Amendment broadly protects speech that expresses or incites racial or religious hatred. Plainly we could agree that this is so as a matter of positive law while disagreeing about whether it ought to be so. (This is most straightforwardly true if we are legal positivists. These distinctions are muddied by moralistic theories of constitutional interpretation, which enjoin us to interpret positive legal rights in a constitutional text partly through the prism of our favorite normative political theory; see Dworkin 1996.)

Second, we can distinguish rights-based theories of free speech from non-rights-based theories. For many liberals, the legal right to free speech is justified by appealing to an underlying moral right to free speech, understood as a natural right held by all persons. (Some use the term human right equivalently—e.g., Alexander 2005—though the appropriate usage of that term is contested.) The operative notion of a moral right here is that of a claim-right (to invoke the influential analysis of Hohfeld 1917); it thereby correlates to moral duties held by others (paradigmatically, the state) to respect or protect the right. Such a right is natural in that it exerts normative force independently of whether anyone thinks it does, and regardless of whether it is codified into the law. A tyrannical state that imprisons dissidents acts unjustly, violating moral rights, even if there is no legal right to freedom of expression in its legal system.

For others, the underlying moral justification for free speech law need not come in the form of a natural moral right. For example, consequentialists might favor a legal right to free speech (on, e.g., welfare-maximizing grounds) without thinking that it tracks any underlying natural right. Or consider democratic theorists who have defended legal protections for free speech as central to democracy. Such theorists may think there is an underlying natural moral right to free speech, but they need not (especially if they hold an instrumental justification for democracy). Or consider deontologists who have argued that free speech functions as a kind of side-constraint on legitimate state action, requiring that the state always justify its decisions in a manner that respects citizens’ autonomy (Scanlon 1972). This theory does not cast free speech as a right, but rather as a principle that forbids the creation of laws that restrict speech on certain grounds. In the Hohfeldian analysis (Hohfeld 1917), such a principle may be understood as an immunity rather than a claim-right (Scanlon 2013: 402). Finally, some “minimalists” (to use a designation in Cohen 1993) favor legal protection for speech principally in response to government malice, corruption, and incompetence (see Schauer 1982; Epstein 1992; Leiter 2016). Such theorists need not recognize any fundamental moral right, either.

Third, among those who do ground free speech in a natural moral right, there is scope for disagreement about how tightly the law should mirror that right (as with any right; see Buchanan 2013). It is an open question what the precise legal codification of the moral right to free speech should involve. A justified legal right to freedom of speech may not mirror the precise contours of the natural moral right to freedom of speech. A raft of instrumental concerns enters the downstream analysis of what any justified legal right should look like; hence a defensible legal right to free speech may protect more speech (or indeed less speech) than the underlying moral right that justifies it. For example, even if the moral right to free speech does not protect so-called hate speech, such speech may still merit legal protection in the final analysis (say, because it would be too risky to entrust states with the power to limit those communications).

2. Justifying Free Speech

I will now examine several of the morally significant considerations taken to justify freedom of expression. Note that while many theorists have built whole conceptions of free speech out of a single interest or value alone, pluralism in this domain remains an option. It may well be that a plurality of interests serves to justify freedom of expression, properly understood (see, influentially, Emerson 1970 and Cohen 1993).

Suppose a state bans certain books on the grounds that it does not want us to hear the messages or arguments contained within them. Such censorship seems to involve some kind of insult or disrespect to citizens—treating us like children instead of adults who have a right to make up our own minds. This insight is fundamental in the free speech tradition. On this view, the state wrongs citizens by arrogating to itself the authority to decide what messages they ought to hear. That is so even if the state thinks that the speech will cause harm. As one author puts it,

the government may not suppress speech on the ground that the speech is likely to persuade people to do something that the government considers harmful. (Strauss 1991: 335)

Why are restrictions on persuasive speech objectionable? For some scholars, the relevant wrong here is a form of disrespect for citizens’ basic capacities (Dworkin 1996: 200; Nagel 2002: 44). For others, the wrong here inheres in a violation of the kind of relationship the state should have with its people: namely, that it should always act from a view of them as autonomous, and so entitled to make up their own minds (Scanlon 1972). It would simply be incompatible with a view of ourselves as autonomous—as authors of our own lives and choices—to grant the state the authority to pre-screen which opinions, arguments, and perspectives we should be allowed to think through, allowing us access only to those of which it approves.

This position is especially well-suited to justify some central doctrines of First Amendment jurisprudence. First, it justifies the claim that freedom of expression especially implicates the purposes with which the state acts. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons why the state might restrict speech (so-called “time, place, and manner” restrictions)—for example, noise curfews in residential neighborhoods, which do not raise serious free speech concerns. Yet when the state restricts speech with the purpose of manipulating the communicative environment and controlling the views to which citizens are exposed, free speech is directly affronted (Rubenfeld 2001; Alexander 2005; Kramer 2021). To be sure, purposes are not all that matter for free speech theory. For example, the chilling effects of otherwise justified speech regulations (discussed below) are seldom intended. But they undoubtedly matter.

Second, this view justifies the related doctrines of content neutrality and viewpoint neutrality (see G. Stone 1983 and 1987) . Content neutrality is violated when the state bans discussion of certain topics (“no discussion of abortion”), whereas viewpoint neutrality is violated when the state bans advocacy of certain views (“no pro-choice views may be expressed”). Both affront free speech, though viewpoint-discrimination is especially egregious and so even harder to justify. While listener autonomy theories are not the only theories that can ground these commitments, they are in a strong position to account for their plausibility. Note that while these doctrines are central to the American approach to free speech, they are less central to other states’ jurisprudence (see A. Stone 2017).

Third, this approach helps us see that free speech is potentially implicated whenever the state seeks to control our thoughts and the processes through which we form beliefs. Consider an attempt to ban Marx’s Capital . As Marx is deceased, he is probably not wronged through such censorship. But even if one held idiosyncratic views about posthumous rights, such that Marx were wronged, it would be curious to think this was the central objection to such censorship. Those with the gravest complaint would be the living adults who have the prerogative to read the book and make up their own minds about it. Indeed free speech may even be implicated if the state banned watching sunsets or playing video games on the grounds that is disapproved of the thoughts to which such experiences might give rise (Alexander 2005: 8–9; Kramer 2021: 22).

These arguments emphasize the noninstrumental imperative of respecting listener autonomy. But there is an instrumental version of the view. Our autonomy interests are not merely respected by free speech; they are promoted by an environment in which we learn what others have to say. Our interests in access to information is served by exposure to a wide range of viewpoints about both empirical and normative issues (Cohen 1993: 229), which help us reflect on what goals to choose and how best to pursue them. These informational interests are monumental. As Raz suggests, if we had to choose whether to express our own views on some question, or listen to the rest of humanity’s views on that question, we would choose the latter; it is our interest as listeners in the public good of a vibrant public discourse that, he thinks, centrally justifies free speech (1991).

Such an interest in acquiring justified beliefs, or in accessing truth, can be defended as part of a fully consequentialist political philosophy. J.S. Mill famously defends free speech instrumentally, appealing to its epistemic benefits in On Liberty . Mill believes that, given our fallibility, we should routinely keep an open mind as to whether a seemingly false view may actually be true, or at least contain some valuable grain of truth. And even where a proposition is manifestly false, there is value in allowing its expression so that we can better apprehend why we take it to be false (1859: chapter 2), enabled through discursive conflict (cf. Simpson 2021). Mill’s argument focuses especially on the benefits to audiences:

It is is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. (1859: chapter 2, p. 94)

These views are sometimes associated with the idea of a “marketplace of ideas”, whereby the open clash of views inevitably leads to the correct ones winning out in debate. Few in the contemporary literature holds such a strong teleological thesis about the consequences of unrestricted debate (e.g., see Brietzke 1997; cf. Volokh 2011). Much evidence from behavioral economics and social psychology, as well as insights about epistemic injustice from feminist epistemology, strongly suggest that human beings’ rational powers are seriously limited. Smug confidence in the marketplace of ideas belies this. Yet it is doubtful that Mill held such a strong teleological thesis (Gordon 1997). Mill’s point was not that unrestricted discussion necessarily leads people to acquire the truth. Rather, it is simply the best mechanism available for ascertaining the truth, relative to alternatives in which some arbiter declares what he sees as true and suppresses what he sees as false (see also Leiter 2016).

Note that Mill’s views on free speech in chapter 2 in On Liberty are not simply the application of the general liberty principle defended in chapter 1 of that work; his view is not that speech is anodyne and therefore seldom runs afoul of the harm principle. The reason a separate argument is necessary in chapter 2 is precisely that he is carving out a partial qualification of the harm principle for speech (on this issue see Jacobson 2000, Schauer 2011b, and Turner 2014). On Mill’s view, plenty of harmful speech should still be allowed. Imminently dangerous speech, where there is no time for discussion before harm eventuates, may be restricted; but where there is time for discussion, it must be allowed. Hence Mill’s famous example that vociferous criticism of corn dealers as

starvers of the poor…ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer. (1859: chapter 3, p. 100)

The point is not that such speech is harmless; it’s that the instrumental benefits of permitting its expressions—and exposing its falsehood through public argument—justify the (remaining) costs.

Many authors have unsurprisingly argued that free speech is justified by our interests as speakers . This family of arguments emphasizes the role of speech in the development and exercise of our personal autonomy—our capacity to be the reflective authors of our own lives (Baker 1989; Redish 1982; Rawls 2005). Here an emphasis on freedom of expression is apt; we have an “expressive interest” (Cohen 1993: 224) in declaring our views—about the good life, about justice, about our identity, and about other aspects of the truth as we see it.

Our interests in self-expression may not always depend on the availability of a willing audience; we may have interests simply in shouting from the rooftops to declare who we are and what we believe, regardless of who else hears us. Hence communications to oneself—for example, in a diary or journal—are plausibly protected from interference (Redish 1992: 30–1; Shiffrin 2014: 83, 93; Kramer 2021: 23).

Yet we also have distinctive interests in sharing what we think with others. Part of how we develop our conceptions of the good life, forming judgments about how to live, is precisely through talking through the matter with others. This “deliberative interest” in directly served through opportunities to tell others what we think, so that we can learn from their feedback (Cohen 1993). Such encounters also offer opportunities to persuade others to adopt our views, and indeed to learn through such discussions who else already shares our views (Raz 1991).

Speech also seems like a central way in which we develop our capacities. This, too, is central to J.S. Mill’s defense of free speech, enabling people to explore different perspectives and points of view (1859). Hence it seems that when children engage in speech, to figure out what they think and to use their imagination to try out different ways of being in the world, they are directly engaging this interest. That explains the intuition that children, and not just adults, merit at least some protection under a principle of freedom of speech.

Note that while it is common to refer to speaker autonomy , we could simply refer to speakers’ capacities. Some political liberals hold that an emphasis on autonomy is objectionably Kantian or otherwise perfectionist, valorizing autonomy as a comprehensive moral ideal in a manner that is inappropriate for a liberal state (Cohen 1993: 229; Quong 2011). For such theorists, an undue emphasis on autonomy is incompatible with ideals of liberal neutrality toward different comprehensive conceptions of the good life (though cf. Shiffrin 2014: 81).

If free speech is justified by the importance of our interests in expressing ourselves, this justifies negative duties to refrain from interfering with speakers without adequate justification. Just as with listener theories, a strong presumption against content-based restrictions, and especially against viewpoint discrimination, is a clear requirement of the view. For the state to restrict citizens’ speech on the grounds that it disfavors what they have to say would affront the equal freedom of citizens. Imagine the state were to disallow the expression of Muslim or Jewish views, but allow the expression of Christian views. This would plainly transgress the right to freedom of expression, by valuing certain speakers’ interests in expressing themselves over others.

Many arguments for the right to free speech center on its special significance for democracy (Cohen 1993; Heinze 2016: Heyman 2009; Sunstein 1993; Weinstein 2011; Post 1991, 2009, 2011). It is possible to defend free speech on the noninstrumental ground that it is necessary to respect agents as democratic citizens. To restrict citizens’ speech is to disrespect their status as free and equal moral agents, who have a moral right to debate and decide the law for themselves (Rawls 2005).

Alternatively (or additionally), one can defend free speech on the instrumental ground that free speech promotes democracy, or whatever values democracy is meant to serve. So, for example, suppose the purpose of democracy is the republican one of establishing a state of non-domination between relationally egalitarian citizens; free speech can be defended as promoting that relation (Whitten 2022; Bonotti & Seglow 2022). Or suppose that democracy is valuable because of its role in promoting just outcomes (Arneson 2009) or tending to track those outcomes in a manner than is publicly justifiable (Estlund 2008) or is otherwise epistemically valuable (Landemore 2013).

Perhaps free speech doesn’t merely respect or promote democracy; another framing is that it is constitutive of it (Meiklejohn 1948, 1960; Heinze 2016). As Rawls says: “to restrict or suppress free political speech…always implies at least a partial suspension of democracy” (2005: 254). On this view, to be committed to democracy just is , in part, to be committed to free speech. Deliberative democrats famously contend that voting merely punctuates a larger process defined by a commitment to open deliberation among free and equal citizens (Gutmann & Thompson 2008). Such an unrestricted discussion is marked not by considerations of instrumental rationality and market forces, but rather, as Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument” (1992 [1996: 37]). One crucial way in which free speech might be constitutive of democracy is if it serves as a legitimation condition . On this view, without a process of open public discourse, the outcomes of the democratic decision-making process lack legitimacy (Dworkin 2009, Brettschneider 2012: 75–78, Cohen 1997, and Heinze 2016).

Those who justify free speech on democratic grounds may view this as a special application of a more general insight. For example, Scanlon’s listener theory (discussed above) contends that the state must always respect its citizens as capable of making up their own minds (1972)—a position with clear democratic implications. Likewise, Baker is adamant that both free speech and democracy are justified by the same underlying value of autonomy (2009). And while Rawls sees the democratic role of free speech as worthy of emphasis, he is clear that free speech is one of several basic liberties that enable the development and exercise of our moral powers: our capacities for a sense of justice and for the rational pursuit a lifeplan (2005). In this way, many theorists see the continuity between free speech and our broader interests as moral agents as a virtue, not a drawback (e.g., Kendrick 2017).

Even so, some democracy theorists hold that democracy has a special role in a theory of free speech, such that political speech in particular merits special protection (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 154ff). One consequence of such views is that contributions to public discourse on political questions merit greater protection under the law (Sunstein 1993; cf. Cohen 1993: 227; Alexander 2005: 137–8). For some scholars, this may reflect instrumental anxieties about the special danger that the state will restrict the political speech of opponents and dissenters. But for others, an emphasis on political speech seems to reflect a normative claim that such speech is genuinely of greater significance, meriting greater protection, than other kinds of speech.

While conventional in the free speech literature, it is artificial to separate out our interests as speakers, listeners, and democratic citizens. Communication, and the thinking that feeds into it and that it enables, invariably engages our interests and activities across all these capacities. This insight is central to Seana Shiffrin’s groundbreaking thinker-based theory of freedom of speech, which seeks to unify the range of considerations that have informed the traditional theories (2014). Like other theories (e.g., Scanlon 1978, Cohen 1993), Shiffrin’s theory is pluralist in the range of interests it appeals to. But it offers a unifying framework that explains why this range of interests merits protection together.

On Shiffrin’s view, freedom of speech is best understood as encompassing both freedom of communication and freedom of thought, which while logically distinct are mutually reinforcing and interdependent (Shiffrin 2014: 79). Shiffrin’s account involves several profound claims about the relation between communication and thought. A central contention is that “free speech is essential to the development, functioning, and operation of thinkers” (2014: 91). This is, in part, because we must often externalize our ideas to articulate them precisely and hold them at a distance where we can evaluate them (p. 89). It is also because we work out what we think largely by talking it through with others. Such communicative processes may be monological, but they are typically dialogical; speaker and listener interests are thereby mutually engaged in an ongoing manner that cannot be neatly disentangled, as ideas are ping-ponged back and forth. Moreover, such discussions may concern democratic politics—engaging our interests as democratic citizens—but of course they need not. Aesthetics, music, local sports, the existence of God—these all are encompassed (2014: 92–93). Pace prevailing democratic theories,

One’s thoughts about political affairs are intrinsically and ex ante no more and no less central to the human self than thoughts about one’s mortality or one’s friends. (Shiffrin 2014: 93)

The other central aspect of Shiffrin’s view appeals to the necessity of communication for successfully exercising our moral agency. Sincere communication enables us

to share needs, emotions, intentions, convictions, ambitions, desires, fantasies, disappointments, and judgments. Thereby, we are enabled to form and execute complex cooperative plans, to understand one another, to appreciate and negotiate around our differences. (2014: 1)

Without clear and precise communication of the sort that only speech can provide, we cannot cooperate to discharge our collective obligations. Nor can we exercise our normative powers (such as consenting, waiving, or promising). Our moral agency thus depends upon protected channels through which we can relay our sincere thoughts to one another. The central role of free speech is to protect those channels, by ensuring agents are free to share what they are thinking without fear of sanction.

The thinker-based view has wide-ranging normative implications. For example, by emphasizing the continuity of speech and thought (a connection also noted in Macklem 2006 and Gilmore 2011), Shiffrin’s view powerfully explains the First Amendment doctrine that compelled speech also constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. Traditional listener- and speaker-focused theories seemingly cannot explain what is fundamentally objectionable with forcing someone to declare a commitment to something, as with children compelled to pledge allegiance to the American flag ( West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 1943). “What seems most troubling about the compelled pledge”, Shiffrin writes,

is that the motive behind the regulation, and its possible effect, is to interfere with the autonomous thought processes of the compelled speaker. (2014: 94)

Further, Shiffrin’s view explains why a concern for free speech does not merely correlate to negative duties not to interfere with expression; it also supports positive responsibilities on the part of the state to educate citizens, encouraging and supporting their development and exercise as thinking beings (2014: 107).

Consider briefly one final family of free speech theories, which appeal to the role of toleration or self-restraint. On one argument, freedom of speech is important because it develops our character as liberal citizens, helping us tame our illiberal impulses. The underlying idea of Lee Bollinger’s view is that liberalism is difficult; we recurrently face temptation to punish those who hold contrary views. Freedom of speech helps us to practice the general ethos of toleration in a manner than fortifies our liberal convictions (1986). Deeply offensive speech, like pro-Nazi speech, is protected precisely because toleration in these enormously difficult cases promotes “a general social ethic” of toleration more generally (1986: 248), thereby restraining unjust exercises of state power overall. This consequentialist argument treats the protection of offensive speech not as a tricky borderline case, but as “integral to the central functions of the principle of free speech” (1986: 133). It is precisely because tolerating evil speech involves “extraordinary self-restraint” (1986: 10) that it works its salutary effects on society generally.

The idea of self-restraint arises, too, in Matthew Kramer’s recent defense of free speech. Like listener theories, Kramer’s strongly deontological theory condemns censorship aimed at protecting audiences from exposure to misguided views. At the core of his theory is the thesis that the state’s paramount moral responsibility is to furnish the social conditions that serve the development and maintenance of citizens’ self-respect and respect for others. The achievement of such an ethically resilient citizenry, on Kramer’s view, has the effect of neutering the harmfulness of countless harmful communications. “Securely in a position of ethical strength”, the state “can treat the wares of pornographers and the maunderings of bigots as execrable chirps that are to be endured with contempt” (Kramer 2021: 147). In contrast, in a society where the state has failed to do its duty of inculcating a robust liberal-egalitarian ethos, the communication of illiberal creeds may well pose a substantial threat. Yet for the state then to react by banning such speech is

overweening because with them the system’s officials take control of communications that should have been defused (through the system’s fulfillment of its moral obligations) without prohibitory or preventative impositions. (2021: 147)

(One might agree with Kramer that this is so, but diverge by arguing that the state—having failed in its initial duty—ought to take measures to prevent the harms that flow from that failure.)

These theories are striking in that they assume that a chief task of free speech theory is to explain why harmful speech ought to be protected. This is in contrast to those who think that the chief task of free speech theory is to explain our interests in communicating with others, treating the further issue of whether (wrongfully) harmful communications should be protected as an open question, with different reasonable answers available (Kendrick 2017). In this way, toleration theories—alongside a lot of philosophical work on free speech—seem designed to vindicate the demanding American legal position on free speech, one unshared by virtually all other liberal democracies.

One final family of arguments for free speech appeals to the danger of granting the state powers it may abuse. On this view, we protect free speech chiefly because if we didn’t, it would be far easier for the state to silence its political opponents and enact unjust policies. On this view, a state with censorial powers is likely to abuse them. As Richard Epstein notes, focusing on the American case,

the entire structure of federalism, divided government, and the system of checks and balances at the federal level shows that the theme of distrust has worked itself into the warp and woof of our constitutional structure.

“The protection of speech”, he writes, “…should be read in light of these political concerns” (Epstein 1992: 49).

This view is not merely a restatement of the democracy theory; it does not affirm free speech as an element of valuable self-governance. Nor does it reduce to the uncontroversial thought that citizens need freedom of speech to check the behavior of fallible government agents (Blasi 1977). One need not imagine human beings to be particularly sinister to insist (as democracy theorists do) that the decisions of those entrusted with great power be subject to public discussion and scrutiny. The argument under consideration here is more pessimistic about human nature. It is an argument about the slippery slope that we create even when enacting (otherwise justified) speech restrictions; we set an unacceptable precedent for future conduct by the state (see Schauer 1985). While this argument is theoretical, there is clearly historical evidence for it, as in the manifold cases in which bans on dangerous sedition were used to suppress legitimate war protest. (For a sweeping canonical study of the uses and abuses of speech regulations during wartime, with a focus on U.S. history, see G. Stone 2004.)

These instrumental concerns could potentially justify the legal protection for free speech. But they do not to attempt to justify why we should care about free speech as a positive moral ideal (Shiffrin 2014: 83n); they are, in Cohen’s helpful terminology, “minimalist” rather than “maximalist” (Cohen 1993: 210). Accordingly, they cannot explain why free speech is something that even the most trustworthy, morally competent administrations, with little risk of corruption or degeneration, ought to respect. Of course, minimalists will deny that accounting for speech’s positive value is a requirement of a theory of free speech, and that critiquing them for this omission begs the question.

Pluralists may see instrumental concerns as valuably supplementing or qualifying noninstrumental views. For example, instrumental concerns may play a role in justifying deviations between the moral right to free communication, on the one hand, and a properly specified legal right to free communication, on the other. Suppose that there is no moral right to engage in certain forms of harmful expression (such as hate speech), and that there is in fact a moral duty to refrain from such expression. Even so, it does not follow automatically that such a right ought to be legally enforced. Concerns about the dangers of granting the state such power plausibly militate against the enforcement of at least some of our communicative duties—at least in those jurisdictions that lack robust and competently administered liberal-democratic safeguards.

This entry has canvassed a range of views about what justifies freedom of expression, with particular attention to theories that conceive free speech as a natural moral right. Clearly, the proponents of such views believe that they succeed in this justificatory effort. But others dissent, doubting that the case for a bona fide moral right to free speech comes through. Let us briefly note the nature of this challenge from free speech skeptics , exploring a prominent line of reply.

The challenge from skeptics is generally understood as that of showing that free speech is a special right . As Leslie Kendrick notes,

the term “special right” generally requires that a special right be entirely distinct from other rights and activities and that it receive a very high degree of protection. (2017: 90)

(Note that this usage is not to be confused from the alternative usage of “special right”, referring to conditional rights arising out of particular relationships; see Hart 1955.)

Take each aspect in turn. First, to vindicate free speech as a special right, it must serve some distinctive value or interest (Schauer 2015). Suppose free speech were just an implication of a general principle not to interfere in people’s liberty without justification. As Joel Feinberg puts it, “Liberty should be the norm; coercion always needs some special justification” (1984: 9). In such a case, then while there still might be contingent, historical reasons to single speech out in law as worthy of protection (Alexander 2005: 186), such reasons would not track anything especially distinctive about speech as an underlying moral matter. Second, to count as a special right, free speech must be robust in what it protects, such that only a compelling justification can override it (Dworkin 2013: 131). This captures the conviction, prominent among American constitutional theorists, that “any robust free speech principle must protect at least some harmful speech despite the harm it may cause” (Schauer 2011b: 81; see also Schauer 1982).

If the task of justifying a moral right to free speech requires surmounting both hurdles, it is a tall order. Skeptics about a special right to free speech doubt that the order can be met, and so deny that a natural moral right to freedom of expression can be justified (Schauer 2015; Alexander & Horton 1983; Alexander 2005; Husak 1985). But these theorists may be demanding too much (Kendrick 2017). Start with the claim that free speech must be distinctive. We can accept that free speech be more than simply one implication of a general presumption of liberty. But need it be wholly distinctive? Consider the thesis that free speech is justified by our autonomy interests—interests that justify other rights such as freedom of religion and association. Is it a problem if free speech is justified by interests that are continuous with, or overlap with, interests that justify other rights? Pace the free speech skeptics, maybe not. So long as such claims deserve special recognition, and are worth distinguishing by name, this may be enough (Kendrick 2017: 101). Many of the views canvassed above share normative bases with other important rights. For example, Rawls is clear that he thinks all the basic liberties constitute

essential social conditions for the adequate development and full exercise of the two powers of moral personality over a complete life. (Rawls 2005: 293)

The debate, then, is whether such a shared basis is a theoretical virtue (or at least theoretically unproblematic) or whether it is a theoretical vice, as the skeptics avow.

As for the claim that free speech must be robust, protecting harmful speech, “it is not necessary for a free speech right to protect harmful speech in order for it to be called a free speech right” (Kendrick 2017: 102). We do not tend to think that religious liberty must protect harmful religious activities for it to count as a special right. So it would be strange to insist that the right to free speech must meet this burden to count as a special right. Most of the theorists mentioned above take themselves to be offering views that protect quite a lot of harmful speech. Yet we can question whether this feature is a necessary component of their views, or whether we could imagine variations without this result.

3. Justifying Speech Restrictions

When, and why, can restrictions on speech be justified? It is common in public debate on free speech to hear the provocative claim that free speech is absolute . But the plausibility of such a claim depends on what is exactly meant by it. If understood to mean that no communications between humans can ever be restricted, such a view is held by no one in the philosophical debate. When I threaten to kill you unless you hand me your money; when I offer to bribe the security guard to let me access the bank vault; when I disclose insider information that the company in which you’re heavily invested is about to go bust; when I defame you by falsely posting online that you’re a child abuser; when I endanger you by labeling a drug as safe despite its potentially fatal side-effects; when I reveal your whereabouts to assist a murderer intent on killing you—across all these cases, communications may be uncontroversially restricted. But there are different views as to why.

To help organize such views, consider a set of distinctions influentially defended by Schauer (from 1982 onward). The first category involves uncovered speech : speech that does not even presumptively fall within the scope of a principle of free expression. Many of the speech-acts just canvassed, such as the speech involved in making a threat or insider training, plausibly count as uncovered speech. As the U.S. Supreme Court has said of fighting words (e.g., insults calculated to provoke a street fight),

such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. ( Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 1942)

The general idea here is that some speech simply has negligible—and often no —value as free speech, in light of its utter disconnection from the values that justify free speech in the first place. (For discussion of so-called “low-value speech” in the U.S. context, see Sunstein 1989 and Lakier 2015.) Accordingly, when such low-value speech is harmful, it is particularly easy to justify its curtailment. Hence the Court’s view that “the prevention and punishment of [this speech] have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem”. For legislation restricting such speech, the U.S. Supreme Court applies a “rational basis” test, which is very easy to meet, as it simply asks whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. (Note that it is widely held that it would still be impermissible to selectively ban low-value speech on a viewpoint-discriminatory basis—e.g., if a state only banned fighting words from left-wing activists while allowing them from right-wing activists.)

Schauer’s next category concerns speech that is covered but unprotected . This is speech that engages the values that underpin free speech; yet the countervailing harm of the speech justifies its restriction. In such cases, while there is real value in such expression as free speech, that value is outweighed by competing normative concerns (or even, as we will see below, on behalf of the very values that underpin free speech). In U.S. constitutional jurisprudence, this category encompasses those extremely rare cases in which restrictions on political speech pass the “strict scrutiny” test, whereby narrow restrictions on high-value speech can be justified due to the compelling state interests thereby served. Consider Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project 2010, in which the Court held that an NGO’s legal advice to a terrorist organization on how to pursue peaceful legal channels were legitimately criminalized under a counter-terrorism statute. While such speech had value as free speech (at least on one interpretation of this contested ruling), the imperative of counter-terrorism justified its restriction. (Arguably, commercial speech, while sometimes called low-value speech by scholars, falls into the covered but unprotected category. Under U.S. law, legislation restricting it receives “intermediate scrutiny” by courts—requiring restrictions to be narrowly drawn to advance a substantial government interest. Such a test suggests that commercial speech has bona fide free-speech value, making it harder to justify regulations on it than regulations on genuinely low-value speech like fighting words. It simply doesn’t have as much free-speech value as categories like political speech, religious speech, or press speech, all of which trigger the strict scrutiny test when restricted.)

As a philosophical matter, we can reasonably disagree about what speech qualifies as covered but unprotected (and need not treat the verdicts of the U.S. Supreme Court as philosophically decisive). For example, consider politically-inflected hate speech, which advances repugnant ideas about the inferior status of certain groups. One could concur that there is substantial free-speech value in such expression, just because it involves the sincere expression of views about central questions of politics and justice (however misguided the views doubtlessly are). Yet one could nevertheless hold that such speech should not be protected in virtue of the substantial harms to which it can lead. In such cases, the free-speech value is outweighed. Many scholars who defend the permissibility of legal restrictions on hate speech hold such a view (e.g., Parekh 2012; Waldron 2012). (More radically, one could hold that such speech’s value is corrupted by its evil, such that it qualifies as genuinely low-value; Howard 2019a.)

The final category of speech encompasses expression that is covered and protected . To declare that speech is protected just is to conclude that it is immune from restriction. A preponderance of human communications fall into this category. This does not mean that such speech can never be regulated ; content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations (e.g., prohibiting loud nighttime protests) can certainly be justified (G. Stone 1987). But such regulations must not be viewpoint discriminatory; they must apply even-handedly across all forms of protected speech.

Schauer’s taxonomy offers a useful organizing framework for how we should think about different forms of speech. Where does it leave the claim that free speech is absolute? The possibility of speech that is covered but unprotected suggests that free speech should sometimes be restricted on account of rival normative concerns. Of course, one could contend that such a category, while logically possible, is substantively an empty set; such a position would involve some kind of absoluteness about free speech (holding that where free-speech values are engaged by expression, no countervailing values can ever be weighty enough to override them). Such a position would be absolutist in a certain sense while granting the permissibility of restrictions on speech that do not engage the free-speech values. (For a recent critique of Schauer’s framework, arguing that governmental designation of some speech as low-value is incompatible with the very ideal of free speech, see Kramer 2021: 31.)

In what follows, this entry will focus on Schauer’s second category: speech that is covered by a free speech principle, but is nevertheless unprotected because of the harms it causes. How do we determine what speech falls into this category? How, in other words, do we determine the limits of free speech? Unsurprisingly, this is where most of the controversy lies.

Most legal systems that protect free speech recognize that the right has limits. Consider, for example, international human rights law, which emphatically protects the freedom of speech as a fundamental human right while also affirming specific restrictions on certain seriously harmful speech. Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights declares that “[e]veryone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds”—but then immediately notes that this right “carries with it special duties and responsibilities”. The subsequent ICCPR article proceeds to endorse legal restrictions on “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”, as well as speech constituting “propaganda for war” (ICCPR). While such restrictions would plainly be struck down as unconstitutional affronts to free speech in the U.S., this more restrictive approach prevails in most liberal democracies’ treatment of harmful speech.

Set aside the legal issue for now. How should we think about how to determine the limits of the moral right free speech? Those seeking to justify limits on speech tend to appeal to one of two strategies (Howard and Simpson forthcoming). The first strategy appeals to the importance of balancing free speech against other moral values when they come into conflict. This strategy involves external limits on free speech. (The next strategy, discussed below, invokes free speech itself, or the values that justify it, as limit-setting rationales; it thus involves internal limits on free speech.)

A balancing approach recognizes a moral conflict between unfettered communication and external values. Consider again the case of hate speech, understood as expression that attacks members of socially vulnerable groups as inferior or dangerous. On all of the theories canvassed above, there are grounds for thinking that restrictions on hate speech are prima facie in violation of the moral right to free speech. Banning hate speech to prevent people from hearing ideas that might incline them to bigotry plainly seems to disrespect listener autonomy. Further, even when speakers are expressing prejudiced views, they are still engaging their autonomous faculties. Certainly, they are expressing views on questions of public political concern, even false ones. And as thinkers they are engaged in the communication of sincere testimony to others. On many of the leading theories, the values underpinning free speech seem to be militate against bans on hate speech.

Even so, other values matter. Consider, for example, the value of upholding the equal dignity of all citizens. A central insight of critical race theory is that public expressions of white supremacy, for example, attack and undermine that equal dignity (Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw 1993). On Jeremy Waldron’s view (2012), hate speech is best understood as a form of group defamation, launching spurious attacks on others’ reputations and thereby undermining their standing as respected equals in their own community (relatedly, see Beauharnais v. Illinois 1952).

Countries that ban hate speech, accordingly, are plausibly understood not as opposed to free speech, but as recognizing the importance that it be balanced when conflicting with other values. Such balancing can be understood in different ways. In European human rights law, for example, the relevant idea is that the right to free speech is balanced against other rights ; the relevant task, accordingly, is to specify what counts as a proportionate balance between these rights (see Alexy 2003; J. Greene 2021).

For others, the very idea of balancing rights undermines their deontic character. This alternative framing holds that the balancing occurs before we specify what rights are; on this view, we balance interests against each other, and only once we’ve undertaken that balancing do we proceed to define what our rights protect. As Scanlon puts it,

The only balancing is balancing of interests. Rights are not balanced, but are defined, or redefined, in the light of the balance of interests and of empirical facts about how these interests can best be protected. (2008: 78)

This balancing need not come in the form of some crude consequentialism; otherwise it would be acceptable to limit the rights of the few to secure trivial benefits for the many. On a contractualist moral theory such as Scanlon’s, the test is to assess the strength of any given individual’s reason to engage in (or access) the speech, against the strength of any given individual’s reason to oppose it.

Note that those who engage in balancing need not give up on the idea of viewpoint neutrality; they can accept that, as a general principle, the state should not restrict speech on the grounds that it disapproves of its message and dislikes that others will hear it. The point, instead, is that this commitment is defeasible; it is possible to be overridden.

One final comment is apt. Those who are keen to balance free speech against other values tend to be motivated by the concern that speech can cause harm, either directly or indirectly (on this distinction, see Schauer 1993). But to justify restrictions on speech, it is not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary) to show that such speech imposes or risks imposing harm. The crucial point is that the speech is wrongful (or, perhaps, wrongfully harmful or risky) , breaching a moral duty that speakers owe to others. Yet very few in the free speech literature think that the mere offensiveness of speech is sufficient to justify restrictions on it. Even Joel Feinberg, who thinks offensiveness can sometimes be grounds for restricting conduct, makes a sweeping exception for

[e]xpressions of opinion, especially about matters of public policy, but also about matters of empirical fact, and about historical, scientific, theological, philosophical, political, and moral questions. (1985: 44)

And in many cases, offensive speech may be actively salutary, as when racists are offended by defenses of racial equality (Waldron 1987). Accordingly, despite how large it looms in public debate, discussion of offensive speech will not play a major role in the discussion here.

We saw that one way to justify limits on free speech is to balance it against other values. On that approach, free speech is externally constrained. A second approach, in contrast, is internally constrained. On this approach, the very values that justify free speech themselves determine its own limits. This is a revisionist approach to free speech since, unlike orthodox thinking, it contends that a commitment to free speech values can counterintuitively support the restriction of speech—a surprising inversion of traditional thinking on the topic (see Howard and Simpson forthcoming). This move—justifying restrictions on speech by appealing to the values that underpin free speech—is now prevalent in the philosophical literature (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 1ff).

Consider, for example, the claim that free speech is justified by concerns of listener autonomy. On such a view, as we saw above, autonomous citizens have interests in exposure to a wide range of viewpoints, so that they can decide for themselves what to believe. But many have pointed out that this is not autonomous citizens’ only interest; they also have interests in not getting murdered by those incited by incendiary speakers (Amdur 1980). Likewise, insofar as being targeted by hate speech undermines the exercise of one’s autonomous capacities, appeal to the underlying value of autonomy could well support restrictions on such speech (Brison 1998; see also Brink 2001). What’s more, if our interests as listeners in acquiring accurate information is undermined by fraudulent information, then restrictions on such information could well be compatible with our status as autonomous; this was one of the insights that led Scanlon to complicate his theory of free speech (1978).

Or consider the theory that free speech is justified because of its role in enabling autonomous speakers to express themselves. But as Japa Pallikkathayil has argued, some speech can intimidate its audiences into staying silent (as with some hate speech), out of fear for what will happen if they speak up (Pallikkathayil 2020). In principle, then, restrictions on hate speech may serve to support the value of speaker expression, rather than undermine it (see also Langton 2018; Maitra 2009; Maitra & McGowan 2007; and Matsuda 1989: 2337). Indeed, among the most prominent claims in feminist critiques of pornography is precisely that it silences women—not merely through its (perlocutionary) effects in inspiring rape, but more insidiously through its (illocutionary) effects in altering the force of the word “no” (see MacKinnon 1984; Langton 1993; and West 204 [2022]; McGowan 2003 and 2019; cf. Kramer 2021, pp. 160ff).

Now consider democracy theories. On the one hand, democracy theorists are adamant that citizens should be free to discuss any proposals, even the destruction of democracy itself (e.g., Meiklejohn 1948: 65–66). On the other hand, it isn’t obvious why citizens’ duties as democratic citizens could not set a limit to their democratic speech rights (Howard 2019a). The Nazi propagandist Goebbels is said to have remarked:

This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. (as quoted in Fox & Nolte 1995: 1)

But it is not clear why this is necessarily so. Why should we insist on a conception of democracy that contains a self-destruct mechanism? Merely stipulating that democracy requires this is not enough (see A. Greene and Simpson 2017).

Finally, consider Shiffrin’s thinker-based theory. Shiffrin’s view is especially well-placed to explain why varieties of harmful communications are protected speech; what the theory values is the sincere transmission of veridical testimony, whereby speakers disclose what they genuinely believe to others, even if what they believe is wrongheaded and dangerous. Yet because the sincere testimony of thinkers is what qualifies some communication for protection, Shiffrin is adamant that lying falls outside the protective ambit of freedom of expression (2014) This, then, sets an internal limit on her own theory (even if she herself disfavors all lies’ outright prohibition for reasons of tolerance). The claim that lying falls outside the protective ambit of free speech is itself a recurrent suggestion in the literature (Strauss 1991: 355; Brown 2023). In an era of rampant disinformation, this internal limit is of substantial practical significance.

Suppose the moral right (or principle) of free speech is limited, as most think, such that not all communications fall within its protective ambit (either for external reasons, internal reasons, or both). Even so, it does not follow that laws banning such unprotected speech can be justified all-things-considered. Further moral tests must be passed before any particular policy restricting speech can be justified. This sub-section focuses on the requirement that speech restrictions be proportionate .

The idea that laws implicating fundamental rights must be proportionate is central in many jurisdictions’ constitutional law, as well as in the international law of human rights. As a representative example, consider the specification of proportionality offered by the Supreme Court of Canada:

First, the measures adopted must be carefully designed to achieve the objective in question. They must not be arbitrary, unfair, or based on irrational considerations. In short, they must be rationally connected to the objective. Second, the means, even if rationally connected to the objective in this first sense, should impair “as little as possible” the right or freedom in question[…] Third, there must be a proportionality between the effects of the measures which are responsible for limiting the Charter right or freedom, and the objective which has been identified as of “sufficient importance” ( R v. Oakes 1986).

It is this third element (often called “proportionality stricto sensu ”) on which we will concentrate here; this is the focused sense of proportionality that roughly tracks how the term is used in the philosophical literatures on defensive harm and war, as well as (with some relevant differences) criminal punishment. (The strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny tests of U.S. constitutional law are arguably variations of the proportionality test; but set aside this complication for now as it distracts from the core philosophical issues. For relevant legal discussion, see Tsesis 2020.)

Proportionality, in the strict sense, concerns the relation between the costs or harms imposed by some measure and the benefits that the measure is designed to secure. The organizing distinction in recent philosophical literature (albeit largely missing in the literature on free speech) is one between narrow proportionality and wide proportionality . While there are different ways to cut up the terrain between these terms, let us stipulatively define them as follows. An interference is narrowly proportionate just in case the intended target of the interference is liable to bear the costs of that interference. An interference is widely proportionate just in case the collateral costs that the interference unintentionally imposes on others can be justified. (This distinction largely follows the literature in just war theory and the ethics of defensive force; see McMahan 2009.) While the distinction is historically absent from free speech theory, it has powerful payoffs in helping to structure this chaotic debate (as argued in Howard 2019a).

So start with the idea that restrictions on communication must be narrowly proportionate . For a restriction to be narrowly proportionate, those whose communications are restricted must be liable to bear their costs, such that they are not wronged by their imposition. One standard way to be liable to bear certain costs is to have a moral duty to bear them (Tadros 2012). So, for example, if speakers have a moral duty to refrain from libel, hate speech, or some other form of harmful speech, they are liable to bear at least some costs involved in the enforcement of that duty. Those costs cannot be unlimited; a policy of executing hate speakers could not plausibly be justified. Typically, in both defensive and punitive contexts, wrongdoers’ liability is determined by their culpability, the severity of their wrong, or some combination of the two. While it is difficult to say in the abstract what the precise maximal cost ceiling is for any given restriction, as it depends hugely on the details, the point is simply that there is some ceiling above which a speech restriction (like any restriction) imposes unacceptably high costs, even on wrongdoers.

Second, for a speech restriction to be justified, we must also show that it would be widely proportionate . Suppose a speaker is liable to bear the costs of some policy restricting her communication, such that she is not wronged by its imposition. It may be that the collateral costs of such a policy would render it unacceptable. One set of costs is chilling effects , the “overdeterrence of benign conduct that occurs incidentally to a law’s legitimate purpose or scope” (Kendrick 2013: 1649). The core idea is that laws targeting unprotected, legitimately proscribed expression may nevertheless end up having a deleterious impact on protected expression. This is because laws are often vague, overbroad, and in any case are likely to be misapplied by fallible officials (Schauer 1978: 699).

Note that if a speech restriction produces chilling effects, it does not follow that the restriction should not exist at all. Rather, concern about chilling effects instead suggests that speech restrictions should be under-inclusive—restricting less speech than is actually harmful—in order to create “breathing space”, or “a buffer zone of strategic protection” (Schauer 1978: 710) for legitimate expression and so reduce unwanted self-censorship. For example, some have argued that even though speech can cause harm recklessly or negligently, we should insist on specific intent as the mens rea of speech crimes in order to reduce any chilling effects that could follow (Alexander 1995: 21–128; Schauer 1978: 707; cf. Kendrick 2013).

But chilling effects are not the only sort of collateral effects to which speech restrictions could lead. Earlier we noted the risk that states might abuse their censorial powers. This, too, could militate in favor of underinclusive speech restrictions. Or the implication could be more radical. Consider the problem that it is difficult to author restrictions on hate speech in a tightly specified way; the language involved is open-ended in a manner that enables states to exercise considerable judgment in deciding what speech-acts, in fact, count as violations (see Strossen 2018). Given the danger that the state will misuse or abuse these laws to punish legitimate speech, some might think this renders their enactment widely disproportionate. Indeed, even if the law were well-crafted and would be judiciously applied by current officials, the point is that those in the future may not be so trustworthy.

Those inclined to accept such a position might simply draw the conclusion that legislatures ought to refrain from enacting laws against hate speech. A more radical conclusion is that the legal right to free speech ought to be specified so that hate speech is constitutionally protected. In other words, we ought to give speakers a legal right to violate their moral duties, since enforcing those moral duties through law is simply too risky. By appealing to this logic, it is conceivable that the First Amendment position on hate speech could be justified all-things-considered—not because the underlying moral right to free speech protects hate speech, but because hate speech must be protected for instrumental reasons of preventing future abuses of power (Howard 2019a).

Suppose certain restrictions on harmful speech can be justified as proportionate, in both the narrow and wide senses. This is still not sufficient to justify them all-things-considered. Additionally, they must be justified as necessary . (Note that some conceptions of proportionality in human rights law encompass the necessity requirement, but this entry follows the prevailing philosophical convention by treating them as distinct.)

Why might restrictions on harmful speech be unnecessary? One of the standard claims in the free speech literature is that we should respond to harmful speech not by banning it, but by arguing back against it. Counter-speech—not censorship—is the appropriate solution. This line of reasoning is old. As John Milton put it in 1644: “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” The insistence on counter-speech as the remedy for harmful speech is similarly found, as noted above, throughout chapter 2 of Mill’s On Liberty .

For many scholars, this line of reply is justified by the fact that they think the harmful speech in question is protected by the moral right to free speech. For such scholars, counter-speech is the right response because censorship is morally off the table. For other scholars, the recourse to counter-speech has a plausible distinct rationale (although it is seldom articulated): its possibility renders legal restrictions unnecessary. And because it is objectionable to use gratuitous coercion, legal restrictions are therefore impermissible (Howard 2019a). Such a view could plausibly justify Mill’s aforementioned analysis in the corn dealer example, whereby censorship is permissible but only when there’s no time for counter-speech—a view that is also endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

Whether this argument succeeds depends upon a wide range of further assumptions—about the comparable effectiveness of counter-speech relative to law; about the burdens that counter-speech imposes on prospective counter-speakers. Supposing that the argument succeeds, it invites a range of further normative questions about the ethics of counter-speech. For example, it is important who has the duty to engage in counter-speech, who its intended audience is, and what specific forms the counter-speech ought to take—especially in order to maximize its persuasive effectiveness (Brettschneider 2012; Cepollaro, Lepoutre, & Simpson 2023; Howard 2021b; Lepoutre 2021; Badano & Nuti 2017). It is also important to ask questions about the moral limits of counter-speech. For example, insofar as publicly shaming wrongful speakers has become a prominent form of counter-speech, it is crucial to interrogate its permissibility (e.g., Billingham and Parr 2020).

This final section canvasses the young philosophical debate concerning freedom of speech on the internet. With some important exceptions (e.g., Barendt 2005: 451ff), this issue has only recently accelerated (for an excellent edited collection, see Brison & Gelber 2019). There are many normative questions to be asked about the moral rights and obligations of internet platforms. Here are three. First, do internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users? Second, do internet platforms have moral duties to restrict (or at least refrain from amplifying) harmful speech posted by their users? And finally, if platforms do indeed have moral duties to restrict harmful speech, should those duties be legally enforced?

The reference to internet platforms , is a deliberate focus on large-scale social media platforms, through which people can discover and publicly share user-generated content. We set aside other entities such as search engines (Whitney & Simpson 2019), important though they are. That is simply because the central political controversies, on which philosophical input is most urgent, concern the large social-media platforms.

Consider the question of whether internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users. One dominant view in the public discourse holds that the answer is no . On this view, platforms are private entities, and as such enjoy the prerogative to host whatever speech they like. This would arguably be a function of them having free speech rights themselves. Just as the free speech rights of the New York Times give it the authority to publish whatever op-eds it sees fit, the free speech rights of platforms give them the authority to exercise editorial or curatorial judgment about what speech to allow. On this view, if Facebook were to decide to become a Buddhist forum, amplifying the speech of Buddhist users and promoting Buddhist perspectives and ideas, and banning speech promoting other religions, it would be entirely within its moral (and thus proper legal) rights to do so. So, too, if it were to decide to become an atheist forum.

A radical alternative view holds that internet platforms constitute a public forum , a term of art from U.S. free speech jurisprudence used to designate spaces “designed for and dedicated to expressive activities” ( Southeastern Promotions Ltd., v. Conrad 1975). As Kramer has argued:

social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube have become public fora. Although the companies that create and run those platforms are not morally obligated to sustain them in existence at all, the role of controlling a public forum morally obligates each such company to comply with the principle of freedom of expression while performing that role. No constraints that deviate from the kinds of neutrality required under that principle are morally legitimate. (Kramer 2021: 58–59)

On this demanding view, platforms’ duties to respect speech are (roughly) identical to the duties of states. Accordingly, if efforts by the state to restrict hate speech, pornography, and public health misinformation (for example) are objectionable affronts to free speech, so too are platforms’ content moderation rules for such content. A more moderate view does not hold that platforms are public forums as such, but holds that government channels or pages qualify as public forums (the claim at issue in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump (2019).)

Even if we deny that platforms constitute public forums, it is plausible that they engage in a governance function of some kind (Klonick 2018). As Jack Balkin has argued, the traditional model of free speech, which sees it as a relation between speakers and the state, is today plausibly supplanted by a triadic model, involving a more complex relation between speakers, governments, and intermediaries (2004, 2009, 2018, 2021). If platforms do indeed have some kind of governance function, it may well trigger responsibilities for transparency and accountability (as with new legislation such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act).

Second, consider the question of whether platforms have a duty to remove harmful content posted by users. Even those who regard them as public forums could agree that platforms may have a moral responsibility to remove illegal unprotected speech. Yet a dominant view in the public debate has historically defended platforms’ place as mere conduits for others’ speech. This is the current position under U.S. law (as with 47 U.S. Code §230), which broadly exempts platforms from liability for much illegal speech, such as defamation. On this view, we should view platforms as akin to bulletin boards: blame whoever posts wrongful content, but don’t hold the owner of the board responsible.

This view is under strain. Even under current U.S. law, platforms are liable for removing some content, such as child sexual abuse material and copyright infringements, suggesting that it is appropriate to demand some accountability for the wrongful content posted by others. An increasing body of philosophical work explores the idea that platforms are indeed morally responsible for removing extreme content. For example, some have argued that platforms have a special responsibility to prevent the radicalization that occurs on their networks, given the ways in which extreme content is amplified to susceptible users (Barnes 2022). Without engaging in moderation (i.e., removal) of harmful content, platforms are plausibly complicit with the wrongful harms perpetrated by users (Howard forthcoming).

Yet it remains an open question what a responsible content moderation policy ought to involve. Many are tempted by a juridical model, whereby platforms remove speech in accordance with clearly announced rules, with user appeals mechanisms in place for individual speech decisions to ensure they are correctly made (critiqued in Douek 2022b). Yet platforms have billions of users and remove millions of pieces of content per week. Accordingly, perfection is not possible. Moving quickly to remove harmful content during a crisis—e.g., Covid misinformation—will inevitably increase the number of false positives (i.e., legitimate speech taken down as collateral damage). It is plausible that the individualistic model of speech decisions adopted by courts is decidedly implausible to help us govern online content moderation; as noted in Douek 2021 and 2022a, what is needed is analysis of how the overall system should operate at scale, with a focus on achieving proportionality between benefits and costs. Alternatively, one might double down and insist that the juridical model is appropriate, given the normative significance of speech. And if it is infeasible for social-media companies to meet its demands given their size, then all the worse for social-media companies. On this view, it is they who must bend to meet the moral demands of free speech theory, not the other way around.

Substantial philosophical work needs to be done to deliver on this goal. The work is complicated by the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is central to the processes of content moderation; human moderators, themselves subjected to terrible working conditions at long hours, work in conjunction with machine learning tools to identify and remove content that platforms have restricted. Yet AI systems notoriously are as biased as their training data. Further, their “black box” decisions are cryptic and cannot be easily understood. Given that countless speech decisions will necessarily be made without human involvement, it is right to ask whether it is reasonable to expect users to accept the deliverances of machines (e.g., see Vredenburgh 2022; Lazar forthcoming a). Note that machine intelligence is used not merely for content moderation, narrowly understood as the enforcement of rules about what speech is allowed. It is also deployed for the broader practice of content curation, determining what speech gets amplified — raising the question of what normative principles should govern such amplification; see Lazar forthcoming b).

Finally, there is the question of legal enforcement. Showing that platforms have the moral responsibility to engage in content moderation is necessary to justifying its codification into a legal responsibility. Yet it is not sufficient; one could accept that platforms have moral duties to moderate (some) harmful speech while also denying that those moral duties ought to be legally enforced. A strong, noninstrumental version of such a view would hold that while speakers have moral duties to refrain from wrongful speech, and platforms have duties not to platform or amplify it, the coercive enforcement of such duties would violate the moral right to freedom of expression. A more contingent, instrumental version of the view would hold that legal enforcement is not in principle impermissible; but in practice, it is simply too risky to grant the state the authority to enforce platforms’ and speakers’ moral duties, given the potential for abuse and overreach.

Liberals who champion the orthodox interpretation of the First Amendment, yet insist on robust content moderation, likely hold one or both of these views. Yet globally such views seem to be in the minority. Serious legislation is imminent that will subject social-media companies to burdensome regulation, in the form of such laws as the Digital Services Act in the European Union and the Online Safety Bill in the UK. Normatively evaluating such legislation is a pressing task. So, too, is the task of designing normative theories to guide the design of content moderation systems, and the wider governance of the digital public sphere. On both fronts, political philosophers should get back to work.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) , adopted: 16 December 1966; Entry into force: 23 March 1976.
• Free Speech Debate
• Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
• van Mill, David, “Freedom of Speech”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/freedom-speech/ >. [This was the previous entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – see the version history .]

ethics: search engines and | hate speech | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, John Stuart | Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy | pornography: and censorship | rights | social networking and ethics | toleration

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the editors and anonymous referees of this Encyclopedia for helpful feedback. I am greatly indebted to Robert Mark Simpson for many incisive suggestions, which substantially improved the entry. This entry was written while on a fellowship funded by UK Research & Innovation (grant reference MR/V025600/1); I am thankful to UKRI for the support.

Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey W. Howard < jeffrey . howard @ ucl . ac . uk >

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

What is the role of free speech in a democratic society?

Book co-edited by prof. geoffrey stone examines evolution, future of first amendment.

Free speech has been an experiment from the start—or at least that’s what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested nearly a century ago in his dissent in  Abrams v. United States , one of the first decisions to interpret and shape the doctrine that would come to occupy a nearly sacred place in America’s national identity.

Since then, First Amendment jurisprudence has stirred America in novel ways, forcing deep introspection about democracy, society and human nature and sometimes straddling the political divide in unexpected fashion. In the past 100 years, free speech protections have ebbed and flowed alongside America’s fears and progress, adapting to changing norms but ultimately growing in reach.

And now, this piece of the American experiment faces a new set of challenges presented by the ever-expanding influence of technology as well as sharp debates over the government’s role in shaping the public forum.

That’s why Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, two of the country’s leading First Amendment scholars, brought together some of the nation’s most influential legal scholars in a new book to explore the evolution—and the future—of First Amendment doctrine in America. 

The Free Speech Century  (Oxford University Press) is a collection of 16 essays by Floyd Abrams, the legendary First Amendment lawyer; David Strauss, the University of Chicago’s Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law; Albie Sachs, former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa; Tom Ginsburg, the University of Chicago’s Leo Spitz Professor of International Law; Laura Weinrib, a University of Chicago Professor of Law; Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School; and others.

“Lee and I were law clerks together at the Supreme Court during the 1972 term,” Stone said. “I was with Justice Brennan and Lee was with Chief Justice Burger. We have both been writing, speaking and teaching about the First Amendment now for 45 years. This was a good time, we decided, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s first decision on the First Amendment with a volume that examines four basic themes: The Nature of First Amendment Jurisprudence, Major Critiques and Controversies over Current Doctrine, The International Impact of our First Amendment Jurisprudence, and the Future of Free Speech in a World of Ever-Changing Technology. Our hope is that this volume will enlighten, inspire and challenge readers to think about the role of free speech in a free and democratic society.”

Stone, JD’71, has spent much of his career examining free speech— a topic he first became passionate about as a University of Law School student.

The University has a long tradition of upholding freedom of expression. UChicago’s influential 2015 report by the Committee on Freedom of Expression, which Stone chaired, became a model for colleges and universities across the country.

The collection takes on pressing issues, such as free expression on university campuses, hate speech, the regulation of political speech and the boundaries of free speech on social media, unpacking the ways in which these issues are shaping the norms of free expression.

One essay, for instance, explores how digital behemoths like Facebook, Twitter and Google became “gatekeepers of free expression”—a shift that contributor Emily Bell, a Columbia University journalism professor, writes “leaves us at a dangerous point in democracy and freedom of the press.” Her article examines foreign interference in the 2016 election and explores some of the questions that have emerged since, such as how to balance traditional ideas of a free press with the rights of citizens to hear accurate information in an information landscape that is now dominated by social media.

Technology, the editors write, has presented some of the most significant questions that courts, legal scholars, and the American public will face in the coming decades.

“While vastly expanding the opportunities to participate in public discourse, contemporary means of communication have also arguably contributed to political polarization, foreign influence in our democracy, and the proliferation of ‘fake’ news,” Stone writes in the introduction. “To what extent do these concerns pose new threats to our understanding of ‘the freedom of speech, and of the press’? To what extent do they call for serious reconsideration of some central doctrines and principles on which our current First Amendment jurisprudence is based?”

In another essay, Strauss, an expert in constitutional law, examines the principles established in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case,  New York Times Co. v. United States.  The landmark ruling blocked an attempt at prior restraint by the Nixon administration, allowing the  New York Times  and  Washington Post  to publish a classified report that reporters had obtained about America’s role in Vietnam. The threat to national security wasn’t sufficiently immediate or specific to warrant infringing on the papers’ right to publish, the Court said at the time.

But today’s world is different, Strauss argues. It is easier to leak large amounts of sensitive information—and publication is no longer limited to a handful of media companies with strict ethical guidelines. What’s more, the ease with which information can be shared—digitally as opposed to carefully sneaking papers in batches from locked cabinets to a photocopier, as military analyst Daniel Ellsberg did when leaking the Pentagon Papers—means that a larger number of people can act as leakers. That can include those who don’t fully understand the information they are sharing, which many have argued was the case when former IT contractor Edward Snowden allegedly leaked millions of documents from the National Security Agency in 2013.

“[T]he stakes are great on both sides,” Strauss writes, “and the world has changed in ways that make it important to rethink the way we deal with the problem.”

Ultimately, the health of the First Amendment will depend on two things, Bollinger writes: a continued understanding that free speech plays a critical role in democratic society—and a recognition that the judicial branch doesn’t claim sole responsibility for achieving that vision. The legislative and executive branches can support free speech as well.

What’s more, modern-day challenges do not have to result in an erosion of protections, Bollinger argues.

“[O]ur most memorable and consequential decisions under the First Amendment have emerged in times of national crises, when passions are at their peak and when human behavior is on full display at its worst and at its best, in times of war and when momentous social movements are on the rise,” he writes. “Freedom of speech and the press taps into the most essential elements of life—how we think, speak, communicate, and live within the polity. It is no wonder that we are drawn again and again into its world.”

—Adapted from an article that first appeared on the University of Chicago Law School website.

Related content

• Examining the importance of free expression
• Podcast: SCOTUS Nears Unimaginable Era with Geoffrey Stone

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The Free Speech Century

Geoffrey R. Stone, Lee C. Bollinger

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College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech 2024

Full reports.

A look at Key Trends in Student Speech Views Since 2016

A knight foundation-ipsos study from the knight free expression research series.

“College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech 2024” continues Knight Foundation’s research series tracking college student views on the First Amendment and free expression, which began in 2016. This work seeks to elevate the voices of students and understand their complex attitudes on free expression, especially within the college setting. This latest report is particularly timely as the 2024 election nears and as the war in Gaza has sparked contentious protests on campuses across the country, bringing the specific complexities of free speech to the center of the national debate. This research was conducted before the spring 2024 campus protests, thus not capturing students’ responses to these events. [1]

This Knight Foundation-Ipsos report continues the investigation into the complexities of free expression on campus and highlights the evolving views of students. This survey shows that the story of free speech on campus continues to be nuanced and characterized by lived experiences, good-faith efforts and genuine student interest to build a constructive learning environment.

During this tumultuous time, it’s more important than ever that university leaders are equipped with data that elevates the views of students to guide their campus decision-making. The findings described in this report cover many of the rich insights contained in this expansive dataset. Higher education administrators, the public, and researchers are welcome to continue exploring this publicly available survey database.

Read the full report here .

Download the topline and methodology here . For access to the full raw data set, please reach out to [email protected] .

Key Findings

Students believe free speech is essential to american democracy, but confidence in the security of this right has plummeted since 2016..

While 9 in 10 college students continue to feel that citizens’ free speech rights are very important to them, fewer students believe their freedom of speech is secure in 2024, down 30 percentage points from 2016. Notably, since 2021 the increased concern about security of free speech is driven by Democratic students.

Discomfort with the speech environment on campus is rising, and 7 in 10 students say speech can be as damaging as physical violence.

The percentage of students who felt uncomfortable due to speech about race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation on campus has almost doubled, from 25% to 44%, since 2017. More than half (55%) report feeling uncomfortable due to political speech. However, there has been little change in reported rates of students feeling physically unsafe (15%) due to speech on campus.

Students want to be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints, though tension persists between promoting free expression and protecting students from hateful or threatening speech.

Most students continue to support allowing all types of speech, even offensive speech. Few students are in favor of restrictive speech measures on campus such as speech codes. However, students do draw lines, with a majority saying that both hate and threatening speech should be restricted from campus. [2]

Few students report they would take part in disruptive actions toward invited speakers they oppose.

Eight percent of students report they would engage in disruptive actions – either trying to stop a speech ahead of time or disrupt it during – to halt a speaker they oppose. The large majority of students report they would take no action (51%), boycott the event (23%), or other non-disruptive actions.

Compared with white students, Black, Asian, and multiracial students report challenging experiences and diverging opinions of campus speech.

Half or more of these students report feeling uncomfortable on campus due to something someone else said about race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. A decisive majority of Black students (85%) also agree that hate speech should not be allowed on college campuses, in line with Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students.

Students feel self-censorship hampers educational value.

Two in 3 students say self-censorship limits educationally valuable conversations on campus, and 2 in 3 report self-censoring on some topics during classroom discussions. This is particularly true when it comes to discussing topics of gender or LGBTQ+ issues, racial issues, or religion.

Students crave opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue.

Most students are unaware of programs at their institution to promote constructive dialogues. Among those who definitively report that their schools do not have such programs, a clear majority favor creating programs to help foster healthy debate.

Students are increasingly skeptical of social media’s role in productive conversations.

Only 1 in 4 students feel the dialogue that occurs on social media is usually civil, down from 40% in 2016. Only half feel comfortable sharing opinions online, with many believing social media stifles free expression due to fear of attacks or shaming.

A selection of key student views on free expression and campus speech. Full findings are in the body of the report.

KEY POPULATIONS

Experience with and attitudes toward speech vary widely among different student groups. The greatest differences exist among partisanship and race, and less so by gender or other demographic groupings. The following is a brief summary of the major findings and how opinion has changed over time, including the degree to which students have a formed opinion at all.

Democratic students

Half of Democratic students believe that freedom of speech is secure in America today, down from about 3 in 5 Democratic students who felt that way in 2021. Since 2021, Democratic students have been driving the increased concern about the security of free speech. Democratic students are split on whether to allow all types of speech on campus, even speech that is offensive. Similar to 2021, more Democratic than Republican or independent students are in favor of protecting students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive, something that was also true in prior Knight-Gallup research. [3] Since 2019, a large majority of Democratic students have believed that colleges should be able to restrict the use of racial slurs on campus. When it comes to other speech policies, about 3 in 4 support the creation of safe spaces on campus, close to half support the creation of speech codes that could limit offensive or biased speech, and about 2 in 5 favor schools disinviting a speaker because of their views. These views are consistent with previous surveys. A majority of Democrats and independents feel that their campus climate prevents people from saying what they believe for fear of offending others, although they are less likely to feel this way than Republicans.

Independent students

Independent students express growing concerns about the fundamental security of free speech in America today while indicating their wariness of colleges limiting speech on campus. Just about 2 in 5 independent students feel that free speech is secure today, down from under half of independents in 2021, and down even more from the 3 in 4 who felt this way in 2016. Yet a large majority feel that the First Amendment protects people like them, a view that has held steady since 2019. A majority believe that colleges should allow students to be exposed to all forms of speech. Opinion is split among the remaining minority with equal numbers either believing that colleges should foster a protective environment or having no opinion on the matter. Much as in previous surveys, few support colleges disinviting controversial speakers or instituting speech codes. A majority feel that their campus climate limits free expression, a view that has remained roughly the same since 2019.

Republican students

Few Republican students feel that freedom of speech is secure today, with about 1 in 3 feeling this right is secure. However, that has increased since 2021, when only about 1 in 4 felt that freedom of speech was secure. Still, that is down substantially from the 2 in 3 Republicans who felt free speech was secure in 2016. About 2 in 3 Republican students feel that their campus prevents people from saying things they believe because others might find it offensive, roughly in line with where Republican students stood in 2021 on this question. A strong majority (7 in 10) say it is more important for colleges to allow students to be exposed to all types of speech, even if they find it offensive or biased, than to prohibit offensive or biased speech. This is consistent with 2021, but down from 2019. A majority (53%) – albeit a smaller share than either Democratic or independent students – believe that colleges should be allowed to prohibit the use of racial slurs on campus, in line with attitudes from 2021. Republicans are more divided around whether safe spaces should be allowed on campus – half favor this – but come down firmly against schools disinviting controversial speakers, something that was also true in 2019 and 2021. Half oppose schools instituting speech codes that could restrict offensive or biased speech.

White students

White students tend to favor allowing all types of speech on campus, over protecting students by prohibiting certain speech. They are least likely to report having felt unsafe or uncomfortable on campus because of comments about their identity, as compared with Black and Hispanic students. This has not changed substantially since 2021. Overall, over half of white college students believe that freedom of speech is under threat in America today. Yet a large majority feel that the First Amendment protects people like them, a view that has held steady since 2019. When it comes to free expression on college campuses, white students are more likely than their Black or Hispanic counterparts to agree that schools should favor exposing students to all forms of speech, rather than protecting them from speech they may f ind offensive or biased. This was also true in 2019 and 2021. A majority agree that their campus climate prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find it offensive, in line with attitudes among Black and Hispanic students.

Black students

A growing number of Black students favor a more protective campus environment. In 2021, 36% of Black students favored a campus environment that protects students by prohibiting speech they may find offensive or biased, up from the 28% who favored this in 2019. Now, 43% favor this more protective speech environment over allowing students to be exposed to all types of speech even if they may find it offensive or biased. Black students, in particular, are among the most supportive of speech restrictions, including being the most likely to say hate speech should not be legally protected (71%), and the most likely to report that “people like them” have a harder time exercising their free speech rights, a sentiment that has grown since 2021. A decisive majority of Black students (85%) also agree that hate speech should not be allowed on college campuses, in line with Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students. In both in 2019 and 2021, a majority of Black students felt that colleges should restrict the use of offensive racial slurs on campus. This year, around half of these students report feeling uncomfortable on campus due to something someone else said about race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Notably, 1 in 5 Black students also report feeling unsafe on campus because of something someone said about their race, ethnicity, or religion, statistically the same as Hispanic students. Only 1 in 10 white students report the same.

Hispanic students

Hispanic students’ views of campus speech, and personal experiences, fall somewhere between the differing views of Black and white students. Half of Hispanic students say colleges should allow students to be exposed to all types of speech even if they may find it offensive or biased over having a more protective speech environment that limits speech students may find offensive or biased. Hispanic students fall between white and Black students on their view about allowing students to be exposed to all types of speech over protecting students by having a more prohibitive policy. Hispanic students align closely with white students on perceptions that free speech is under threat; just under half agree. A majority of Hispanic students also feel that colleges should be able to restrict offensive racial slurs, in line with attitudes among white students, with 2 in 3 supporting this, even as more Black students support colleges being able to restrict racial slurs. A plurality of Hispanic students oppose disinviting controversial speakers, though after that, Hispanic students are split between having no opinion on the subject and favoring disinviting a controversial speaker. Like Black students, a plurality (43%) favor instituting speech codes to restrict potentially offensive or biased speech on campus, while far fewer white students (25%) agree. Likewise, close to 7 in 10 Hispanic students favor the creation of safe spaces on campus, less than the share of white students who do but statistically no different from Black students. Sixteen percent of Hispanic students report feeling unsafe on campus because of something someone said about their race, ethnicity, or religion, statistically the same as Black students. Only 1 in 10 white students report the same.

Male and female students

For the most part, male and female students are aligned in their attitudes and experiences of free speech, with a few key differences. Overall, a majority of both male and female students say that free speech rights are important to American democracy. Now, male students are more likely than female students to strongly agree that free speech is an important part of American democracy. Nearly twice as many female students (19%) as male students (10%) report that they have felt personally unsafe on campus because of something someone said in reference to their race, ethnicity, or religion. Additionally, far more female students (51%) than male students (35%) report feeling uncomfortable in a class, living area, public space, or other part of campus because of something someone said about their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, something that was also true in 2021 and 2019.

[1] The 2024 Knight Foundation-Ipsos survey was conducted March 7-28, 2024.

[2] In the survey hate speech was defined as an attack based on someone’s race, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. This definition was used in order to maintain trend with previous surveys. It should be noted that this could be interpreted to cover abstractly hateful speech or unprotected conducts such as harassment.

[3] Knight-Gallup Free Expression Research, 2016, 2017, 2019

Explore the Knight Free Expression Research Series

Knight Free Expression Research Series

Knight Free Expression Research Series: College

Knight Free Expression Research Series: High School

Composition Type: Problem-Solution Essays

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

In composition , using a problem-solution format is a method for analyzing and writing about a topic by identifying a problem and proposing one or more solutions. A problem-solution essay is a type of argument. "This sort of essay involves argumentation in that the writer seeks to convince the reader to take a particular course of action. In explaining the problem, it may also need to persuade the reader concerning specific causes" (Dave Kemper et al., "Fusion: Integrated Reading and Writing," 2016).

The Thesis Statement

In many types of report writing, the thesis statement is posed front and center, in one sentence. Author Derek Soles writes about how the thesis statement in a problem-solution paper differs from a straight "report of findings" type of text:

"[One]  expository  mode is the problem-solution essay, topics for which are typically framed in the form of questions. Why did fourth-graders from poor families score low on a nationwide math test, and how can educators improve math education for this group? Why is Iran a threat to our national security, and how can we reduce this threat? Why did it take the Democratic Party so long to select a candidate for the 2008 presidential election, and what can the party do to make the process more efficient in the future? These essays have two parts: a full explanation of the nature of the problem, followed by an analysis of solutions and their likelihood of success."

("The Essentials of Academic Writing," 2nd ed. Wadsworth, Cengage, 2010)

Readers need additional context before you get to your thesis, but that is not to say that the thesis has to be posed as a question in the introduction:  

"In a problem-solution essay, the thesis statement usually proposes the solution. Because readers must first understand the problem, the thesis statement usually comes after a description of the problem. The thesis statement does not have to give details about the solution. Instead, it summarizes the solution. It should also lead naturally to the body of the essay, preparing your reader for a discussion of how your solution would work."

(Dorothy Zemach and Lynn Stafford-Yilmaz, "Writers at Work: The Essay." Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Sample Introductions

It can be helpful to see completed examples before writing in order to examine what makes for an effective piece. See how these introductions give some context before posing the topic and lead naturally into the body paragraphs, where the evidence will be listed. You can imagine how the author has organized the rest of the piece.

"We buried my cousin last summer. He was 32 when he hanged himself from a closet coat rack in the throes of alcoholism, the fourth of my blood relatives to die prematurely from this deadly disease. If America issued drinking licenses, those four men—including my father, who died at 54 of liver failure—might be alive today."

(Mike Brake, "Needed: A License to Drink."  Newsweek , March 13, 1994)

"America is suffering from overwork. Too many of us are too busy, trying to squeeze more into each day while having less to show for it. Although our growing time crunch is often portrayed as a personal dilemma, it is, in fact, a major social problem that has reached crisis proportions over the past twenty years."

(Barbara Brandt, "Whole Life Economics: Revaluing Daily Life." New Society, 1995)

"The modern-day apartment dweller is faced with a most annoying problem: paper-thin walls and sound-amplifying ceilings. To live with this problem is to live with the invasion of privacy. There is nothing more distracting than to hear your neighbors' every function. Although the source of the noise cannot be eliminated, the problem can be solved."

(Maria B. Dunn, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor: The Problem of Noise")

Organization

In "Passages: A Writer's Guide, " how to organize a problem-solution paper is explained:  

"Though to some extent [your organization of the paper] depends on your topic, do make sure that you include the following information:

Introduction: Identify the problem in a nutshell. Explain why this is a problem, and mention who should be concerned about it.

Problem Paragraph(s): Explain the problem clearly and specifically. Demonstrate that this is not just a personal complaint, but a genuine problem that affects many people.

"Solution Paragraph(s): Offer a concrete solution to the problem, and explain why this is the best one available. You may want to point out why other possible solutions are inferior to yours. If your solution calls for a series of steps or actions to be followed, present these steps in a logical order.

"Conclusion: Reemphasize the importance of the problem and the value of your solution. Choose a problem that you have experienced and thought about—one that you have solved or are in the process of solving. Then, in the essay itself, you may use your own experience to illustrate the problem. However, don't focus all the attention on yourself and on your troubles. Instead, direct the essay at others who are experiencing a similar problem. In other words, don't write an I essay ('How I Cure the Blues'); write a you essay ('How You Can Cure the Blues')."

(Richard Nordquist, Passages: A Writer's Guide , 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press, 1995)

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• by Alex Russell
• July 30, 2024

The right to free speech is part of our American identity, but what if some forms of speech use this idea of freedom against us? Increasingly, certain forms of speech — hate speech and disinformation in particular — threaten our society and the many freedoms we might take for granted.

In a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Jurisprudence , UC Davis philosopher and legal scholar Mark Reiff gives new insight into the source of the right to free speech and the limits that this right contains. The paper explains how these limits show us that hate speech and disinformation are not protected by the right, but rather must be limited to ensure all of our fundamental freedoms. 

“We have to wake up to the conditions we are now in,” said Reiff, a research professor of philosophy in the College of Letters and Science. “Hate speech and disinformation are a real problem. People who claim you can say whatever you want in a liberal democracy are misunderstanding what freedom of speech is intended to guarantee in a free society.”

Untangling free speech and disinformation

Lies can have dangerous consequences. In 2016, a man with an assault rifle entered a Washington, D.C. pizzeria to search the building for the children an internet conspiracy theory convinced him were being held there. On a much bigger scale, campaigns of hate speech and disinformation provoked widespread violence and even genocide in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. 

How could we live in a society where you can’t make a false claim about a dessert topping or floor polish, but you can falsely claim that the presidential election was stolen? There’s a difference between saying something that is reasonably mistaken but harmless and saying something that is wildly implausible and dangerous, like claiming that Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. — Reiff

Reiff argues that the idea of protecting all forms of speech in a free society regardless of their content is actually illiberal. Hate speech and disinformation can be used to sow division and hatred and thereby undermine democracy. This has been the approach of Russia’s Internet Service Agency, which has been found to be actively spreading disinformation and division in the U.S. and other countries.

The claim is that this is done in the name of freedom, but when liberal democracies fall apart, their many freedoms are typically replaced by an authoritarian social structure that is radically different and much less free.

“There is a much wider range of permissible behavior in a liberal society than there is in an authoritarian society,” said Reiff. “Authoritarians think that to be free, people must behave in a very specific, uniform, and inflexible way. Only then can they realize their true potential, and if they cannot recognize this themselves, then it is the job of the government to force them to be free.”

Liberal society and the principles that make free speech possible

Some fundamental principles of liberalism.

• A commitment to toleration, neutrality, equality and freedom
• A commitment to the separation of religious and political authority
• The belief that all members of a political community should have an opportunity to participate in political decision-making under conditions of full information
• The view that the purpose of public discourse and debate is to persuade others of the rightness of one’s position by resorting to arguments that one’s opponents could not reasonably reject
• The view that the rule of law applies even to the rich and powerful
• That belief that empirical evidence rather than emotion and pre-moral ideology should have primacy in forming our reasons for action and belief
• The idea that punishment should be informed by the principle of proportionality
• The belief that the individual, not the community, is the fundamental social unit of moral responsibility and moral concern

When Reiff talks about liberal society or liberalism, it’s not in the sense of beliefs that are politically “liberal,” “progressive,” or even “leftist.” In a liberal society, people can have wildly different opinions, but they still embrace the same fundamental values. They just disagree about how best to apply those values to real-world situations.

“In a liberal society, people can disagree about what their fundamental principles require,” said Reiff. “They might want different public policies on abortion, immigration or government spending, but it’s important that the source of the disagreement is about how we should interpret the relevant fundamental principles, and not about what those fundamental principles are.”

In his paper, Reiff provides an extensive list of fundamental principles that define liberal societies. The full list is extensive and detailed. It includes tolerance, neutrality, equality and freedom. It includes the idea that everyone is entitled to meaningfully participate in political decision-making with full information. It includes the view that politics and religion should remain separate, and a commitment to applying the rule of law to everyone equally. 

“But liberalism doesn’t say you have to tolerate all plans of life,” said Reiff. “For example, a serial killer might say, ‘I was born this way, that’s just my plan of life, don’t oppress me by preventing me from pursuing it.’ But most people would say such a plan of life is not reasonable, so it does not have to be tolerated. The reasonableness of the plan of life always matters under liberalism.”

Free speech, hate speech and the test of what’s reasonable

Reiff argues that freedom of speech is not an independent, free-standing right, which we then try to tie to the fundamental principles of liberalism as an afterthought. Instead, we begin with these fundamental principles and then see what kind of right to free speech these fundamental principles would produce. 

“You cannot work the other way round,” said Reiff. “You have to start with the fundamental principles that everyone generally accepts in a liberal society, and then ask what would a right to free speech that is consistent with these principles look like? Otherwise, you will end up with an ad hoc right that is simply the product of someone’s pre-moral personal preferences, not one which is consistent with our general moral values.”

All these general principles are infused with the idea of reasonableness under liberalism. And while this idea may seem a little vague, it’s not. There are countless examples of what is reasonable in real-world situations in the law. These examples provide detailed guidelines that we can use to determine when speech moves from being reasonably and therefore tolerably mistaken, to being dangerously misleading and intolerably hateful. 

The legal system’s own rules show us how to do this. They strictly control what type of evidence can be used to inform a judge or jury’s decision. Rather than assuming truth will somehow emerge on its own from some sort of unregulated free-for-all, legal proceedings use a very careful and regulated approach. 

“In every other area of behavior in a liberal society reasonableness is the criteria of regulation, and we have centuries of jurisprudence explaining what’s reasonable and what’s not,” said Reiff. “We do this all the time in other areas. It’s crazy not to do this in the free speech area considering that hate speech and disinformation can do so much damage.”  

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Problem-Solution Speech [Topics, Outline, Examples]

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

In this article:

Problem-Solution Outline

Problem-solution examples, criminal justice, environment, relationships, teen issues.

What to include in your problem-solution speech or essay?

Problem-solution papers employ a nonfiction text structure, and typically contain the following elements:

Introduction: Introduce the problem and explain why the audience should be concerned about it.

Cause/Effect : Inform the audience on what causes the problem. In some cases, you may also need to take time to dispel common misconceptions people have about the real cause.

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Thesis Statement: The thesis typically lays out the problem and solution in the form of a question and answer. See examples below.

Solution : Explain the solution clearly and in detail, your problem-solving strategy, and reasons why your solution will work. In this section, be sure to answer common objections, such as “there is a better solution,” “your solution is too costly,” and “there are more important problems to solve.”

Call to Action: Summarize the problem and solution, and paint a picture of what will happen if your final solution is adopted. Also, let the reader know what steps they should take to help solve the problem.

These are the most used methods of developing and arranging:

Problem Solution Method Recommended if you have to argue that there is a social and current issue at stake and you have convince the listeners that you have the best solution. Introduce and provide background information to show what is wrong now.

List the best and ideal conditions and situations. Show the options. Analyze the proper criteria. And present your plan to solve the not wanted situation.

Problem Cause Solution Method Use this pattern for developing and identifying the source and its causes.

Analyze the causes and propose elucidations to the causes.

Problem Cause-Effect Method Use this method to outline the effects of the quandary and what causes it all. Prove the connection between financial, political, social causes and their effects.

Comparative Advantage Method Use this organizational public speaking pattern as recommendation in case everyone knows of the impasse and the different fixes and agrees that something has to be done.

Here are some examples of problems you could write about, with a couple of potential solutions for each one:

Marriage Problem: How do we reduce the divorce rate?

Solution 1: Change the laws to make it more difficult for couples to divorce.

Solution 2: Impose a mandatory waiting period on couples before they can get married.

Environmental Problem: What should we do to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Solution 1: Use renewable energy to fuel your home and vehicles.

Solution 2: Make recycling within local communities mandatory.

Technical Problem: How do we reduce Windows error reporting issues on PCs?

Solution 1: Learn to use dialogue boxes and other command prompt functions to keep your computer system clean.

Solution 2: Disable error reporting by making changes to the registry.

Some of the best problems to write about are those you have personal experience with. Think about your own world; the town you live in, schools you’ve attended, sports you’ve played, places you’ve worked, etc. You may find that you love problem-solution papers if you write them on a topic you identify with. To get your creativity flowing, feel free to browse our comprehensive list of problem-solution essay and paper topics and see if you can find one that interests you.

Problem-Solution Topics for Essays and Papers

• How do we reduce murder rates in the inner cities?
• How do we stop police brutality?
• How do we prevent those who are innocent from receiving the death penalty?
• How do we deal with the problem of gun violence?
• How do we stop people from driving while intoxicated?
• How do we prevent people from texting while driving?
• How do we stop the growing child trafficking problem?
• What is the best way to deal with domestic violence?
• What is the best way to rehabilitate ex-cons?
• How do we deal with the problem of overcrowded prisons?
• How do we reduce binge drinking on college campuses?
• How do we prevent sexual assaults on college campuses?
• How do we make college tuition affordable?
• What can students do to get better grades in college?
• What is the best way for students to effectively balance their classes, studies, work, and social life?
• What is the best way for college students to deal with a problem roommate?
• How can college students overcome the problem of being homesick?
• How can college students manage their finances more effectively?
• What is the best way for college students to decide on a major?
• What should be done about the problem of massive student loan debts?
• How do we solve the global debt crisis?
• How do we keep countries from employing child labor?
• How do we reduce long-term unemployment?
• How do we stop businesses from exploiting consumers?
• How do we reduce inflation and bring down the cost of living?
• How do we reduce the home foreclosure rate?
• What should we do to discourage consumer debt?
• What is the best way to stimulate economic growth?
• How do we lower the prime cost of manufacturing raw materials?
• How can book retailers deal with rising bookseller inventory costs and stay competitive with online sellers?
• How do we prevent kids from cheating on exams?
• How do we reduce the illiteracy rate?
• How do we successfully integrate English as a Second Language (ESL) students into public schools?
• How do we put an end to the problem of bullying in schools?
• How do we effectively teach students life management skills?
• How do we give everyone access to a quality education?
• How do we develop a system to increase pay for good teachers and get rid of bad ones?
• How do we teach kids to problem solve?
• How should schools deal with the problem of disruptive students?
• What can schools do to improve reading comprehension on standardized test scores?
• What is the best way to teach sex education in public schools?
• How do we teach students to recognize a noun clause?
• How do we teach students the difference between average speed and average velocity?
• How do we teach math students to use sign charts?
• How can we make public education more like the Webspiration Classroom?
• How do we stop pollution in major population centers?
• How do we reduce the negative effects of climate change?
• How do we encourage homeowners to lower their room temperature in the winter to reduce energy consumption?
• What is the best way to preserve our precious natural resources?
• How do we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?
• What is the best way to preserve the endangered wildlife?
• What is the best way to ensure environmental justice?
• How can we reduce the use of plastic?
• How do we make alternative energy affordable?
• How do we develop a sustainable transportation system?
• How can we provide quality health care to all our citizens?
• How do we incentivize people to stop smoking?
• How do we address the growing doctor shortage?
• How do we curb the growing obesity epidemic?
• How do we reduce dependence on prescription drugs?
• How do we reduce consumption of harmful substances like phosphoric acid and acetic acid?
• How can we reduce the number of fatal hospital errors?
• How do we handle the health costs of people living longer?
• How can we encourage people to live healthier lifestyles?
• How do we educate consumers on the risk of laxatives like magnesium hydroxide?
• How do we end political corruption?
• How do we address the problem of election fraud?
• What is the best way to deal with rogue nations that threaten our survival?
• What can our leaders do to bring about world peace?
• How do we encourage students to become more active in the political process?
• What can be done to encourage bipartisanship?
• How can we prevent terrorism?
• How do we protect individual privacy while keeping the country safe?
• How can we encourage better candidates to run for office?
• How do we force politicians to live by the rules they impose on everyone else?
• What is the best way to get out of a bad relationship?
• How do we prevent cyberbullying?
• What is the best solution for depression?
• How do you find out where you stand in a relationship?
• What is the best way to help people who make bad life choices?
• How can we learn to relate to people of different races and cultures?
• How do we discourage humans from using robots as a substitute for relationships?
• What is the best way to deal with a long-distance relationship?
• How do we eliminate stereotypical thinking in relationships?
• How do you successfully navigate the situation of dating a co-worker?
• How do we deal with America’s growing drug problem?
• How do we reduce food waste in restaurants?
• How do we stop race and gender discrimination?
• How do we stop animal cruelty?
• How do we ensure that all citizens earn a livable wage?
• How do we end sexual harassment in the workplace?
• How do we deal with the water scarcity problem?
• How do we effectively control the world’s population?
• How can we put an end to homelessness?
• How do we solve the world hunger crisis?
• How do we address the shortage of parking spaces in downtown areas?
• How can our cities be made more bike- and pedestrian-friendly?
• How do we balance the right of free speech and the right not to be abused?
• How can we encourage people to use public transportation?
• How do we bring neighborhoods closer together?
• How can we eliminate steroid use in sports?
• How do we protect players from serious injuries?
• What is the best way to motivate young athletes?
• What can be done to drive interest in local sports?
• How do players successfully prepare for a big game or match?
• How should the revenue from professional sports be divided between owners and players?
• What can be done to improve local sports venues?
• What can be done to ensure parents and coaches are not pushing kids too hard in sports?
• How can student athletes maintain high academic standards while playing sports?
• What can athletes do to stay in shape during the off-season?
• How do we reduce teen pregnancy?
• How do we deal with the problem of teen suicide?
• How do we keep teens from dropping out of high school?
• How do we train teens to be safer drivers?
• How do we prevent teens from accessing pornography on the Internet?
• What is the best way to help teens with divorced parents?
• How do we discourage teens from playing violent video games?
• How should parents handle their teens’ cell phone and social media use?
• How do we prepare teens to be better workers?
• How do we provide a rational decision-making model for teens?
• How do we keep companies from mining our private data online and selling it for profit?
• How do we prevent artificial intelligence robots from taking over society?
• How do we make high-speed internet accessible in rural areas?
• How do we stop hackers from breaking into our systems and networks?
• How do we make digital payments more secure?
• How do we make self-driving vehicles safer?
• What is the best way to improve the battery life of mobile devices?
• How can we store energy gleaned from solar and wind power?
• What is the best way to deal with information overload?
• How do we stop computer makers from pre-installing Internet Explorer?

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Problem Solution Essays

A problem-solution essay is a type of argumentative writing that addresses a specific problem and proposes one or more solutions. It requires not only critical thinking and analysis but also creativity and foresight to propose effective solutions. Writing a problem-solution essay involves identifying a problem that is both significant and relevant, exploring its various facets, and suggesting actionable solutions that are both practical and innovative. This article will guide you through the process of crafting a compelling problem-solution essay, from conceptualization to structure.

What Is Problem Solution Essay

A problem-solution essay is an essay that describes a problem in detail and presents a clear solution or a set of solutions to that problem. It aims to convince the reader that the problem is significant and needs addressing, and that the proposed solution(s) is both feasible and effective. This type of essay is common in academic settings and other contexts that require critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It emphasizes not only the identification of a problem but also the proactive search for solutions that can improve or resolve the situation.

How to Start a Problem Solution Essay

Starting a problem-solution essay involves several key steps:

• Identify a Problem: Choose a problem that is relevant and significant to your audience. It should be something with clear implications that require addressing.
• Research Thoroughly: Conduct comprehensive research to understand all dimensions of the problem. This includes its causes, effects, stakeholders involved, and any previous attempts at solutions.
• Formulate a Thesis Statement: Your thesis statement should clearly state the problem and hint at the solution you will propose. It serves as the foundation of your essay, guiding your argument and analysis.
• Outline Your Essay: Plan the structure of your essay. An outline helps organize your thoughts and ensures you cover both the problem and the solution adequately.

Why Does the Thesis Statement Matter?

The thesis statement is crucial in a problem-solution essay because it:

• Establishes the Purpose: It clearly defines the purpose of your essay, focusing on the specific problem you aim to address and the solution you propose.
• Guides the Structure: A strong thesis statement provides a roadmap for your essay, indicating how you will explore the problem and elaborate on your proposed solution.
• Engages the Reader: By presenting a compelling problem and hinting at an innovative solution, your thesis statement piques the reader’s interest and encourages them to read further to understand your argument and analysis.

How to Write a Structure for Problem Solution Essay

A well-structured problem-solution essay enhances clarity and persuasiveness. Here’s a suggested structure:

Introduction

• Start with a hook to capture the reader’s attention, such as a startling fact or a personal anecdote related to the problem.
• Provide background information to set the context for the problem.
• Present your thesis statement, defining the problem and indicating your proposed solution.
• Problem Description: Detail the problem, including its causes and effects. Use evidence from your research to underscore its significance and the need for a solution.
• Solution Proposal: Present your solution(s) to the problem. For each solution, describe how it addresses the problem, including steps for implementation and potential obstacles. Use evidence to argue for its feasibility and effectiveness.
• Evaluation: Compare your proposed solution(s) with existing solutions, if any, to highlight its advantages and innovations.

Final Thoughts

• Summarize the problem and the proposed solution(s), reinforcing the importance of action.
• Restate the thesis in the context of the information presented in your essay.
• End with a call to action, encouraging the reader to consider or adopt your proposed solution.

Writing a problem-solution essay is a valuable exercise in critical and creative thinking. By carefully selecting a significant problem, conducting thorough research, crafting a clear thesis statement, and structuring your essay to effectively argue for a practical solution, you can produce a compelling and insightful essay. Remember, the key to a successful problem-solution essay lies in presenting a well-defined problem and proposing a solution that is both innovative and feasible, encouraging your readers to see the possibilities for positive change.

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The Las Vegas Shooting, Gun Control and American Violence

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Freedom of Speech and Propaganda in School Setting Essay

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Introduction

The problem of free speech’s risks for propaganda in school setting, possible solution one: policy development and implementation, works cited.

The right to free speech is granted to citizens by Constitution and should be executed across the various spheres of life. However, since the school environment in general and teachers’ educational work, in particular, are characterized by purposeful influence on learners, teachers’ freedom of speech is particularly important to address. When free speech reaches its extremes, it might interfere with the rights of other individuals to dignity and self-expression. For example, when tackling such issues as political views, religious affiliation, or opinions about controversial topics, teachers are not expected to pursue their subjective opinions onto students. Thus, despite the granted right to speak freely, there are some limitations to free speech, which are validated by the prevention of propaganda of one’s subjective opinions. In this essay, the term propaganda as a risk of uncontrolled free speech in the classroom will be used to denote the promotion of one’s biased opinion among others to influence their worldview.

Since education implies teachers’ intentional influence on students’ socialization, educators’ freedom of speech should be subject to control to minimize the risks of propaganda.

Freedom of self-expression, which is inherently connected with the freedom of speech, is a substantial part of life in schools for both students and teachers. According to Hutchens and Fernandez, students’ communication of their opinions in the school environment implies the possibility of public representation of biased opinions that might hinder the rights of others, which is why students’ freedom of speech should be balanced (103-104). Nonetheless, classroom communication and curriculum materials delivered by teachers to students convey socializing messages that further standardize particular opinions and views that might be biased if not controlled properly. The problem under investigation in this essay is the gap in the practical achievement of balancing the rights to freedom of speech and ensuring an unbiased propaganda-free educational environment.

Overall, freedom of speech is essential for a democratic society to function; however, researchers argue that freedom of speech is not the only value or right that should be prioritized. Indeed, “commitment to free speech must be balanced when its demands conflict with other normative commitments, such as the social equality, dignity, or security of historically marginalized citizens” (Howard 94). On the other hand, when tackling other aspects of life outside the concerns of marginalized populations, propaganda might occur in the form of the promotion of political or religious views that might hinder students’ right to autonomy. Thus, since the school environment is characterized by influential interactions, the manifestations of free speech in this setting should be controlled.

Moreover, while the issue of controlling free speech in a school environment is applicable to both students and teachers, the focus of this essay will be teachers’ conduct in the classroom. Such prioritization is validated by the ultimate role of educators in learners’ socialization which occurs in the context of the communicated messages transmitted through curricula and classroom management methods (Magarian 553). In such a manner, it is essential to identify ways to balance free speech in schools to prevent bias in the learners’ social life that would predetermine society’s development in the long-term perspective. Furthermore, the problem of free speech regulation in a school setting is intertwined with international law precedents, which signify a more in-depth practical challenge. According to Leiser, this challenge is commonly associated with the lack of a clear understanding of the main stakeholders’ responsibilities and duties in the cases of propaganda regulation (219-220). Thus, the identified issue requires a multifaceted solution that would address its ethical, legal, educational, and practical implementation-based concerns related to minimizing propaganda as an antecedent of free speech in schools.

One of the practical solutions to the problem is the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy for balanced free speech in the classroom. The new policy should be based on ethical and legal principles and have clear, practical guidance on the creation of curricula and the tackling of controversial issues in communication with students. According to Fenwick and Fenwick, it is essential to promote democratic values of respect and tolerance in the school environment, which should be incorporated into the free speech regulation strategies (662). Similarly, Howard argues that the policies and rules for free speech regulation should be based on moral principles and interdisciplinary cooperation (94-95). For that matter, when developing the new school policy on controlling the manifestations of free speech in teachers’ classroom conduct, the representatives of several fields of expertise should be engaged in a multi-disciplinary team. In particular, these representatives should include legislators, psychologists, ethical advisors, and educators who would inform the necessary steps for proper supervision of rules abidance.

A significant aspect of the implementation of the new policy is the development of professional skills in managing controversial issues in the classroom. According to Maxwell et al., the main challenge to biased free speech of teachers is the lack of proper competencies and skills for identification of controversial issues and balanced communication of proper educational messages to the learners (3). For that matter, practical workshops, training, and evaluation of teachers’ conduct in the classroom will be initiated as a part of the policy implementation strategy.

Fenwick, Helen, and Daniel Fenwick. “Prevent, Free Speech,‘Extremism’ and Counter-Terror Interventions: Exploring Narratives about Chilling Expression in Schools.” Public Law , 2020, pp. 661-679.

Howard, Jeffrey W. “Free Speech and Hate Speech.” Annual Review of Political Science vol. 22, 2019, pp. 93-109.

Hutchens, Neal H., and Frank Fernandez. “Searching for Balance with Student Free Speech: Campus Speech Zones, Institutional Authority, and Legislative Prerogatives.” Belmont Law Review, vol. 5, 2018, pp. 103-128.

Leiser, M. R. “Regulating Computational Propaganda: Lessons from International Law.” Cambridge International Law Journal , vol. 8, no. 2, 2019, pp. 218-240.

Magarian, Gregory P. “When Audiences Object: Free Speech and Campus Speaker Protests.” University of Colorado Law Review , vol. 90, 2019, pp. 551-592.

Maxwell, Bruce, et al. “Teachers’ Freedom of Speech in the Classroom.” Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, edited by Michael A. Peters, Springer, 2019, pp. 1-6.

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Essay on Human Rights: Samples in 500 and 1500

• Updated on  
• Jun 20, 2024

Essay writing is an integral part of the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. It is designed to test your command of the English language and how well you can gather your thoughts and present them in a structure with a flow. To master your ability to write an essay, you must read as much as possible and practise on any given topic. This blog brings you a detailed guide on how to write an essay on Human Rights , with useful essay samples on Human rights.

This Blog Includes:

The basic human rights, 200 words essay on human rights, 500 words essay on human rights, 500+ words essay on human rights in india, 1500 words essay on human rights, importance of human rights, essay on human rights pdf, what are human rights.

Human rights mark everyone as free and equal, irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed, religion and nationality. The United Nations adopted human rights in light of the atrocities people faced during the Second World War. On the 10th of December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its adoption led to the recognition of human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace for every individual. Although it’s not legally binding, most nations have incorporated these human rights into their constitutions and domestic legal frameworks. Human rights safeguard us from discrimination and guarantee that our most basic needs are protected.

Also Read: Essay on Yoga Day

Also Read: Speech on Yoga Day

Before we move on to the essays on human rights, let’s check out the basics of what they are.

Also Read: What are Human Rights?

Also Read: 7 Impactful Human Rights Movies Everyone Must Watch!

Here is a 200-word short sample essay on basic Human Rights.

Human rights are a set of rights given to every human being regardless of their gender, caste, creed, religion, nation, location or economic status. These are said to be moral principles that illustrate certain standards of human behaviour. Protected by law , these rights are applicable everywhere and at any time. Basic human rights include the right to life, right to a fair trial, right to remedy by a competent tribunal, right to liberty and personal security, right to own property, right to education, right of peaceful assembly and association, right to marriage and family, right to nationality and freedom to change it, freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, freedom from slavery, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of movement, right of opinion and information, right to adequate living standard and freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence.

Also Read: Law Courses

Check out this 500-word long essay on Human Rights.

Every person has dignity and value. One of the ways that we recognise the fundamental worth of every person is by acknowledging and respecting their human rights. Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness. They recognise our freedom to make choices about our lives and develop our potential as human beings. They are about living a life free from fear, harassment or discrimination.

Human rights can broadly be defined as the basic rights that people worldwide have agreed are essential. These include the right to life, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to health, education and an adequate standard of living. These human rights are the same for all people everywhere – men and women, young and old, rich and poor, regardless of our background, where we live, what we think or believe. This basic property is what makes human rights’ universal’.

Human rights connect us all through a shared set of rights and responsibilities. People’s ability to enjoy their human rights depends on other people respecting those rights. This means that human rights involve responsibility and duties towards other people and the community. Individuals have a responsibility to ensure that they exercise their rights with consideration for the rights of others. For example, when someone uses their right to freedom of speech, they should do so without interfering with someone else’s right to privacy.

Governments have a particular responsibility to ensure that people can enjoy their rights. They must establish and maintain laws and services that enable people to enjoy a life in which their rights are respected and protected. For example, the right to education says that everyone is entitled to a good education. Therefore, governments must provide good quality education facilities and services to their people. If the government fails to respect or protect their basic human rights, people can take it into account.

Values of tolerance, equality and respect can help reduce friction within society. Putting human rights ideas into practice can help us create the kind of society we want to live in. There has been tremendous growth in how we think about and apply human rights ideas in recent decades. This growth has had many positive results – knowledge about human rights can empower individuals and offer solutions for specific problems.

Human rights are an important part of how people interact with others at all levels of society – in the family, the community, school, workplace, politics and international relations. Therefore, people everywhere must strive to understand what human rights are. When people better understand human rights, it is easier for them to promote justice and the well-being of society. 

Also Read: Important Articles in Indian Constitution

Here is a human rights essay focused on India.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. It has been rightly proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Created with certain unalienable rights….” Similarly, the Indian Constitution has ensured and enshrined Fundamental rights for all citizens irrespective of caste, creed, religion, colour, sex or nationality. These basic rights, commonly known as human rights, are recognised the world over as basic rights with which every individual is born.

In recognition of human rights, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made on the 10th of December, 1948. This declaration is the basic instrument of human rights. Even though this declaration has no legal bindings and authority, it forms the basis of all laws on human rights. The necessity of formulating laws to protect human rights is now being felt all over the world. According to social thinkers, the issue of human rights became very important after World War II concluded. It is important for social stability both at the national and international levels. Wherever there is a breach of human rights, there is conflict at one level or the other.

Given the increasing importance of the subject, it becomes necessary that educational institutions recognise the subject of human rights as an independent discipline. The course contents and curriculum of the discipline of human rights may vary according to the nature and circumstances of a particular institution. Still, generally, it should include the rights of a child, rights of minorities, rights of the needy and the disabled, right to live, convention on women, trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation etc.

Since the formation of the United Nations , the promotion and protection of human rights have been its main focus. The United Nations has created a wide range of mechanisms for monitoring human rights violations. The conventional mechanisms include treaties and organisations, U.N. special reporters, representatives and experts and working groups. Asian countries like China argue in favour of collective rights. According to Chinese thinkers, European countries lay stress upon individual rights and values while Asian countries esteem collective rights and obligations to the family and society as a whole.

With the freedom movement the world over after World War II, the end of colonisation also ended the policy of apartheid and thereby the most aggressive violation of human rights. With the spread of education, women are asserting their rights. Women’s movements play an important role in spreading the message of human rights. They are fighting for their rights and supporting the struggle for human rights of other weaker and deprived sections like bonded labour, child labour, landless labour, unemployed persons, Dalits and elderly people.

Unfortunately, violation of human rights continues in most parts of the world. Ethnic cleansing and genocide can still be seen in several parts of the world. Large sections of the world population are deprived of the necessities of life i.e. food, shelter and security of life. Right to minimum basic needs viz. Work, health care, education and shelter are denied to them. These deprivations amount to the negation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Also Read: Human Rights Courses

Check out this detailed 1500-word essay on human rights.

The human right to live and exist, the right to equality, including equality before the law, non-discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment, the right to freedom of speech and expression, assembly, association, movement, residence, the right to practice any profession or occupation, the right against exploitation, prohibiting all forms of forced labour, child labour and trafficking in human beings, the right to freedom of conscience, practice and propagation of religion and the right to legal remedies for enforcement of the above are basic human rights. These rights and freedoms are the very foundations of democracy.

Obviously, in a democracy, the people enjoy the maximum number of freedoms and rights. Besides these are political rights, which include the right to contest an election and vote freely for a candidate of one’s choice. Human rights are a benchmark of a developed and civilised society. But rights cannot exist in a vacuum. They have their corresponding duties. Rights and duties are the two aspects of the same coin.

Liberty never means license. Rights presuppose the rule of law, where everyone in the society follows a code of conduct and behaviour for the good of all. It is the sense of duty and tolerance that gives meaning to rights. Rights have their basis in the ‘live and let live’ principle. For example, my right to speech and expression involves my duty to allow others to enjoy the same freedom of speech and expression. Rights and duties are inextricably interlinked and interdependent. A perfect balance is to be maintained between the two. Whenever there is an imbalance, there is chaos.

A sense of tolerance, propriety and adjustment is a must to enjoy rights and freedom. Human life sans basic freedom and rights is meaningless. Freedom is the most precious possession without which life would become intolerable, a mere abject and slavish existence. In this context, Milton’s famous and oft-quoted lines from his Paradise Lost come to mind: “To reign is worth ambition though in hell/Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”

However, liberty cannot survive without its corresponding obligations and duties. An individual is a part of society in which he enjoys certain rights and freedom only because of the fulfilment of certain duties and obligations towards others. Thus, freedom is based on mutual respect’s rights. A fine balance must be maintained between the two, or there will be anarchy and bloodshed. Therefore, human rights can best be preserved and protected in a society steeped in morality, discipline and social order.

Violation of human rights is most common in totalitarian and despotic states. In the theocratic states, there is much persecution, and violation in the name of religion and the minorities suffer the most. Even in democracies, there is widespread violation and infringement of human rights and freedom. The women, children and the weaker sections of society are victims of these transgressions and violence.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ main concern is to protect and promote human rights and freedom in the world’s nations. In its various sessions held from time to time in Geneva, it adopts various measures to encourage worldwide observations of these basic human rights and freedom. It calls on its member states to furnish information regarding measures that comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights whenever there is a complaint of a violation of these rights. In addition, it reviews human rights situations in various countries and initiates remedial measures when required.

The U.N. Commission was much concerned and dismayed at the apartheid being practised in South Africa till recently. The Secretary-General then declared, “The United Nations cannot tolerate apartheid. It is a legalised system of racial discrimination, violating the most basic human rights in South Africa. It contradicts the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter. That is why over the last forty years, my predecessors and I have urged the Government of South Africa to dismantle it.”

Now, although apartheid is no longer practised in that country, other forms of apartheid are being blatantly practised worldwide. For example, sex apartheid is most rampant. Women are subject to abuse and exploitation. They are not treated equally and get less pay than their male counterparts for the same jobs. In employment, promotions, possession of property etc., they are most discriminated against. Similarly, the rights of children are not observed properly. They are forced to work hard in very dangerous situations, sexually assaulted and exploited, sold and bonded for labour.

The Commission found that religious persecution, torture, summary executions without judicial trials, intolerance, slavery-like practices, kidnapping, political disappearance, etc., are being practised even in the so-called advanced countries and societies. The continued acts of extreme violence, terrorism and extremism in various parts of the world like Pakistan, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon, Chile, China, and Myanmar, etc., by the governments, terrorists, religious fundamentalists, and mafia outfits, etc., is a matter of grave concern for the entire human race.

Violation of freedom and rights by terrorist groups backed by states is one of the most difficult problems society faces. For example, Pakistan has been openly collaborating with various terrorist groups, indulging in extreme violence in India and other countries. In this regard the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva adopted a significant resolution, which was co-sponsored by India, focusing on gross violation of human rights perpetrated by state-backed terrorist groups.

The resolution expressed its solidarity with the victims of terrorism and proposed that a U.N. Fund for victims of terrorism be established soon. The Indian delegation recalled that according to the Vienna Declaration, terrorism is nothing but the destruction of human rights. It shows total disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. The delegation further argued that terrorism cannot be treated as a mere crime because it is systematic and widespread in its killing of civilians.

Violation of human rights, whether by states, terrorists, separatist groups, armed fundamentalists or extremists, is condemnable. Regardless of the motivation, such acts should be condemned categorically in all forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever they are committed, as acts of aggression aimed at destroying human rights, fundamental freedom and democracy. The Indian delegation also underlined concerns about the growing connection between terrorist groups and the consequent commission of serious crimes. These include rape, torture, arson, looting, murder, kidnappings, blasts, and extortion, etc.

Violation of human rights and freedom gives rise to alienation, dissatisfaction, frustration and acts of terrorism. Governments run by ambitious and self-seeking people often use repressive measures and find violence and terror an effective means of control. However, state terrorism, violence, and human freedom transgressions are very dangerous strategies. This has been the background of all revolutions in the world. Whenever there is systematic and widespread state persecution and violation of human rights, rebellion and revolution have taken place. The French, American, Russian and Chinese Revolutions are glowing examples of human history.

The first war of India’s Independence in 1857 resulted from long and systematic oppression of the Indian masses. The rapidly increasing discontent, frustration and alienation with British rule gave rise to strong national feelings and demand for political privileges and rights. Ultimately the Indian people, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, made the British leave India, setting the country free and independent.

Human rights and freedom ought to be preserved at all costs. Their curtailment degrades human life. The political needs of a country may reshape Human rights, but they should not be completely distorted. Tyranny, regimentation, etc., are inimical of humanity and should be resisted effectively and united. The sanctity of human values, freedom and rights must be preserved and protected. Human Rights Commissions should be established in all countries to take care of human freedom and rights. In cases of violation of human rights, affected individuals should be properly compensated, and it should be ensured that these do not take place in future.

These commissions can become effective instruments in percolating the sensitivity to human rights down to the lowest levels of governments and administrations. The formation of the National Human Rights Commission in October 1993 in India is commendable and should be followed by other countries.

Also Read: Law Courses in India

Human rights are of utmost importance to seek basic equality and human dignity. Human rights ensure that the basic needs of every human are met. They protect vulnerable groups from discrimination and abuse, allow people to stand up for themselves, and follow any religion without fear and give them the freedom to express their thoughts freely. In addition, they grant people access to basic education and equal work opportunities. Thus implementing these rights is crucial to ensure freedom, peace and safety.

Human Rights Day is annually celebrated on the 10th of December.

Human Rights Day is celebrated to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UNGA in 1948.

Some of the common Human Rights are the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom from slavery and torture and the right to work and education.

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Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

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