The Most Human Right by Eric Heinze

Author:Eric Heinze [Heinze, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

6 Do All Opinions Count?

The scope of free speech within the public sphere must be vast if citizens are to have adequate opportunities to pursue their human rights, but how vast? Today, every major social problem somehow involves human rights. Do human rights therefore presuppose free speech absolutism? In this chapter, I shall consider some of the protections of free speech that are necessary for a human rights system. I shall borrow from some U.S. First Amendment disputes decided around the mid-twentieth century, along with a European Court case, mostly because these cases vividly illustrate some core free speech principles. Readers versed in the First Amendment will already know the U.S. cases, but the few examples I discuss are chosen solely to a sketch a basic notion of the citizens’ public sphere, and not to offer any detailed recitation of free speech law.

We must also bear in mind that, contrary to popular opinion, and despite the strength of the First Amendment “on paper,” the United States is by no means the nation most protective of speech in practice, as witnessed, for example, by its history of crackdowns on peaceful political demonstrations, often along racial lines. For example, in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index published by the independent monitoring group Reporters Without Borders, the United States ranked only 45th among 180 nations. In earlier years, too, the United States has failed to rank in the top tier of states, mirroring the Democracy Index findings and other studies.1 I shall draw, then, from First Amendment doctrine, but I by no means place the United States as the global leader in its concrete governance of free speech.

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