Free Speech Flashcards
What are the Citations for Free Speech?
Waldron, 2012, The Harm in Hate Speech
Feinberg, 1980, ‘Harmless Wrongdoing and Offensive Nuisances’
Matsuda, 1989, ‘Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story’
Parekh, 2012, ‘Is There a Case for Banning Hate Speech?’
Fiss, 1996, ‘The Irony of Free Speech’
MacKinnon, 1987, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law
Langton, 1993, ‘Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts’
Dworkin, 2009, ‘Foreword’, in Extreme Speech and Democracy
Baker, 2009, ‘Autonomy and Hate Speech’, in Extreme Speech and Democracy
Mill, 1861, ‘On Liberty’
What is Waldron’s (2012) argument for why hate speech should be restricted in ‘The Harm in Hate Speech’?
Laws against hate speech reduce violence and discrimination and protect the dignity and reputation of vulnerable groups.
Laws against hate speech don’t just protect against offense, but systemically secure a particular aspect of social peace and civic order under justice: the dignity of inclusion and the public good of mutual assurance concerning the fundamentals of justice.
Hate speech is equivalent to group libel or defamation.
Things such as racially demeaning signs intimate an intention to discriminate in particular areas but also bespeak a whole mentality abroad in society that is incompatible with the aspirations of ordinary members of racial and religious minorities to live their lives in this society on the same terms as others
What is Waldron’s response to Dworkin?
- Dworkin’s position amounts to that if you want to be tough on crime then you must be tolerant of the causes of the crime.
- Dworkin’s argument will also apply to any other asserted exception to the free speech principle.
- Pushing Dworkin’s argument to its extreme this means that in almost all advanced democracies (because almost all have upstream hate speech laws), the use of force to uphold downstream laws isn’t legitimate.
- Possible that legitimacy is a matter of degree and upstream laws only diminish the legitimacy of downstream laws without completely destroying it. However, hate speech laws have the objective of protecting the basic social standing – the elementary dignity – of members of vulnerable groups, and to maintain the assurance they need to go about their lives in a secure and dignified matter. The complaint that attempting to secure it greatly undermines the legitimacy of the enforcement of other laws may be much less credible as a result.
- Our concern about whether legitimacy is affected might well be affected by a sense of whether the hateful views being regulated are views whose truth is a live issue or views whose falsity the politically community is entitled to regard as settled. Dworkins position seems to assume that debates are timeless and that considerations of political legitimacy relative to public debate must be understood as impervious to progress. I think we do not need to ask whether we are past the stage where society is in such a need of a robust debate about fundamental matters of race that we ought to bear the costs of what amount to attacks on the dignity of minority groups.
What is Waldron’s response to Baker?
- Speech is not as pure a means of self-disclosure as Baker takes it to be. Speech acts can be designed to wound, terrify, discourages and dismay. Harms are often harms constituted by rather than merely cause by speech. The harm is the dispelling of the assurance, and the dispelling of assurance is the speech act – it is what the speaker is doing in his self-disclosure as far as he is capable
- The hate speaker is trying to construct an alternative public good: solidarity among like-minded people, so these acts of self-disclosure have a deep significance for a well-ordered society.
What is Feinberg’s (1980) argument in ‘Harmless Wrongdoing and Offensive Nuisances’
The offense principle is that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions
For the special class of offensive behaviour that consists in the flaunting of abusive, mocking, insulting behaviour of a sort bound to upset, alarm, anger, or irritate those it insults, I would allow the offense principle to apply. Those who are taunted by such conduct will understandably suffer intense and complicated emotions. The law might well undertake to protect those who are vulnerable because they are a minority
What is Matsuda’s response to the argument that having restrictions on hate speech will be content based restrictions which will put the state in the censorship business which will lead to more exceptions?
Racist speech is a category so historically untenable, dangerous, and tied to the perpetuation of violence and degradation of the very classes of human beings who are least equipped to respond that it is properly treated as outside the realm of public discourse.
It is a mark of human progress that this is (or should be) a universal principle
explicit content-based rejection of narrowly defined racist speech is more protective of civil liberties than the competing-interests tests or the likely-to-incite-violence tests that can spill over to censor forms of political speech
What is Fiss’s (1996) argument for the value of free speech in ‘The Irony of Free Speech’?
Democracy is only legitimate when everyone is allowed to have free speech
Free speech is valuable insofar as it helps realise democratic legitimacy
Preventing hate speech does not undermine legitimacy but furthers the worthy public end of fostering full and open debate by making certain the public hears all that it should
Free speech is valued not so much for the self-expression it affords but because it is essential for self-determination
If egalitarian considerations remain secondary one side of the debate tends to be silenced
What is Fiss’s response to Baker?
In response to Baker’s argument that free speech is integral as an autonomous expression of the self and its most closely held values, the state is not trying to arbitrate between the self-expressive interests of the various groups but rather establishing essential preconditions for collective self-governance by making certain that all sides are presented to the public.
What is it, according to Parekh (2012), that makes something hate speech?
Directed against a specified or easily identifiable individual or group of individuals based on an arbitrary and normatively irrelevant feature
Stigmatises the target group by implicitly or explicitly ascribing to it qualities widely regarded as highly undesirable
Because of its negative qualities, the target group is viewed as an undesirable presence and a legitimate object of hostility
Why, according to Parekh (2012), is free speech valuable?
It is the indispensable basis of free thought and critical self-consciousness. When it is denied or severely curtailed, the human capacity to think, and all that is distinctive to human beings, is undermined
It is the basis of a meaningful human life. It is through the medium of speech that individuals disclose themselves, appear before others, are recognised and affirmed by them, and aquire a sense of who they are.
Free speech is vital in political life. In enables citizens to submit their beliefs and opinions to critical scrutiny, assists the formation of an informed public opinion and collective will, provides the only effective check on the government, creates a vibrant civil society, and in general ensures an easy and constant flow of ideas among citizens and between them and the government
Free speech is crucial to intellectual inquiries. It enables us to challenge inherited dogmas, critically examine different bodies of ideas, rise above our biases, pursue truth, expand the range of intellectual and moral sympathy, secure a firmer grasp of the grounds of our beliefs and practices, and develop vital human capacities.
What is Parekh’s (2012) argument for why free speech should be restricted
Free speech is not the only value that needs to be protected. Human dignity, equality, freedom to live without harassment and intimidation, social harmony, mutual respect and honour are also central to the good life and if they come into conflict with free speech need to be balanced
Lowers the tones of public debate and weakens culture of mutual respect that lies at the heart of a good society. Refuses to accept targeted members as legitimate and equal members of society subverting the basis of a shared life
Creates barriers of mistrust between individuals and groups and exercises a corrosive influence on the conduct of collective life
Hate speech also violates the dignity of the members of the target group by stigmatizing them, denying their capacity to live as responsible members of society, and ignoring their individuality and differences by reducing them to uniform specimens of the relevant racial, ethnic, or religious group.
Because hate speech intimidates and displays contempt and ridicule for the target group, group members find it difficult not only to participate in the collective life, but also to lead autonomous and fulfilling personal lives. They lead ghettoized and isolated lives with a knock-on effect on their children’s education and career choices. (e.g., they may resist invitation to stand for elections because of fear of racist insults)
Targets of hate speech understandably feel nervous in public spaces lest they should be humiliated. They are afraid to speak their minds and behave normally, and they worry constantly about how the negative stereotypes that others hold of them will lead them to interpret their words and actions. As a result, they are likely to feel alienated from the wider society, to lead shadowy lives, and to feel trapped in a cramped mode of being.
When hate speech is allowed uninhibited expression, its targets rightly conclude that the state either shares the implied sentiments or does not consider their dignity, self-respect, and well-being important enough to warrant action. In either case, the state forfeits its legitimacy in their eyes and weakens its claim to represent them and demand their loyalty.
What is Parekh’s response to the argument that Evil ideas are best defeated by subjecting them to critical scrutiny rather than banning them?
The marketplace of ideas, on whose competitive scrutiny and fairness this argument relies, is not neutral and does not provide level playing fields. It has its biases and operates against the background of prevailing prejudices. When racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic beliefs are an integral part of a society’s culture, they appear self-evident, commonsensical, and obvious, and therefore enjoy a built-in advantage over their opposites. Indeed, the latter rarely get heard, and if they do, they tend to be dismissed out of hand. Furthermore, a fair competition between ideas requires that they all enjoy equal access to the marketplace, including the popular media and other agencies through which they are communicated and critically engage with each other. This is rarely the case. Even assuming that the market is or can be made neutral and equally accessible to all bodies of ideas, it is naive to imagine that false ideas will always lose in their battle with true ones. Ideas do not operate in a social vacuum. They are bound up with interests, the prevailing structure of power, and so on, and the victory often goes to those bodies of ideas that enjoy the patronage of powerful groups or prey on people’s fears and anxieties. By allowing ideas to be freely expressed provided that they do not violate norms of mutual respect and civility, it ensures their fair competition, counters the weight of prevailing prejudices, and encourages the participation of those likely to be intimidated or alienated by hate speech.
What is Parekh’s response to the argument that free speech is key to democracy; effects of hate speech is a small price to pay in larger interest of free and vibrant democracy
Free speech is the lifeblood of democracy when it advances reasoned arguments, subjects ideas and opinions to critical public scrutiny, exposes falsehoods, aims to arrive at a rational view of the matter, and so on. Hate speech does none of these. In fact it weakens democracy by arousing passions and irrational fears
What is Parekh’s response to the argument that a ban on hate speech gives right to state to judge the content of speech which violates its moral neutrality?
Beyond a certain point, the moral neutrality of the state is itself problematic. A liberal state should not enforce a particular view of the good life on its citizens and should allow a free flow of ideas, but some values are so central to its moral identity that it cannot remain neutral with respect to them. A state committed to human dignity, gender and race equality, or the spirit of free inquiry cannot be neutral between forms of speech or behaviour that uphold or undermine these values
What is Parekh’s response to the argument that human beings are responsible and autonomous individuals?
Autonomy, further, is exercised under certain conditions. It requires, among other things, that one has equal access to different bodies of ideas so that one can judge and arbitrate between them. As we observed earlier, this is not the case.
