Meaning of a Global Perspective

Law enforcement agencies face challenges in balancing freedom of expression with maintaining public order. They must manage safety issues, manage elections, natural disasters, and health emergencies while promoting respect for freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Political, social, and economic factors contribute to these difficult situations. Journalists' freedoms are increasingly threatened, with 1,088 journalists killed in the past 12 years. In 2022, 45 media professionals were killed, prompting governments and law enforcement agencies to address public order issues, work with journalists, and communicate effectively with the public.

"Through the seven modules in this toolkit, officers and trainers can better appreciate how to equitably balance their public safety and order duties while enabling freedom of expression, and its associated freedoms, through better communications, provision of information, supporting the legal process, and enabling journalists to work safely."

The Guidelines aim to promote freedom of expression and information access while addressing illegal and harmful content. They call for states to apply regulation in accordance with international human rights standards and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Guidelines serve as a resource for policymakers, regulatory bodies, digital platforms, and civil society in their advocacy and accountability efforts. They will inform regulatory processes for digital platforms, leading them in an open, transparent, multistakeholder, and evidence-based manner. The Guidelines will contribute to UN-wide processes, such as the Global Digital Compact, the UN Summit of the Future, and the Code of Conduct for public information integrity.

In light of the global suppression of environmental protests through intimidation, surveillance, deprivation of liberty, violence, and even murder, these guidelines address States’ obligations under Article 3 (8) of the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention). Compiled by Michel Forst, the first UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention, the guiding principles include: 1) Tackling the root causes of the environmental protest; 2) countering negative portrayals of environmental protesters as criminals; 3) refraining from civic space restrictions in response to civil disobedience; 4) avoiding the use of unnecessary or disproportionate measures against environmental defenders; 5) asserting that “the courts’ approach to peaceful environmental protest, including any sanctions imposed, does not contribute to the restriction of the civic space.”

The authors "examine why international actors-including states, firms, and activists-seek different types of legalized arrangements to solve political and substantive problems. [They] show how particular forms of legalization provide superior institutional solutions in different circumstances. [They] begin by examining the baseline advantages of "hard" legalization (that is, precise, legally binding obligations with appropriate third-party delegation). [They] emphasize, however, that actors often prefer softer forms of legalization (that is, various combinations of reduced precision, less stringent obligation, and weaker delegation). Soft legalization has a number of significant advantages, including that it is easier to achieve, provides strategies for dealing with uncertainty, infringes less on sovereignty, and facilitates compromise among differentiated actors. Although [their] approach is largely interest-based, [they] explicitly incorporate the normative elements that are central in law and in recent international relations theorizing. [They] also consider the important role of nonstate actors who, along with states, are central participants in contemporary international legalization. [They] illustrate the advantages of various forms of international legal arrangements with examples drawn from articles in this special issue and elsewhere.

Modern liberal-democratic nations are divided over whether the right to freedom of expression should extend to hate speech, which abuses, degrades, or promotes violence or discrimination against others based on traits like race, nationality, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Most liberal democracies outlaw certain forms of public hate speech in order to protect the dignity, equality, and security of the targeted groups. At the same time, the United States rejects this position and holds that public hate speech generally should receive constitutional protection.

This essay argues that bans on public and private hate speech can contradict liberal principles. It focuses on the writings of John Locke, which laid the theoretical foundations of the modern liberal state and addressed the problem of speech that denies the equal status and rights of others. Locke's thought offers a valuable starting point for considering how liberal principles should apply to hate speech.

This essay presents a theory of free expression based on liberal humanism, which argues that free speech is based on respect for human freedom and dignity, but does not entitle one to infringe on the rights of others. It uses this approach to grapple with the problem of hate speech, which may be restricted on the grounds that it violates the most basic right of all: the right to be recognized and treated as a human being and a member of the community. Locke argued that expression that sought to deny freedom and equality to religious minorities should not receive legal protection because it invaded its targets' rights and undermined society's foundations. The essay also responds to two of the leading liberal arguments against hate-speech bans: that they violate individual autonomy and undermine democratic legitimacy.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a new edition of the Inter-American Legal Framework on the Right to Freedom of Expression. Consolidating freedom of expression standards established by the bodies of the Inter-American system, this 139-page document builds on the earlier version, published in 2009 by the Office of Special Rapporteur Catalina Botero, CGFoE’s former consulting director. The updated version recognizes new categories of specially protected expression, like “speech on environmental issues and speech denouncing gender violence,” reflects the evolution of case law “on the incompatibility of criminal legislation to protect the honor of public officials over critical comments,” and adds strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) to categories of analysis, among many other additions. For now, the document is available in Spanish only.

“On September 28, 2018, the Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information (WIII) hosted an intensive, day-long workshop entitled “Intermediaries and Private Speech Regulation: A Transatlantic Dialogue.” The Yale Information Society Project (ISP) and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society (CIS) co-hosted this event, with support from the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School. This intimate, invitation-only academic workshop took place at Yale Law School. For this workshop, WIII and CIS convened leading experts from the United States and the European Union for a series of non-public, guided discussions. Participants discussed the complicated issue of private speech regulation and the connections between platform liability laws and fundamental rights, including free expression. This report presents a synthesized collection of ideas and questions raised by one or more of the experts during the event, providing an overview of theoretical ideas, practical experiences, and directions for further research on rapidly evolving questions of intermediary liability from a uniquely transatlantic perspective.”

"The first section of this essay defines a few key terms and provides some historical background on the relationship between international law and international relations. The second section discusses the major theoretical approaches, from those that highlight material incentives to those that rest on more ideational foundations. The third section discusses international law development – concepts of legalization, judicialization, constitutionalization, and global administrative law. The fourth section reviews theories and empirical studies of compliance with public international law. The final section concludes that theory has become less compartmentalized by “school” and empirical research has become more rigorous over the past decade."

“The inquiry in this essay thus begins not with classical international law, but with the dominant positive analytical framework shared by both international lawyers and political scientists - Realism. Part I outlines the basic tenets of Realism and introduces the principal alternative to Realism in international relations scholarship — Liberalism. […] The project here, consistent with an overall commitment to a new generation of interdisciplinary scholarship, is to reimagine international law based on an acceptance of this distinction and an extrapolation of its potential implications. Part II distills various factors that political scientists have correlated with the 'liberal peace', factors that can be translated into assumptions about political and economic relations among liberal States. Part III introduces the concept of a world of liberal States, acknowledging the distance between such a world and the present international system but arguing that the hypothesis may nevertheless describe an important dimension of the current system. Part IV constructs a model of international law based on a hypothetical world of liberal States, integrating assumptions about relations among such States with the broader assumptions of Liberal international relations theory.”

"This symposium has sought to examine the fragmentation of the international legal system.  Such a task presupposes that international law is, in fact, undergoing some form of fragmentation. A range of recent scholarship has described this so-called fragmentation in various ways and generally considered it a negative development, a threat to the legal system as we know it.  This commentary challenges both these assumptions by suggesting that international law is not fragmenting, but rather is being transformed into a pluralist system. Instead of being undermined by fragmentation, the rules, the institutions, and practices of the international legal order can be strengthened by the emergence of an international legal pluralism."