Types of Expressions

“This research report concerns the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, and through any media – including in the form of art. As such, it provides an overview of the human rights law framework applicable to artistic freedom of expression, highlights several contemporary instances of threat to artistic freedom, and concludes with a limited number of recommendations for States, private actors and civil society.” 

"Many human rights have a dual value in that their realisation is both an important end, and a means to enable the realisation of other rights. The effective implementation of these kinds of rights is thus particularly important for advancing rights-based democracy. However, in practice, the implementation of such rights is often problematic. The article examines access to information and protest as examples of such ‘enabling’ rights. Drawing on the experience of communities and civil society organisations, it identifies and discusses some striking similarities in the way in which the legislation promulgated to give effect to these two rights in South Africa is being implemented, and argues that the problematic implementation of legislation is having the effect of thwarting these rights, rather than promoting them. Further, it argues that the existence of such striking similarities may point to a more systemic problem of civil and political rights failing to enable the realisation of socio-economic rights."

The Australian Constitution lacks a comprehensive statement of rights. The few rights which have been judicially recognized by the High Court of Australia have typically been narrowly interpreted. One such right is the freedom of political communication, which is a restricted/limited kind of free speech right. Though the early 1990s witnessed several decisions in which the freedom of speech was protected in fairly expansive ways, the doctrine was revised in 1997 due to growing doubts about its “more adventurous applications” within the Court. In Lange, the affirmation of the doctrine was accompanied by an emphasis on the limits imposed on the right by the text and structure of the Constitution, and the afterlife of Lange until Coleman witnessed the failure of all free speech challenges levelled in the High Court of Australia. In this article, Stone and Evans discuss how the decision in Coleman affirms the survival of the freedom of political communication as well as clarifies several aspects of the doctrine. They highlight that the quashing of Coleman’s conviction is reflective of the rejection of arguments about the legitimacy of the State’s endeavour to mandate civility in political communication. They argue that the Judiciary’s decision reveals a preference for public debate which tolerates insult as well as other forms of uncivil expression, and that such a justification “exposes the fragility of the consensus regarding the legitimacy of the implied freedom established in Lange.”

Cartooning for Peace and Cartoonists Rights - network organizations with missions to defend the rights of cartoonists globally - published a report on the challenges of censorship that cartoonists face today. Based on the monitoring and case studies from between 2020 and 2022, the report reviews increased censorship in authoritarian states, hate speech, online trolling, disinformation, and manipulation that targets press cartoonists. The report also looks at criminalization and displacement and how the two became the new normal for many cartoonists. “When you question authority, when you hold up a mirror to authority, that’s what makes you a satirist or a cartoonist,” says Rachita Taneja, a cartoonist from India. “And it is essential that in any healthy democracy that satirists should not face censorship [...]. [O]nly a very insecure and very authoritarian government would silence satirists.” Concluding with recommendations for cartoonists’ organizations, governments, and social media, the report’s authors intend to follow up with a more detailed analytical report in 2025. 

“Citizens United v. FEC has fundamentally reshaped American politics by enshrining into law a radical new conception of what it means to be a democratic participant. The Court strikes down, on freedom of speech grounds, a federal law prohibiting independent political expenditures by unions and corporations. Yet, throughout the approximately 180 pages of opinion, there is strikingly sparse discussion of just what “speech” is. Nor do any of the Justices adequately explore the rationale behind the phrase “corporate speech,” an arguably paradoxical syntactical combination rooted in the Court’s “freedom of expressive association” jurisprudence-a doctrine of relatively recent vintage. Justice Stevens’ passionate dissent is laced throughout with the concession that corporations themselves engage in “speech”-a term that, on its face, would seem to require a human “speaker.” Thus even the dissent implicitly accepts the default position that corporations are potentially eligible for protections clearly designed by the First Amendment’s framers for human beings. Legal academics and journalists of all stripes have likewise blithely accepted the conclusion that there is something called “corporate speech.” In doing so, the dissent and others who find the Citizens United decision troubling have unwittingly and unwisely ceded unnecessary ground. By reifying corporations and imbuing them with the sympathetic qualities of individual American citizens seeking to assert their fundamental First Amendment freedoms, the majority is able to craft an opinion that resembles constitutional common sense. In this article, I examine how the Court ultimately arrives at this destination. In the decades prior to Citizens United, the Court established that associating with others has a close nexus with the textual freedoms of speech and assembly, but the contours of the “right to associate” remained far from clear. I argue that the right to enhance individual expression through association gradually, and without acknowledgement, morphed into a right of the association itself I trace and critique this development, looking closely at Court precedent, the views of the Framers, and the core philosophical underpinnings of free speech. After Citizens United, the fiction of the “corporate speaker,” useful in other contexts, was inappropriately accorded First Amendment status. The result, I argue, is contrary to democratic and republican ideals-allowing corporations and other associations to become potent players in political contests intended for individual citizens.”

“This Article endeavors to catalog and resolve cases involving competing free speech values, and then applies its solutions to violent and disruptive protests. Almost every First Amendment case can be framed as implicating free speech values on both sides of the First Amendment equation. Government action directly abridges speech, but government inaction may allow private parties too much control over others’ speech. First Amendment doctrine, which generally protects speech only from suppression by state actors, can thus compromise the very free speech values that form the rationales for the First Amendment. Scholars and litigants have argued that government regulation of speech, to preserve free speech values, is necessary in areas ranging from campaign finance, to access to media resources, to bigoted speech. This Article argues that strict adherence to a formal state action doctrine should resolve most, but not all, clashes between free speech doctrine and values. A robust application of the state action doctrine—where government interference to preserve speech values is not considered as part of the First Amendment calculus—also best advances both formal and substantive First Amendment equality. This Article proceeds in three parts. First, the Article chronicles the Supreme Court’s approach to cases involving competing free speech values. The Article then demonstrates why the state action doctrine, with its associated formal equality and neutrality principles, will ultimately advance free speech values. Finally, the Article considers political protests, and distinguishes between prosecution of violent protesters, which should be encouraged, and legislation criminalizing disruptive protest tactics, which may be unconstitutional.”

“[T]he Government of Costa Rica […] submitted to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights […] an advisory opinion request relating to the interpretation of Articles 13 [Freedom of thought and expression] and 29 [Restrictions Regarding Interpretation] of the American Convention on Human Rights […] as they affect the compulsory membership in an association prescribed by law for the practice of journalism […]. The request also sought the Court's interpretation relating to the compatibility of Law No. 4420 of September 22, 1969, Organic Law of the Colegio de Periodistas (Association of Journalists) of Costa Rica […], with the provisions of the aforementioned articles.”