Synthesis

According to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” General speaking, I believe that freedom of speech should be recognized and protected anywhere in the world. My general perception of freedom of speech has not changed even after what I learned in this class. However, this class helped me to recognize that there are many different elements playing different roles in freedom of speech such as philosophy, context, people, laws and culture. One thing I learned in the class is that there is no absolute freedom of speech that everyone can express anything they want without interfering with each other. For example, people are not free to criticize someone in public because it suppresses the rights of the person. It can be libel. However, the U.S. and England have a very different approach to a libel case, and Canada recently created a different approach based on their culture and perception of freedom of speech.

I believe that freedom of speech stands for individual self-fulfillment; also, there is a need to adapt to new mediums that are consistently changing. Therefore, my favorite philosopher, as far as I know, is Thomas Emerson because he values the overall importance of protecting one's freedom of speech. Emerson argues “freedom of expression includes the right to form and hold beliefs on any subject and to communicate those beliefs to others by whatever medium one chooses (438).” By this statement, he protects not only traditional mediums, but he also protects new mediums such as music, art and word. Also, his expression-action theory broadly protects expressions very well; at the same time, it prohibits undesirable actions. However, his philosophy can be very hard to apply to specific cases because it is hard to draw a line between an expression and an action sometimes. In the book, there is an example of dealing with a sedition case with his philosophy. In the example, burning a draft card and burning a flag to protest are classified as an expression. However, the physical obstruction of doorways is classified as an action. As the book example shows, expressions and actions are sometimes hard to distinguish. bI think a philosopher like Chafee can be more applicable to many cases because he puts an emphasis on the social value of the material and strongly protecting these socially valuable (worthwhile) materials and gives far less protection on these “worthless” materials. However, I do not necessarily agree with his idea that some expressions are “worthless.” Although it could be easier to apply his philosophy especially for obscenity or animal cruelty cases; I still think that expressions are supposed to be protected as long as they do not harm people.

For the same reason, I like the Harm principal. Although the Offense principal could be applied to more cases because the bar is set lower, and it also restricts offensive but not actually harmful expressions. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy employs the case of pornography. That Harm principal punishes only when violence against these women are captured. However, the offense theory bans materials that are just “offensive” for many people. I think the offense theory sets the bar too low in that anything can be restricted because of the offensiveness, and it suppresses freedom of speech too greatly.
In addition, I think the burden of proof should be on the prosecutor in general. As we learned in class, libel cases in England are very hard to win for the speaker because the burden of proof is on the speaker. Because the speaker is the one to prove his/her own innocence, it is less likely to protect the freedom of speech of the person. Although the burden of proof on the speaker may be necessary in cases such as obscenity and animal cruelty because it is so hard for the prosecutors to prove, and accused people are likely to get away if the burden is on the prosecutors for that reason. Therefore, I think it is okay to put the burden on the speaker on this kind of issue as long as the government has a compelling reason. Although some restrictions need to be imposed in order to balance freedom of expression and rights of people, I still think that expressions should have maximum protection. Therefore, I choose Emerson, the offense theory and having the burden of proof on the prosecutor to maximize the protection while suppressing harmful actions. For example, in obscenity and child pornography, I believe that harmful actions that cause bodily harm t women and children should be suppressed; however, artistic or scientific expressions should not suffer from restrictions. But, I also think that the approach of law and philosophy should be flexible enough to achieve the needs of the specific issue. Therefore, other principals and philosophies are also valuable in society.

In conclusion, I believe that freedom of expression should be universally recognized; however, there are times that it needs to be limited in order to protect people from offenses. Because of importance of freedom of expression, I think restrictions are carefully limited, so only harmful expressions would be suppressed. On the other hand, I agree that there should be some flexibility, and choice of philosophy and doctrine approach depends on the issue because each philosopher and doctrine approach has a different area and level of protection on a different issue. Therefore, I did not use Emerson on every my posting.