Freedom of Speech and Public Reason

2021 ◽  
pp. 136-156
Author(s):  
Wojciech Sadurski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Typical Pattern ◽  
The Public ◽  
The One

This chapter addresses the salience of the Rawlsian idea of public reason for freedom of speech. It applies a philosophical template of Public Reason to a typically legal issue: what motivations for speech restrictions render the restriction legitimate under the Public Reason criterion, and what motivations taint the law as illegitimate, because they are non-endorsable by reasonable persons to whom they apply. Traces of this pattern of argument can be found in several legal systems: in the United States, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia, when they grapple with constitutionality of restrictions on freedom of speech, and choose the motive path (rather than the effects path) of scrutiny. The most typical pattern of argument is the one which disfavours content-oriented restrictions, as compared to content-neutral restrictions. This distinction offers attractive avenues of argument when it is viewed in the context of legislative motives, and how they fare under a general principle of Public Reason. The chapter then establishes that viewpoint restrictions and subject-matter restrictions—two subcategories of a broader genus of content-based restrictions of freedom of speech—correspond to two perceived wrongful motivations in regulating speech: intolerance and paternalism.

Why Politicians Are More Tolerant: Selective Recruitment and Socialization Among Political Elites in Britain, Israel, New Zealand and the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Sullivan ◽  
Pat Walsh ◽  
Michal Shamir ◽  
David G. Barnum ◽  
James L. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Tolerance ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Members Of Parliament

In this article, we present data showing that national legislators are more tolerant than the public in Britain, Israel, New Zealand and the United States. Two explanations for this phenomenon are presented and assessed. The first is the selective recruitment of Members of Parliament, Knesset and Congress from among those in the electorate whose demographic, ideological and personality characteristics predispose them to be tolerant. Although this process does operate in all four countries, it is insufficient to explain all of the differences in tolerance between elites and the public in at least three countries. The second explanation relies on a process of explicitly political socialization, leading to differences in tolerance between elites and their public that transcend individual-level, personal characteristics. Relying on our analysis of political tolerance among legislators in the four countries, we suggest how this process of political socialization may be operating.

Immigration restriction: rethinking period and place from settler colonies to postcolonial nations

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Bashford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Nation States ◽  
World Nation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

AbstractImmigration acts have long been analysed as instrumental to the working of the modern nation-state. A particular focus has been the racial exclusions and restrictions that were adopted by aspirationally white, new world nation-states: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. This article looks again at the long modern history of immigration restriction in order to connect the history of these settler-colonial race-based exclusions (much studied) with immigration restriction in postcolonial nation-states (little studied). It argues for the need to expand the scope of immigration restriction histories geographically, temporally and substantively: beyond the settler nation, beyond the Second World War, and beyond ‘race’. The article focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, bringing into a single analytical frame the early immigration laws of New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada on the one hand and those of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Fiji on the other.

Notes and News

1917 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-56
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public School ◽  
Food Habits ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
United States Food ◽  
States Food ◽  
The One

In planning its campaign the Food Conservation Bureau of the United States Food Administration has realized the importance of the public school as a medium for the dissemination of the ideas which are “to modify the food habits of the one hundred million of our people.”

scholarly journals Elonis v. United States: The Doctrine of True Threats: Protecting Our Ever-Shrinking First Amendment Rights in the New Era of Communication

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-223
Author(s):  
Mary Margaret Roark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The U.S

The First Amendment protects one of our most precious rights as citizens of the United States—the freedom of speech. Such protection has withstood the test of time, even safeguarding speech that much of the population would find distasteful. There is one form of speech which cannot be protected: the true threat. However, the definition of what constitutes a "true threat" has expanded since its inception. In the new era of communication—where most users post first and edit later—the First Amendment protection we once possessed has been eroded as more and more speech is considered proscribable as a "true threat." In order to adequately protect both the public at large and our individual right to free speech, courts should analyze a speaker’s subjective intent before labeling speech a "true threat." Though many courts have adopted an objective, reasonable listener test, the U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity, in deciding Elonis v. United States, to take a monumental step in protecting the First Amendment right to free speech. By holding that the speaker’s subjective intent to threaten is necessary for a true threat conviction, the Court will restore the broad protection afforded by the First Amendment and repair years of erosion caused by an objective approach.

International Migration as an Issue on Today's Inter-American Agenda

1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Labor Migrants ◽  
The Public ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The One

As a frequent concern both of governments and of the public at large in Western Hemisphere nations, international migration is now more prominent than at any time since 1980. The episodic flow of seaborne refugees from Haiti since 1991 has been a key factor in spurring the inter-American community to oppose Haiti's military rulers. The flotilla of rafts leaving Cuba since early August 1994 has engendered high-profile negotiations on migration between Washington and Havana. The stream of undocumented labor migrants from Mexico to the United States has regained momentum since the late 1980s and is encountering increased public criticism, especially in the western United States.Underlying these instances of political tension is a strong, and only partially-met, demand for migration to the United States from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean on the one hand, and a growing anxiety in the US to “control the nation's borders” on the other.

scholarly journals Libel or Not? The War of Words between Lajos Kossuth and New York Editor James Watson Webb

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kenneth Nyirady
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Attack ◽  
The Public ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Day To Day Operations

Although three notable American editors opposed Lajos Kossuth before and during his visit to the United States in 1851-52, the most influential was arguably James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer (NYCE). Webb had been appointed by President Zachary Taylor to be Charge d’Affaires to Vienna in 1849 but had neglected to wait for confirmation by the Senate before traveling to Vienna. When the Senate rejected his appointment by an overwhelming vote, an embittered Webb was obliged to return to the United States. Although Webb had made many political enemies, the public reason given for his Senate rejection was that body intended to keep the post vacant as a “punishment” for Austria’s brutal suppression of the Hungarian rebels after their defeat in August 1849. Webb allegedly held Kossuth responsible for his rejected nomination, and upon returning to the United States and resuming the day-to-day operations of the NYCE, the paper's coverage of Hungary and Kossuth turned negative. During his visit to New York, Kossuth hinted that the Austrians might have bribed a certain New York editor to publish falsehoods about the Hungarian War of Independence. Webb took this hint as a personal attack and demanded an explanation from Kossuth, who never clearly explained which editor he was referring to.

scholarly journals What Happens When Books Enter the Public Domain? Testing Copyright’s Underuse Hypothesis across Australia, New Zealand, The United States and Canada

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Flynn ◽  
Rebecca Giblin ◽  
François Petitjean
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Widespread Access ◽  
Access To Knowledge

A key justification for copyright term extension has been that exclusive rights encourage publishers to make older works available (and that, without them, works will be ‘underused’). We empirically test this hypothesis by investigating the availability of ebooks to public libraries across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. We find that titles are actually less available where they are under copyright, that competition apparently does not deter commercial publishers from investing in older works, and that the existence of exclusive rights is not enough to trigger investment in works with low commercial demand. Further, works are priced much higher when under copyright than when in the public domain. In sum, simply extending copyrights results in higher prices and worse access. We argue that nations should explore alternative ways of allocating copyrights to better achieve copyright’s fundamental aims of rewarding authors and promoting widespread access to knowledge and culture.

Hollywood Hates Hitler!

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Yogerst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
Public Mind ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government

In September of 1941, a handful of isolationist senators set out to tarnish Hollywood for war-mongering. The United States was largely divided on the possibility of entering the European War, yet the immigrant moguls in Hollywood were acutely aware of the conditions in Europe. After Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), the gloves came off. Warner Bros. released the first directly anti-Nazi film in 1939 with Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Other studios followed with films such as The Mortal Storm (MGM), Man Hunt (Fox), The Man I Married (Fox), and The Great Dictator (United Artists). While these films represented a small percentage of Hollywood’s output, senators took aim at the Jews in Hollywood who were supposedly “agitating us for war” and launched an investigation that resulted in Senate Resolution 152. The resolution was aimed at both radio and movies that “have been extensively used for propaganda purposes designed to influence the public mind in the direction of participation in the European war.” When the Senate approved a subcommittee to investigate the intentions of these films, studio bosses were ready and willing to stand up against the government to defend their beloved industry. What followed was a complete embarrassment of the United States Senate and a large victory for Hollywood as well as freedom of speech.

Political Culture, Flag Use and Freedom of Speech

2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Gelber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
Turn On ◽  
National Flag

Flag use generates passionate debates that fundamentally turn on questions of the appropriate extent and limits of freedom of speech. The national flag is a natural and forceful medium with which to express one's views about a nation. Yet its use in this way also generates controversy and emotionally charged reactions. The purpose of this article is to assess attitudes in political culture towards flag use in the context of wider freedom of speech considerations. By analysing events in Australia, the United States and New Zealand, the article argues that public responses to flag use as a medium of political expression demonstrate a flawed understanding of the meaning, import and effect of freedom of speech and its limits. This has significant implications, exposing the extent of fragility of freedom of speech on controversial issues, and its persistence despite differences between jurisdictions in the manner and extent of free speech protection.

United States Of America (‘.us’)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R Towns
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Trademark Infringement ◽  
Likelihood Of Confusion ◽  
The One

The standard for trademark infringement in the United States is ‘likelihood of confusion’. Under this standard trademark infringement occurs when, dependent on the attendant circumstances, two parties’ use of the same or similar mark with related goods and services would be likely to cause the public mistakenly to believe: (1) that the goods and services emanate from the same source; or (2) that the parties are in some manner affiliated or that the goods and services of one party have the sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of the other party. In either case, trademark law aims to protect the public from deceit, and to prevent the diversion of reputation and goodwill from the one who has created it to another who has not.

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