Tag: freedom of expression
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Adam Tomkins: On ABJ: Proscribed Organisations, Proportionality, and Freedom of Speech
In R v ABJ [2026] UKSC 8 a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the offence of expressing support for a proscribed organisation, as defined in the Terrorism Act 2000, is not a disproportionate interference with the right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court’s verdict was no surprise: the…
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Kirsty Hughes: The Bill of Rights and the Precarity of Abortion Rights
In the aftermath of the US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization attention has turned to whether abortion is adequately protected in the UK from the winds of political change. Given that in England, Scotland, and Wales abortion is provided for by ordinary Act of Parliament, and in Northern Ireland by Regulation, an orthodox view…
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Autumn Ellis: Lawfulness of policies of public bodies and Freedom of Expression under Article 10 ECHR
The reaffirmation of the Gillick test by the Supreme Court Thirty five years after Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech AHA (Gillick) was decided, the Supreme Court took the opportunity, in R (A) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (A) and R (BF (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department(BF), (previously discussed in this blog here), to restate the boundaries of the test…
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N.A. Moreham: Police investigations: privacy, confidence and public duties
The Court of Appeal has recently affirmed the proposition that a person can be liable under the misuse of private information tort for revealing that someone is the subject of a police investigation before they have been charged. This raises important questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state when the former has…
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Eliza Bechtold: The Republican Party’s Misappropriation of ‘Free Speech’ Undermines American Democracy
Following the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, several Republican lawmakers accused the press and social media companies of censorship and attempting to ‘cancel’ conservative voices. During Trump’s impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives the following week, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a nationally televised speech in the House Chamber wearing…
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Christopher McCrudden: Democracy, protests, and Covid-19: the challenge of (and for) human rights
Two excellent databases enable us to track the effect of Covid-19 on political protests and demonstrations. Both the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project tell a similar story: that the effect of the virus has been mixed. Some protest movements that were active before the pandemic are…
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Eliza Bechtold: Has The United States’ Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Exposed the Marketplace of Ideas as a Failed Experiment?
The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic in the US has placed a spotlight not only on the fragility of the American economy and the perils of yawning income and social inequality, but also on the dangers flowing from the crisis of truth infecting US politics and American culture more broadly. In particular, President Trump’s purported…
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Emmanouil Bougiakiotis: E.S. v Austria: Blasphemy Laws and the Double Standards of the European Court of Human Rights
This case concerns the criminal conviction of an Austrian national because of a number of comments she made about Muhammad during some seminars she held under the title “Basic Information on Islam”. In one of those seminars she referred to Muhammad’s marriage with Aisha, one of his wives, implying that the fact that the marriage…
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Yossi Nehushtan and Stella Coyle: Ashers Baking (Part 2): Do Homophobes and Racists have a Right Not to Manifest Liberal Messages?
At the heart of the recent Supreme Court’s decision in Ashers Baking lies the ruling that nobody should be forced to express a view in which they do not believe. The unfortunate implications of this content-neutral reasoning go far beyond the circumstances of this case. This reasoning will result in vindicating behaviours that are founded…
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Yossi Nehushtan and Stella Coyle: Ashers Baking (Part 1): The Supreme Court’s Betrayal of Liberalism and Equality
Much has already been written about the recent Supreme Court judgment in Ashers Baking, but the debate has so far omitted an important argument: that the Court has, once again, ignored the legitimacy of the values that grounded the discriminatory practice of the religious service provider. Judgments based on content-neutral considerations have previously resulted in…