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List of contents
1. Complicating Freedom: Investigating Positive Free Speech
Andrew T Kenyon
2. Providing a Platform for Speech: Possible Duties and Responsibilities
Thomas Gibbons
3. Positive Protection for Speech and Substantive Political Equality
Jacob Rowbottom
4. The Access to Information Dimension of Positive Free Speech
Andrew Scott and Abbey Burke
5. Promoting Civic Discourse: A Form of Positive Free Speech under the Constitution of Ireland?
Eoin Carolan
6. The State of Affairs of Freedom: Implications of German Broadcasting Freedom
Andrew T Kenyon
7. The Collective Speech Rights of Minorities
Sally Broughton Micova
8. The Positive Right to Freedom of Expression and Party Anonymity in Legal Proceedings
Merris Amos
9. Positive Free Speech and Public Access to Courts
Judith Townend
10. Hiding the Truth in the Shadow of the Law? Addressing the Misuse of Confidentiality Clauses in Public Authority Contracts
Andrew Scott
11. Speaking and Governing through Freedom of Access to Environmental Information
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay and Laura Maxim
About the author
Andrew T Kenyon is Professor of Law at Melbourne Law School, Australia, and a member of its Centre for Media and Communications Law.Andrew Scott is Associate Professor in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Summary
Freedom of expression is generally analysed as a bare liberty against restraint by state action. Underpinning rationales for freedom of speech very often imply, however, that the concept also has important positive aspects, and that to be truly ‘democratic’ the modern polity requires more than negative freedom. In contemporary conditions, this understanding of free speech raises matters such as media diversity or pluralism, the concept of voice and access to the public sphere, access to information, and the need to rethink the audience in relation to public speech. Whether securing positive free speech is a matter of politics or of law, a task for legislatures or for courts, is an open question. On one level, any programme of inculcating positive dimensions of free speech might be understood as inherently polycentric and hence political in character. Yet, a number of jurisdictions evince enhanced legal recognition for the principle.
The aim of this collection of papers is to interrogate the rationales of positive free speech, to consider the political and juridical methods by which it has or may be more fully reflected in the modern state, and to consider the range of practical contexts in which its valorisation has or would have significant implications. The contributors are drawn from an array of European and international jurisdictions. They include academic lawyers and communications researchers
Foreword
Original collection of essays on the unexplored concept of positive free speech, and the obligations of the state to provide opportunities for people to realise freedom of expression.
