I’ve heard people from other countries refer to their own rights to free speech or freedom of the press as if their constitution mirrors ours in that regard. How common is the inclusion of these rights in other countries’ governing documents?
I’d guess it’s pretty universal. Even the constitutions of North Korea and the former USSR enshrined freedom of speech.
There are going to be nuances and shades of meaning. For instance, in most regards, Germany can be regarded as having freedom of speech, but they also ban the use of Nazi symbols, something that would be considered unconstitutional here in the US. And even in the US, there are restrictions on all of those rights (for instance, freedom of assembly is currently significantly curtailed in many parts of the country).
Norway had press freedom and some version of freedom of explicitly explicitly mentioned in the 1814 constitution. It also included some specific exceptions such as encouraging criminal activity, blasphemy and sedition.
It remained unchanged until 2004 when it was revised to reflect changes in what’s considered acceptable and to include elements that had been added through other laws in the interim.
It’s worth noting that Norway criminalizes even certain remarks that are made in private.
The Hate Speech Law in the Norwegian penal code says it’s illegal to expressing hate speech in public as well as “profess hate speech in the presence of others towards someone based on their protected characteristic.”
I can understand free speech absolutism, even though I disagree with it, but the “even in private!” seems like a disingenuous misrepresentation.
It was.
The article says a year in prison for private remarks, and three years for public comments.
The point is that if you’re going to ban telling a Christian that you think all Christians should be killed, it makes little sense to limit that ban only to comments made in what is defined as “in public”. Putting it as “even in private” makes it seem like it’s some sort of extreme step, but from a freedom of expression point of view it’s a minor one compared to making such remarks punishable at all. But this is pretty much a derail, so I will leave it there.
Yeah, we’ll leave it for another thread.
Anyhow, it’s hard to think of any other nation that has the full equivalent (not just on paper, but in practice) of the First Amendment. (Not that the 1st Am is necessarily a good thing.)
Even before the first amendment, freedom of speech, religion, the press were explicitly covered in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. They are notions that emerge from the enlightenment, and they will be covered in most, if not all, modern written constitutions and international human rights instruments.
The trick, of course, is balancing these rights when they are in tension with other rights, or with other important principles. The the wider the range of rights and values that you recognise, the more often conflicts and tensions arise that require reconciliation. A lot of US discourse about the importance of free speech serves to distract attention from the many ways in which free speech is limited, perfectly legally, in the US. There are laws which protect medical confidentiality, protect banking/commercial confidentiality, protect copyright, ensure data privacy, require truth in advertising, impose product labelling standards, penalise defamation, restrict the distribution of child pornography, forbid hate speech, etc, etc. These are all laws which restrict freedom of speech, and all countries which have constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech also have multiple laws of this kind.
The point about a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech is not that they actually deliver absolute freedom of speech; they never do. What they do is establish that restrictions on free speech require to be justified by appeals to other important rights or values.
I may be a little over sensitive, but found the OP vaguely troubling. As though “free speech” is some sort of holy grail towards which we should be working.
When in reality we have seen the result of free speech nowhere more starkly than in a laughing stock of a President and his minions causing untold damage during a pandemic. If free speech is a “right” that leads to the sorts of outcomes that we have seen over the last 4 years, then I would certainly be in favour of re-phrasing the question more towards:
“many countries have laws relating to accuracy of public speech - why aren’t there such protections in America’s founding documents?”
I have lived in Singapore - which doesn’t have anything even approaching the free speech protections that America does - but even there truth and accuracy are both an absolute defence.
Here in New Zealand, incitement to violence and knowingly repeating “bad” information will get you into trouble. But I have never been the least bit concerned about the words I say - other than those that would cause personal offence to the people I am with
Australians have no codified right to free speech (nor many other freedoms expressed in the the US Bill of Rights).
The Australian High Court has recognised that freedom of political communication is implied in the Constitution
The Australian Constitution has not been found to protect free speech more broadly.
There are libel laws, privacy, confidentiality, and legislation against hate speech etc which have been challenged and upheld.
The colloquial right to talk bunkum, bilge, drivel, twaddle, guff and bull’s wool is unabridged and commonly encouraged.
The European Convention on Human Rights, which covers not just the EU but other countries (including Russia!) has a two-part “right to freedom of expression”, balancing freedom against the kind of restrictions you might expect:
In the UK we have laws against incitement to hatred (more serious, hard to prove and not often used) and a lower-level public order offence, which is context-dependent (things you could say in your own home, but not if you’re deliberately coat-trailing for a fight in public or in your victim’s home).
And there’s no great public hooha about it, bar the occasional case, usually on a lower-level case where someone takes umbrage at the court’s decision (and/or some alt.right nutter wants to claim martyrdom).
Good point - back during the debates about ratification of the US Constitution part of the issue was whether certain things that were already understood as “rights” under the British “unwritten constitution” model needed to be expressly protected from the new federal government undoing them – and thus how come the Bill of Rights is added on as a series of Amendments to the original Constitution, and why towards the end it mentions “oh, BTW, there may be more rights than just these mentioned ones, don’t think this is it.”
My question was exactly what I meant to ask. I did not intend to have it relate to our current situation. Nor did I intend to as the question that you seem to think I was asking. I was merely curious as to the degree to which these rights, regardless of how they are phrased, are local - i.e. built in to the founding documents of the United States, and to what extent they are more broadly included in other nations’ grounding documents. I had no idea as to the answer to that question. I’m aware of your point that “free speech” seems to be a rallying cry of a number of rather distasteful groups and points of view. I was not dipping into that water.
Again, I may be being over sensitive here - I’m a rather parochial Kiwi, and all too often we suffer the whims and fancies of “American Exceptionalism” as a tiny nation compared to the US behemouth.
It may not be codified the way that it is in America, but I most certainly consider myself to have free speech and full freedom of expression.
The way that I read the question is similar to, for example
“What nations have protections for universal suffrage”
or
“What nations give equal right to the LGBQT+ community”
Something that is to be aimed for.
At the same time - I look at the level of political discourse you have in the US, and it is not pretty. It is in no way something to be emulated.
Ask, for example, Hunter Biden what he thinks of “free speech” and what it has treated him to, and I bet you would get a somewhat different response.
Is not the right to accurate information, or freedom from spurious attacks also something that should be enshrined in a founding document?
Freedom of expression is a constitutional right in India, but it also sometimes gets suppressed in frivolous hate speech cases. Freedom of expression in India - Wikipedia
On a lighter note : Remember how the US used to send Election observers to third world countries to ensure free and fair elections; and a smooth transition of power? I heard that those countries want to return the favor.
I suspect that’s a lot harder to codify. The first amendment to the U.S. Constiution is a limitation on government: it specifies what Congress shall not do.
Would this be to ensure free and fair elections and smooth transition in the US or to learn creative anti-democratic mechanisms to subvert the process?