Democracy and Freedom of Speech - Report Example

Democracy and Freedom of Speech History of Democracy The capa for complex language has been identified by evolutionary scientist as the most distinguishing characteristic of our human species. It is not very clear when the ability developed but some estimate that the ability for spoken language emerged between 100,000 to around one million years ago(democracyweb para. 2).The history of the development of the first written language is, however, understood better. The Sumerian cuneiform and the Egyptian hieroglyphics were the first known written languages. The two written languages and the rise of the first civilisations coincide (democracyweb para. 2). With time, people developed varying philosophies and with that came the desire to express themselves differently. Freedom of speech refers to the political right to express one’s ideas or opinions to anyone willing to lend an ear, using their property or body (Curtis 13). Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are commonly used synonymously although the two terms have slight differences on a strict sense. In every jurisdiction, the right to freedom of speech is limited and precludes cases in which the speech causes harm to other parties (Curtis 23). In other words, freedom of speech is commonly limited if the ideas or opinions being expressed are harmful to society, individuals, or special interest groups. Freedom of speech and democracy are closely related. There arose some who wished to control other people’s freedom of expression. An example of this is the epic poet in ancient Greece, Homer who lived in the ninth and eighth century BC. He supported freedom of expression but Solon who lived 630-560 BC was not so supportive of the idea of freedom of expression. Democracyweb (para.2) quotes him as banning, “speaking evil against the living and the dead”. The development of democracy in Greece can be traced to 507BC when Cleisthenes, an Athenian leader, introduced a political reform that came to be known as demokratia (history.com 1). Demokratia is losely translated to “rule by the people”. In the system, three institutions played a big role in governance; the boule, the ekklesia, and the dikasteria. Of great importance to the development of modern day democracy with respect to the demokratia reform was dikasteria. Dikasteria comprised popular courts that were presided over by a group of jurors. The jurors would listen to arguments made by citizens and make rulings on them (history.com 1). Although the system of demokratia survived for less than 200 years, it remains a great contribution to modern day democracy. Athenian democracy was well established by the 5th century BC. Other Greek cities tried to emulate the kind of democracy practiced in Athens with relative success. At the time, the people of Athens practiced direct democracy; instead of relying on elected representatives to vote and pass laws and bills, the people did performed this task by themselves. Pericles who led the democratic Athens proclaimed freedom of expression as the distinction between Athens and Sparta. Despite this, following the Peloponnesian Wars, Socrates was ordered to take poison because he had lectured people on unrecognised deities and corrupted the youth and encouraged them to question the authority(democracyweb para. 3).Then came the enlightment of the 17th and 18th century in Europe. Before this period, the practice of rulers was censorship; this involved forbidding questioning of their style of leadership. Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press in the mid-15th century which necessitated even bigger control (Puddephatt 75). The Vatican became formidable in enforcing censorship. The Congregation of Index held in 1559 had a long list of books that had been banned for heresy. Among the censored books was one by Nicholaus Copernicus entitled De revolutionibis orbium coelestium published in 1543which challenged the held belief that the earth was stationary(democracyweb para. 3). Galileo Galilei got a life sentence for confirming the theories postulated by Copernicus of earth moving around the sun. Galileo’s sentence was reduced to house arrest after kneeling before the pope and recanting his support for the Copernican theory. This punishment and forced recantation was a huge setback for the advancement in science even more than the banning of De revolutionibis(democracyweb para. 2; Puddephatt 78). After the reformation, rulers who broke from the Vatican control also instituted censorship. Henry VIII together with his daughter Elizabeth I were both in disagreement with the Vatican. They banned all books that were against to the then new Church of England. They also invoked Court of Star Chamber in a bid to repress “slander”. There was also “Master of the Revels”during her reign whose role was censorship of public presentations(democracyweb para. 2). Notable censorships during Elizabeth I times were the directive to remove the scenes containing resignation and assassination in Richard II by William Shakespeare because the book compared her with Richard II who was weak. The Court of the Star Chamber was used in the suppression of political dissent and in controlling licensing of publishers during the reign of Catholic Stuart dynasty(democracyweb para. 2). The Star Chamber was abolished in 1637 following Charles I raising an army against the parliament. Nevertheless, the parliament re-established controls over the press by the 1643 Licensing Act that imposed severe restrictions on published materials’ content(democracyweb para. 3). In 1644, in the context of civil war and state intrigue, one of the most popular defences of freedom of speech was written by John Milton. This essay was called the Areopatica. He opposed the Licensing Act which was unheard of before but today is regarded as a basic mantra for those fighting for freedom of expression.He stated that truth has a greater chance of emerging in a “free and open encounter”(democracyweb para. 3). The argument was not accepted at the time but the Licensing Act was abolished eventually amidst the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that brought to power Mary II and William III requiring them to observe the Bill of Rights. Royal decrees continued to perpetrate censorship but England’s tradition of a free media eventually prevailed. The Areopagitica was rather complex but became a benchmark for liberal view on freedom of expression and helped greatly in establishing the liberal custom of the UK, the US and all through the British Empire and is still respected as a text by advocates of freedom of speech(democracyweb para. 3). Liberal thinkers considered freedom of expression as a yardstick for measuring progress made in liberty. Sweden was the first nation to abolish censorship in Europe in 1766 then Denmark and Norway followed closely in 1770(democracyweb para 4). The French National Assembly instituted the Rights of Man in the year 1989. This included both the right to express oneself freely and the right to owning a printing press. The American colonies’ had one of their complaint being censorship of the press by the King of England. Following the American Revolution, the First Amendment of the US constitution in 1791 established very strong standards guaranteeing freedom of speech by the constitution(democracyweb para. 4). In so many democracies, freedom of speech has evolved more toward expansion and less restrictionof the media. The US Supreme Court has inclined towards this approach. It was common for slander and issues of national security to be used as an excuse for censorship; while this could have had genuine reasons for this, it also opened a door for being abused. In 1964, the US Supreme Court reversed a ruling that had been made earlier in favour of a Montgomery city official who had sued The York Times newspaper for carrying an ad by the civil rights movement(democracyweb para 4). The Supreme Court ruled that slander particularly one involving a public figure, needed to show actual intent of malice, prior knowledge of the falsehood of a claim or disregarding truth in a reckless manner. The US Supreme Court until 1969 upheld the restriction of freedom of expression in matters concerning national security. In the 1919, Schenck versus United States, a famous opinion against freedom of speech in case of public security was written by Oliver Holmes(democracyweb para 5). He argued that freedom of expression should not be used to protect a person yelling fire in a theatre and raising a stampede. This lay ground for a standard method of evaluating the genuineness of threat against public and national security. It had to be “clear and present danger” which again brought up the question of what exactly is clear and present danger(democracyweb para 5).. In Shneck v. US, the plaintiff was Charles Shneck who had been convicted of spreading leaflets that called for the draftees of the World War I to reject the draft(democracyweb para. 5). The court reversed many rulings in Yates versus US in 1957 that had been backed by the Smith Act. The Smith Act outlawed political movements that were revolutionary.In this, the Court made an assertion that the teaching of overthrowing the government and the actual act of overthrowing the government should be distinguished(democracyweb para 6). The Brandenberg versus Ohio in 1969 particularly overturned the Smith Act responding to a KKK TV ad that threatened violence to blacks and Jews. The Court ruled that the idea of clear and present danger was unclear and that it could not prohibit, punish or prevent speech unless in advocating particular lawlessness that had the potential of leading to a lawless action imminently.The ruling New York Times Company versus United States in 1971 that resulted from the infamous Pentagon Papers lead to an establishment of a higher standard for a government to be justified in restricting the First Amendment(democracyweb para 6). The standard required a heavy burden of proof. These decisions reinforced the protection of freedom of expression and the media and emphasized greatly the significance of freedom of expression as an integral part of civilised societies. They also asserted that censorship of freedom was a menace to the very foundations of democracy(democracyweb para 7). Totalitarian regimes had a period of great influence in the 20th century. Their method of leadership was eradicating freedom. The regimes took over the control of the media and transformed it into a tool of conveying the ideology of the state. This was achieved by controlling the thought through propaganda and suppressing deviant views through intimidation(democracyweb para. 7). The regimes would take control of freedom the moment they seized power. The Bolshevics were very active in censorship since the early days of the Russian Revolution. One of their tactics was to destroy the press of rivals in politics and private libraries of the “bourgeois”. The leader of the Bolshevics Vladmir Lenin set the pace for propaganda with his maxim that a lie told consistently eventually becomes truth(democracyweb para. 7). Stalin furthered the course of censorships with when he established a body for overseeing censorship known in Russian as the Glavit and also the Writers Union in 1932 which would become the only writers’ union that was legal. The actions by Stalin were meant to control all aspects in which the public could express themselves and to make socialism the only allowed ideology. Repression was at its maximum in the period between late 1920s and late 1903s during Stalin’s rule. During this period, thousands of advocates of freedom of expression found themselves imprisoned or killed.When Hitler took over leadership in Germany, he gave Joseph Goebbels the job of director of propaganda(democracyweb para. 8). Inciting anti-Semitism was one of his first acts of propaganda. He also mobilised support the burning of books that were not “German” in Berlin in 1933. A German poet in the 19th century argued that people are likely to be burned in a place where books are burned. Totalitarian propaganda is based on the theory that if a lie is told enough times it is likely to be perceived as truth. However, the propagation of the lie is only guaranteed success if there is no truth opposing it. This means that besides spreading a lie through propaganda, a totalitarian regime must be actively involved in suppressing the truth because (democracyweb para. 9). Freedom of expression matters in the US recently There continues to be cases and rulings in the US over the First Amendment rights. The following are just but a few. The case Gertz v. Robert Welch was on whether a publication or broadcast of defamatory news about a person who is not a public official and neither is he a public figure makes the publisher liable for defamation if the slanderous statements generate a lot of public interest. The court ruled against it. The ruling was very controversial when they said that states could decide by themselves a standard of liability for the publisher or broadcaster of slanderous falsehoods that causes injury to the individual for as long as they(states) have not imposed a liability with no fault. States cannot allow recovery of punitive damages-even if presumed - for defamation if liability is not from the basis of knowledge of falsehood or a reckless disregard for truth. It further ruled that the plaintiff in a defamation suit that is not a public official or a public figure and who manages to establish damages of a lesser standard than the one in New York Times versus Sullivan could recover damages for actual injury only ("Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc."). Madsen v. Women’s Health Centre: in this case, an abortion clinic in Florida succeeded in obtaining a court injunction barring anti-abortion protestors from a buffer zone of 36 feet set around the clinic (Casebriefs para. 2-3). The court held that the injunction was content-neutral and only regulated the time, location and manner of expression, and to think otherwise would not differentiate an injunction from an ordinance which addresses not the general public but is meant for specific parties. Injunctions however, risk censoring free speech and for this reason are applied in a rather stringent manner. This case sought to protect the safety the publicand a pregnant woman’s right to seek legal medical consultation but some aspects burden too much speech than necessary for accomplishing a goal. Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York: in this case, a few abortion clinics in New York were targeted by use of huge blockades meant to bar access to them. Members of the clinics sued fifty organisations and three organisations so as to be paid damages and obtain an injunction banning demonstrators from crossing a buffer zone to the clinics. The court issued an injunction to bar the protestors from crossing a buffer zone around the clinics. The injunction further input a buffer zone of 15 feet around any person or vehicle that sought to enter the facilities. Two counsellors were let into the clinics beyond the buffer zones but had to stop the counselling if the person approached requested so. The Supreme Court ruled that the buffer zones around the facilities were constitutional but the floating ones were in violation of the first amendment since they burdened more speech than necessary to meet the objective of the injunction. The floating buffer zones had the potential of for instance, restricting the expression of persons who only line the curb or sidewalk protesting ("Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York | Legal Momentum."). United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington: this ruling happened in 1965. The small coal mining companies took the big coal mining companies for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act after the big companies agreed with the secretary of the union to establish a minimum wage for the workers of large companies that sold coal to Tennessee Valley Authority. This made it hard for the small miners to compete for tenders to trade coal to authority. The union and the big companies had also lobbied the authority to curb spot market buying of coal, most of which had been exempted from the minimum wage deal. It was held that even if the union intended for anti-competition when they approached the labour secretary and the TVA, it had not violated antitrust laws ("United Mine Workers v. Pennington - 381 U.S. 657 (1965): Justia US Supreme Court Center."). Professional Real Estate Investors v. Columbia Pictures: this case immunity is not guaranteed from First Amendment liability if the petitioning is nothing more than a sham. In this ruling, the Court pronounced a two-fold test foe a sham petitioning in a litigation process. The lawsuit must first be baseless to the extent that no litigant could reasonably expect to win on the basis of merits. The Court can determine whether the litigants motive was to interfere with the business of the opponent after the case has been ruled a sham ("Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc., v. Columbia Pictures, 508 U.S. 49 (1993)."). Texas v. Johnson: in this case that happened in 1989; the US Supreme Court ruled that the burning of the United States was a right of expression that was protected by the First Amendment of the US constitution. The case had originated from an event at the Republican National Convention that happened in Dallas Texas in 1984. The Republican Party had convened to nominate President Ronald Reagan the flag-bearer for the election that was to be held that year. There was a group that had gathered outside the convention to protest the policies of Reagan. Among the protestors was Gregory Lee Jonson who drenched the American flag with paraffin and torched it outside the Dallas City Hall. This was in violation of Texas law that forbade desecration of the United States flag; for this reason he was arrested and convicted. He received a sentence of one year in prison and fined on top. His conviction was overturned however by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The court argued the burning of the flag was a form of expression that was under protection from the First Amendment. After review of the case was accepted by the US Supreme Court, the case was heard in 1989. The ruling by the Supreme was a controversial 5 against 4 in favour of upholding the court of appeals decision that the act of burning the US flag is a right protected by the US constitution (Kent 102). The court called the First Amendment protection of free expression a “bedrock principle” and stressed that the government could not ban expression of an opinion because some people are offended by it or don’t agree with it. The ruling in favour was supported by 3 liberal judges and 2 conservative ones ("Texas v. Johnson (law case)." 2014). Advancement in technology and the many ways a person can express themselves today like social media pose an even greater challenge for governments that may seek to attempt to suppress the freedom of expression (Warburton 25). Is it okay for workers to be fired for complaining in the social media? Experts argue that the issue is tricky.They say there are laws that protect the rights of employees when they act for the betterment of the workplace but the rules are not very absolute (Marohn par. 2). The First Amendment does not protect employees to speak whatever they want about the work place but the National Labour Act does protect them to some extent (Marohn par. 4). Freedom of speech is the very heart of a democratic society. Democracy cannot be said to exist if freedom of expression is absent. Since the earliest civilisations of the Greek, through the Middle Ages to the enlightment to the industrial revolution to today, part of the human race has always favoured people be left free to express themselves. It is the very property that separates the west from majority of the rest of the world. There has however been a part of the human race that has always felt that human beings are way too imperfect to be allowed to say whatever they want to say. While both of these groups have their own justifications for inclining in whichever side if the debate, no one is blind enough to not see that restricting freedom of expression opens a door that can cause the greatest evil there can ever be. We have witnessed the act of censorship though history of rulers who have left it to themselves to decide what is right to say and what is not. Restricting free speech could be justified but there is also great risk of being abused by totalitarian regimes just so they can achieve their objective of staying to power. Democracy and freedom of speech may have its flaws, but everything good has to have its shortcomings and honestly for democracy, they are not that many. There is no doubt the US constitution offers the largest immunity for freedom of expression and judging by the decisions outlined above, the Supreme Court has done a commendable job of protecting the right even in slippery situations. Works Cited "Democracy Web | Freedom of Expression: History." Democracy Web | Welcome to Democracy Web.N.p.,n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2014. "First Amendment Cases Decided by the U.S. Supreme Court | California Anti-SLAPP Project." California Lawyers Fighting SLAPPs - Defamation, Malicious Prosecution, Abuse of Process Lawsuits.N.p.,n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc." JEM First Amendment Project.N.p.,n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc., v. Columbia Pictures, 508 U.S. 49 (1993)." LII / Legal Information Institute.N.p.,n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York | Legal Momentum." Home Page | Legal Momentum.N.p.,n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "Texas v. Johnson (law case)." EncyclopediaBritannica.N.p., 20 Jan. 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "United Mine Workers v. Pennington - 381 U.S. 657 (1965): Justia US Supreme Court Center." Justia US Supreme Court Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Casebriefs."Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, Inc | Casebriefs."Law Cases & Case Briefs for Students.N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. Curtis, Michael. Free Speech, "The Peoples Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. London. Duke University Press. 2000. Print. history.com. Ancient Greek Democracy. N.d. Web. http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-greece-democracy/print Kent, Michael. Free Speech, "The Peoples Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. New York. Duke University Press. 2000. Print. Marohn, Kirsti. "Social media free speech rights complicated for workers." USA TODAY: Latest World and US News - USATODAY.com. N.p., 27 July 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Puddephatt, Andrew. Freedom of Expression, The essentials of Human Rights. New York. Hodder Arnold. 2005. Print. Warburton, Nigel. Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. Oxford Publishers. 2009. Print. Read More