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Overlawyered
Jan 10 2015
"In the name of equality and fraternity, liberty has been curtailed in France."
by Walter Olson on January 10, 2015
Jonathan Turley in the Washington Post explores at more length a point
I made briefly in my TIME opinion piece: to honor the slain
cartoonists of Charlie-Hebdo, we should be lifting legal constraints
on what their successors tomorrow can draw and write and say, rather
than, as France and other countries have been doing in recent years,
bringing it under tighter legal constraint in the name of equality and
the prevention of offense:
Indeed, if the French want to memorialize those killed at Charlie
Hebdo, they could start by rescinding their laws criminalizing speech
that insults, defames or incites hatred, discrimination or violence on
the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex
or sexual orientation. These laws have been used to harass the
satirical newspaper and threaten its staff for years.
The numerous court actions brought against Charlie Hebdo by religious
groups (as of 2011, organizations connected with the Catholic church
had taken the magazine to court 13 times, Muslim groups once) are only
the beginning:
[Other] cases have been wide-ranging and bizarre. In 2008, for
example, Brigitte Bardot was convicted for writing a letter to
then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy about how she thought Muslims
and homosexuals were ruining France. In 2011, fashion designer John
Galliano was found guilty of making anti-Semitic comments against at
least three people in a Paris cafe. In 2012, the government
criminalized denial of the Armenian genocide (a law later overturned
by the courts, but Holocaust denial remains a crime). ...Last year,
Interior Minister Manuel Valls moved to ban performances by comedian
Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, declaring that he was "no longer a comedian"
but was rather an "anti-Semite and racist." It is easy to silence
speakers who spew hate or obnoxious words, but censorship rarely ends
with those on the margins of our society....
Recently, speech regulation in France has expanded into non-hate
speech, with courts routinely intervening in matters of opinion. For
example, last year, a French court fined blogger Caroline Doudet and
ordered her to change a headline to reduce its prominence on Google --
for her negative review of a restaurant.
Related: Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog, on efforts to repeal Canada's
not-entirely-in-disuse blasphemy law; earlier here and here. And from
Ireland, an urgent reason to repeal its own law of this sort: Muslim
leader vows to "take legal advice if Irish publications ...republish or
tweet cartoons." [Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Independent]
P.S. Graham Smith on Twitter: "What if every State represented in
Paris today promised to repeal one law that restricts free speech?"
http://overlawyered.com/2015/01/name-equality-fraternity-liberty-curtailed-france/
Jan 10 2015
"In the name of equality and fraternity, liberty has been curtailed in France."
by Walter Olson on January 10, 2015
Jonathan Turley in the Washington Post explores at more length a point
I made briefly in my TIME opinion piece: to honor the slain
cartoonists of Charlie-Hebdo, we should be lifting legal constraints
on what their successors tomorrow can draw and write and say, rather
than, as France and other countries have been doing in recent years,
bringing it under tighter legal constraint in the name of equality and
the prevention of offense:
Indeed, if the French want to memorialize those killed at Charlie
Hebdo, they could start by rescinding their laws criminalizing speech
that insults, defames or incites hatred, discrimination or violence on
the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex
or sexual orientation. These laws have been used to harass the
satirical newspaper and threaten its staff for years.
The numerous court actions brought against Charlie Hebdo by religious
groups (as of 2011, organizations connected with the Catholic church
had taken the magazine to court 13 times, Muslim groups once) are only
the beginning:
[Other] cases have been wide-ranging and bizarre. In 2008, for
example, Brigitte Bardot was convicted for writing a letter to
then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy about how she thought Muslims
and homosexuals were ruining France. In 2011, fashion designer John
Galliano was found guilty of making anti-Semitic comments against at
least three people in a Paris cafe. In 2012, the government
criminalized denial of the Armenian genocide (a law later overturned
by the courts, but Holocaust denial remains a crime). ...Last year,
Interior Minister Manuel Valls moved to ban performances by comedian
Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, declaring that he was "no longer a comedian"
but was rather an "anti-Semite and racist." It is easy to silence
speakers who spew hate or obnoxious words, but censorship rarely ends
with those on the margins of our society....
Recently, speech regulation in France has expanded into non-hate
speech, with courts routinely intervening in matters of opinion. For
example, last year, a French court fined blogger Caroline Doudet and
ordered her to change a headline to reduce its prominence on Google --
for her negative review of a restaurant.
Related: Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog, on efforts to repeal Canada's
not-entirely-in-disuse blasphemy law; earlier here and here. And from
Ireland, an urgent reason to repeal its own law of this sort: Muslim
leader vows to "take legal advice if Irish publications ...republish or
tweet cartoons." [Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Independent]
P.S. Graham Smith on Twitter: "What if every State represented in
Paris today promised to repeal one law that restricts free speech?"
http://overlawyered.com/2015/01/name-equality-fraternity-liberty-curtailed-france/