free speech
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The Confusion in Hate Speech
The Alberta Court of Appeal delivered an interesting decision on the meaning and application of prohibition on “hate speech” in the province’s human rights legislation. The case, Lund v. Boissoin, 2012 ABCA 300, concerned the publication in a Red Deer newspaper of a letter to the editor urging citizens to resist “the homosexual agenda”, and Continue reading
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Don’t Try Again
The BC Court of Appeal recently delivered an important decision in the area of election law. The case, Reference Re Election Act (BC), 2012 BCCA 394, is the Court’s take on the provincial legislature’s attempt to respond to the Court’s earlier judgment in British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2011 BCCA 408, Continue reading
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Words and Misdeeds
Following up on my musings here and here on the reasons why we think it is sometimes permissible to punish a person for saying something that is likely to cause others to act in a certain way, and sometimes not, my friend Simon Murray asks a very sensible question: in what other cases do we sanction people Continue reading
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The Rewards of Punishment
I wondered aloud, yesterday, about the difference between falsely shouting “fire” in a theatre and causing a panic, and producing an incendiary video likely to cause murderous violence half a world away. Actually, I wondered whether there was any difference; I wasn’t able to come up with a convincing distinction. Eugene Volokh, over at the Continue reading
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Shouting Fire
A hateful idiot makes a nasty video about Islam and posts it on Youtube. Predictably enough, similar things having happened a number of times over the last few years, murderous violence breaks out in some Muslim countries as a consequence. (Unusually, there have been Western victims this time.) Predictably too, some people have been calling Continue reading
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Google, Speaker and Censor
Some recent stories highlight Google’s ambiguous role as provider and manager of content, which, from a free-speech perspective, puts at it at once in the shoes of both a speaker potentially subject to censorship and an agent of the censors. The first of these is an interesting exchange between Eugene Volokh, of UCLA and the Continue reading
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More about Election Law
There are two things to mention today, both related to election law, and more specifically to restrictions on “third-party” speech in the pre-electoral context. First, Radio-Canada reports that Québec’s Chief Electoral Officer has been in touch with the leaders of the student organizations who are protesting the tuition fee hikes announced by the provincial government. The Continue reading
Double Aspect 