The examples and perspectives below deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Before the invention of the printing press, a written work, once created, could only be physically multiplied by highly laborious and error-prone manual copying. No elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes existed, who until the 14th century were restricted to religious institutions, and their works rarely caused wider controversy. In response to the printing press, and the theological heresies it allowed to spread, the Roman Catholic Church moved to impose censorship. Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information. The origins of copyright law in most European countries lie in efforts by the Roman Catholic Church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.
In 1501, Pope Alexander VI issued a Bill against the unlicensed printing of books. In 1559, Pope Paul IV promulgated the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books. The Index Expurgatorius is the most famous and long-lasting example of bad books catalogues issued by the Roman Catholic Church, which presumed to be in authority over private thoughts and opinions, and suppressed views that went against its doctrines. The Index Expurgatorius was administered by the Roman Inquisition, but enforced by local government authorities, and went through 300 editions. Amongst others, it banned or censored books written by René Descartes, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, David Hume, John Locke, Daniel Defoe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. While governments and the church encouraged printing in many ways because it allowed for the dissemination of Bibles and government information, works of dissent and criticism could also circulate rapidly. Consequently, governments established controls over printers across Europe, requiring them to have official licenses to trade and produce books.
The notion that the expression of dissent or subversive views should be tolerated, not censured or punished by law, developed alongside the rise of printing and the press. Areopagitica, published in 1644, was John Milton’s response to the Parliament of England’s re-introduction of government licensing of printers, hence publishers. Church authorities had previously ensured that Milton’s essay on the right to divorce was refused a license for publication. In Areopagitica, published without a license, Milton made an impassioned plea for freedom of expression and toleration of falsehood, stating:
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.“
Milton’s defence of freedom of expression was grounded in a Protestant worldview. He thought that the English people had the mission to work out the truth of the Reformation, which would lead to the enlightenment of all people. Nevertheless, Milton also articulated the main strands of future discussions about freedom of expression. By defining the scope of freedom of expression and harmful speech, Milton argued against the principle of pre-censorship and in favour of tolerance for a wide range of views. Freedom of the press ceased being regulated in England in 1695 when the Licensing Order of 1643 was allowed to expire after the introduction of the Bill of Rights in 1689 shortly after the Glorious Revolution. The emergence of publications like the Tatler (1709) and the Spectator (1711) are credited for creating a bourgeois public sphere in England that allowed for a free exchange of ideas and information.
More governments attempted to centralise control as the menace of printing spread. The French crown repressed printing and the printer Etienne Dolet was burned at the stake in 1546. In 1557 the British Crown thought to stem the flow of seditious and heretical books by chartering the Stationers’ Company. The right to print was limited to the members of that guild and was restricted to two universities and the 21 existing printers in the city of London, which had 53 printing presses. As the British crown took control of type founding in 1637, printers fled to the Netherlands. Confrontation with authority made printers radical and rebellious, with 800 authors, printers, and book dealers being incarcerated in the Bastille in Paris before it was stormed in 1789.
A succession of English thinkers was at the forefront of early discussion on the right to freedom of expression, among them John Milton (1608 – 74) and John Locke (1632 – 1704). Locke established the individual as the unit of value and the bearer of rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. However, Locke’s ideas evolved primarily around the concept of the right to seek salvation for one’s soul. He was thus primarily concerned with theological matters. Locke neither supported a universal toleration of peoples nor freedom of speech, according to his ideas some groups, such as atheists, should not be allowed.
By the second half of the 17th century philosophers on the European continent like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle developed ideas encompassing a more universal aspect of freedom of speech and toleration than the early English philosophers. By the 18th century, the idea of freedom of speech was being discussed by thinkers all over the Western world, especially by French philosophes like Denis Diderot, Baron d’Holbach and Claude Adrien Helvetius. The idea began to be incorporated in political theory both in theory as well as practice, the first state edict in history proclaiming complete freedom of speech was the one issued on the 4th of December, 1770 in Denmark-Norway during the regency of Johann Friedrich Struensee. However Struensee himself imposed some minor limitations to this edict on the 7th of October, 1771, and it was even further limited after the fall of Struensee with legislation introduced in 1773, although censorship was not reintroduced.
John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) argued that without human freedom, there could be no progress in science, law, or politics, which according to Mill, required free discussion of opinion. Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1859, became a classic defence of the right to freedom of expression. Mill argued that truth drives out falsity, therefore the free expression of ideas, true or false, should not be feared. Truth is not stable or fixed but evolves with time. Mill argued that much of what we once considered true has turned out false. Therefore, views should not be prohibited for their apparent falsity. Mill also argued that free discussion is necessary to prevent the deep slumber of a decided opinion. Discussion would drive the march of truth, and by considering false views, the basis of true views could be re-affirmed. Furthermore, Mill argued that an opinion only carries intrinsic value to the owner of that opinion, thus silencing the expression of that opinion is an injustice to a basic human right. It is generally held that for Mill, the only instance in which speech can be justifiably suppressed is to prevent harm from a clear and direct threat. Neither economic or moral implications nor the speaker’s well-being would justify suppression of speech. However Mill in On Liberty suggests the speech of pimps (instigating clients and sex workers to have sex) should be restricted. This suggests he may be willing to restrict some speech that, while not harming others, undermines their decisional autonomy.
In her 1906 biography of Voltaire, Evelyn Beatrice Hall coined the following sentence to illustrate Voltaire’s beliefs:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
Hall’s quote is frequently cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech. Noam Chomsky stated:
“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Dictators such as Stalin and Hitler, were in favour of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise”.
Lee Bollinger argues that the free speech principle involves a special act of carving out one area of social interaction for extraordinary self-restraint, the purpose of which is to develop and demonstrate a social capacity to control feelings evoked by a host of social encounters. Bollinger argues that tolerance is a desirable value, if not essential. However, critics argue that society should be concerned by those who directly deny or advocate, for example, genocide (see limitations of freedom of speech above).
As chairman of the London-based P.E.N. International, a club which defends freedom of expression and a free press, English author H. G. Wells met with Stalin in 1934 and was hopeful of reform in the Soviet Union. However, during their meeting in Moscow, Wells said:
“The free expression of opinion, even of opposition opinion, I do not know if you are prepared yet for that much freedom here”.
The 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was banned for obscenity in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and India. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it was the subject of landmark court rulings that saw the ban on obscenity overturned. Dominic Sandbrook of The Telegraph in the U.K. wrote:
“Now that public obscenity has become commonplace, it is hard to recapture the atmosphere of a society that saw fit to ban books such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover because it was likely to deprave and corrupt its readers”.
Fred Kaplan of The New York Times stated the overturning of the obscenity laws set off an explosion of free speech in the U.S. The 1960’s also saw the Free Speech Movement, a massive long-lasting student protest on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, during the 1964 – 65 academic year.
In contrast to Anglophone nations, France was a haven for literary freedom. The innate French regard for the mind meant that France was disinclined to punish literary figures for their writing, and prosecutions were rare. While it was prohibited everywhere else, James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922. Henry Miller’s 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer (banned in the U.S. until 1963) and Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were published in France decades before they were available in the respective authors’ home countries.
In 1964 comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested in the U.S. due to complaints again about his use of various obscenities. A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicised six-month trial. He was found guilty of obscenity in November 1964. He was sentenced on the 21st of December, 1964, to four months in a workhouse. He was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. On the 23rd of December, 2003, thirty-seven years after Bruce’s death, New York Governor George Pataki granted him a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.
In the United States, the right to freedom of expression has been interpreted to include the right to take and publish photographs of strangers in public areas without their permission or knowledge. This is not the case worldwide.
