When: Thursday, November 3, 2022, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PMWhere: Online
The Centre for Law, Democracy, and Society (CLDS) is delighted to host a debate on free speech with Professor Matthew Kramer (Cambridge) and Professor Eric Heinze (Queen Mary) moderated by Dr John Adenitire (Queen Mary).
Debates about free speech ordinarily pit critics against advocates, asking whether a particular kind of speech ought to be penalized or permitted. However, in our discussion we shall take a different approach. While agreeing on the exceptional importance of free speech, the two speakers will put forth two different foundations for this freedom, reflecting contrasting beliefs about more basic political outlooks. According to Matthew Kramer, liberals maintain that the principle of freedom of expression morally prohibits any system of governance from legally forbidding any mode of communication except when some mode of communication is constitutive of serious communication-independent misconduct. Contraventions of the principle of freedom of expression by a system of governance are simultaneously overweening and degrading and are thereby violative of the paramount moral responsibility of every such system. By contrast, Eric Heinze will argue that the paramount value of free speech lies in individuals’ abilities to participate in civil, social, and political life: free speech advances democracy only insofar as government plays an active role in promoting inclusive citizenship. These two scholars’ positions may at times overlap, yet they can also entail concrete differences about the role of government in regulating speech.
Professor Matthew Kramer is Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is the Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy. He is the author of 17 books and the co-editor of four additional books. His work covers many areas of political, moral, and legal philosophy. His most recently published book is Freedom of Expression as Self- Restraint (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Eric Heinze (Maitrise, Paris; JD, Harvard; PhD, Leiden) is Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London. His new book The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech is Everything has been published by the MIT Press in Spring 2022. His other books include Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship (2016), The Concept of Injustice (2013), The Logic of Constitutional Rights (2005); The Logic of Liberal Rights (2003); The Logic of Equality (2003); Sexual Orientation: A Human Right (1995), Of Innocence and Autonomy (2000). His research has published in a wide range of leading law journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Harvard Human Rights Journal, Modern Law Review, Ratio Juris, Legal Studies, International Journal of Law in Context, Michigan Journal of International Law, Journal of Social & Legal Studies, Canadian J. of Law & Jurisprudence.
**Please note all registrants will be sent joining details on the day.