Hybrid | The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression

The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression

Speaker: Professor Richard Moon (University of Windsor)

Commentators: Professor Myriam Hunter-Henin, Dr Bernard Keenan, and Professor Orla Lynskey

Chair: Professor Jeff King

Abstract

In this edition of the Public Law Seminar Series, hosted by the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL Laws, scholar Richard Moon will present on his new book The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (2024). Following his presentation, commentators will offer their remarks, leading into further discussion. 

About the Book

In The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression, Richard Moon argues that freedom of expression is valuable because human agency and identity emerge in discourse – in the joint activity of creating meaning. Moon recognizes that the social character of individual agency and identity is crucial to understanding not only the value of expression but also its potential for harm.

The book considers a range of issues, including the regulation of advertising, hate speech, pornography, blasphemy, and public protest. The book also considers the shift to social media as the principal platform for public engagement, which has added to the ways in which speech can be harmful while undermining the effectiveness of traditional legal responses to harmful speech. The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression makes the case that the principal threat to public discourse may no longer be censorship, but it is rather the spread of disinformation, which undermines public trust in traditional sources of information and makes engagement between different positions and groups increasingly difficult.

About the Speaker

Richard Moon is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Windsor in Canada.  He is the author of The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (U of T Press, 2024), Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Target of Hate Speech (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018), Freedom of Conscience and Religion (Irwin Law, 2014) (2nd edition, 2024), and The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (U of T Press, 2000), editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (UBC Press, 2008), co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (Hart/Bloomsbury, 2016),  The Surprising Constitution (UBC Press, 2024) and Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (U of T Press, in press). 

About the Commentators and Chair

Professor Myriam Hunter-Henin's research addresses the interaction and tensions between law and religion in a comparative perspective. It also examines the interactions between human rights, constitutional law and normative conceptions of democracy and liberalism. After graduating in Law both in France and England, she completed her DPhil at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris, France) on personal status, leading to a monograph (Pour une redefinition du statut personnel, PUAM, 2004, awarded the Dennery Prize), Myriam has mainly taught on comparative law, family law, law & religion and human rights, first at Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris, France) where she was a research and teaching fellow and subsequently at the Faculty of Laws at University College London, where she was consecutively appointed as lecturer, Senior lecturer, Reader and since October 2021, Professor. She was also invited to Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli (LUISS) (Rome, Italy) to teach on the Summer 2020 Programme on Constitutional Law (moved to on-line setting), to UCLouvain as visiting Professor in May 2022 and to over 60 talks and keynote lectures in prestigious Universities and settings, such as the French Conseil d’Etat (2016).
 

Dr Bernard Keenan is a lecturer in the Faculty of Laws, UCL. Most of his research focuses on the evolving role of the legal system in stabilising and regulating digital technologies, particularly in relation to surveillance, national security powers, and other governmental tasks and functions. He has published on the evolution of the legal system after the Snowden revelations, the deployment of Automated Facial Recognition systems in the UK, state access to encrypted communications, and the regulation of social media and search engine content moderation systems under the rubric of online safety. His first book, Interception: State Surveillance from Postal Systems to Global Networks, offers a media genealogical account of the power to govern and intercept private communications, rooted in archival work carried out in Britain. It will be published in 2025 by MIT Press. 

Professor Jeff King joined the UCL Laws in 2011 and has been Professor of Law since 2016. He is the Deputy Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism.  He sits on the Editorial Committees of the journals Public Law and the Federal Law Review, and on the General Council of the International Society of Public Law (ICON Society), and is a member of the Study of Parliament Group.  He was previously the Co-Editor of Current Legal Problems and the Co-Editor of the UK Constitutional Law Blog. Prior to coming to UCL, he was a Fellow and Tutor in law at Balliol College, and CUF Lecturer for the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford (2008-2011), a Research Fellow and Tutor law at Keble College, Oxford (2007-08), and an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York City (2003-04). He has held visiting posts at the University of Oxford (2019-2022), University of Toronto (2013, 2020), Renmin University (Beijing), the University of New South Wales, and in 2014-15 was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation visiting fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His book Judging Social Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the Society of Legal Scholars 2014 Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, and in 2017 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law.

Professor Orla Lynskey joined UCL Laws as Chair of Law and Technology in September 2024. She holds a Visiting Professorship at the College of Europe Bruges (2020-present) and was previously an Associate Professor at LSE Law School (2012-2024). Orla's research examines the role of law in shaping society's relationship with technology, with a particular interest in data protection and data governance. Her scholarship has been published in leading law journals including Current Legal Problems, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the Common Market Law Review and the Iowa Law Review. Her monograph, The Foundations of EU Data Protection Law (OUP, 2015), continues to inform and influence data protection law scholarship. Orla is a Section Editor (Articles) of the Modern Law Review and joint Editor-in-Chief of International Data Privacy Law, a specialist journal published by OUP. She is currently an elected member of the US Privacy Law Scholars Conference. She also sits on the Steering Committee of the Data Protection Scholars Network, on the Scientific Committee of the Centre for a Digital Society at the EUI and on the Advisory Board of the civil society organisation Defend Digital Me.

About the GCDC

The Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism, based at the UCL Faculty of Laws, seeks to advance scholarly understanding of the relationship between democratic government and the rule of law in domestic, comparative, and transnational perspective, with a particular focus on identifying the supporting conditions for constitutional resilience in electorally competitive political systems. Read more about the group and its work.

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You can attend this event in-person at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House, 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG) or alternatively you can join via a live stream.

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