From the selection committee: Jeffrey W. Howard’s “Dangerous Speech” offers a strong argument for the following claims, among others: that the right to free speech does not protect speech that incites the incontrovertible violation of others’ rights, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brandenburg test (according to which speech is protected by the First Amendment so long as it is not directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is not likely to produce such action) is problematic, but that considerations of wide proportionality might indeed speak against the suppression of dangerous speech. The committee found this article illuminating and original, in a way that really advances an important and central debate in the philosophy of law.
Jeffrey Howard is an associate professor of political theory at University College London. He works on a range of issues in political and legal philosophy, focusing on free speech theory, the philosophy of criminal punishment, and normative democratic theory. His work has appeared in a number of journals including Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Journal of Political Philosophy, and Law & Philosophy. He is currently on a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for a book project exploring the ethics of combatting dangerous speech. Originally from New England, he is a graduate of Harvard College and Oxford University.