free speech
English
[edit]
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]- Freedom of speech; the ability or right to express one's opinions, particularly (strictly) the legal right to do so without the government forbidding it via laws, but also (loosely) the ability to do so without facing social repercussions, or one's employer firing one for it, or social media sites not hosting it on their platforms, etc.
- Synonym: freedom of speech
- 1929, Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.), The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes, page 234:
- The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
- 1953, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearings, page 3631:
- Section 8 (c) of the act has been erroneously referred to since its passage as a free-speech provision. Actually this section permits the employer to intimidate and coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by the act. It is not a question of free speech at all. Giving the antiunion employer an unbridled right to condemn and deride the basic rights of employees to self-organization and collective bargaining is not free speech but a license to defeat the exercise of these fundamental rights.
- 2003, Mike Godwin, Cyber Rights, The MIT Press, →ISBN, page 2:
- The term free speech, which appears in this book's subtitle as well as in its text, is used more or less interchangeably with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression to refer to all of the expressive rights guaranteed by the forty-five words of the First Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. courts.
- 2019 October 4, Andrew Marantz, “Free Speech Is Killing Us”, in The New York Times[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
- Using “free speech” as a cop-out is just as intellectually dishonest and just as morally bankrupt. […] Free speech is a bedrock value in this country. But it isn’t the only one. Like all values, it must be held in tension with others, such as equality, safety and robust democratic participation.
- Speech which is protected by this right; public expression of one's opinions that is, or merits being, protected from restraint or censorship.
- 1963, Supreme Court of the United States October Term, 1963, case of George Albert Rutherford against the United States of America (link):
- […] shouting fire-panic-in-theatre is not free speech at all. It is an explosive, deadly action.
- 2007, Wells Earl Draughon, While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination Are Destroying America from Within, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 116:
- Saying certain things or posting fliers or writing in student or independent newspapers is not free speech but instead is sexual harassment or racial harassment.
- 2017, Fernne Brennan, Race Rights Reparations: Institutional Racism and The Law, Routledge, →ISBN:
- I would argue that we must be concerned with free speech but that cyber racism is not free speech, it is racist speech that provides an opportunity to devalue part of humankind ...
- 1963, Supreme Court of the United States October Term, 1963, case of George Albert Rutherford against the United States of America (link):
Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]the right to express an opinion in public (freedom of speech)
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speech which is protected by this right