FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

By Gus Hosein[30]

Nowadays freedom____speech plays a very important role in a social life. It gives a possibility to express your thoughts and desire, person can influence in society and create the future.

There_____two main reasons for the primacy of freedom of expression. First, because it is central to our autonomy and self-fulfilment that we are free to receive and impart information and ideas. Second, because freedom of expression has beneficial effects for society. By promoting debate, freedom of expression is essential to an effective political democracy, facilitates the exposure of errors and deters abuse of power.

We refer to freedom of expression rather than freedom of speech because the former more accurately conveys our intention to cover art and all other forms of expression that do not depend_____the use of words.

As John Stuart Mill observed in On Liberty (1859), chapter 1, “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign”.

John Stuart Mill explained in On Liberty (1859), chapter 2, that the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

As Mr Justice Holmes commented for the United States Supreme Court in Abrams v United States (1919) 250 US 616, 630, “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market”.

But fredom of expresion is not absolute. It may cause harm to others. So it needs to be balanced against a variety of other rights and interests, for example privacy, the protection of children and public order.