Contested Words: Legal Restrictions on Freedom of Speech in Liberal Democracies (Applied Legal Philosophy)

In modern liberal democracies, rights-based judicial intervention in the policy choices of elected bodies has always been controversial. For some, such judicial intervention has trivialized and impoverished democratic politics. For others judges have contributed to a dynamic and healthy dialogue between the different spheres of the constitution, removed from pressures imposed on elected representatives to respond to popular sentiment. This book provides a critical evaluation of ongoing debates surrounding the judicial role in protecting fundamental human rights, focusing in particular on legislative/executive abridgment of a core freedom in western society - namely, liberty of expression. A range of types of expression are considered, including expression related to electoral processes, political expression in general and sexually explicit forms of expression.

Ian Cram is Senior Lecturer and Convenor for the Human Rights Research Unit in the School of Law at Leeds University, UK. He is the Programme Director for the LLM in International and European Human Rights Law. His research interests include public law, comparative law and human rights. He has published widely in these areas in leading academic journals.