Jonathan Turley – We have previously discussed the growing anti-free speech movement in Scotland with the expanding criminalization of political and religious speech. The new Scottish law is a perfect nightmare for free speech, expanding the potential of a jail sentence for merely insulting language. In response, author JK Rowling has taken a stand and dared the Scottish police to come and arrest her for criticizing transgender status.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 illustrates how these laws create a slippery slope of speech criminalization as more and more speech is banned. We previously discussed the law when it was first introduced. Continue reading
Sean Adl-Tabatabai – The British government has declared that William Shakespeare’s work is “racist, sexist, and ableist” and should therefore not be celebrated in schools or theatre’s.
John W. Whitehead – Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.
J.B. Shurk – During oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri — a dispute that Senator Rand Paul rightly calls “the most consequential free speech case in U.S. history” — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed concern that the First Amendment is “hamstringing the government in significant ways, in the most important time periods.”
Anthony Murdoch – One of Canada’s leading pro-freedom constitutional groups warned that the federal government’s Online Harms Act is a dangerous piece of legislation that is not only an “assault” on free speech but will be used to take away “basic rights” by allowing the return of “Kangaroo courts.”