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I'm unfamiliar with UK Law... Is this actually a court of law or was this done through the Sheriff's department? The concept of Free Speech is very quickly bei
by baskethead 5y ago
I'm unfamiliar with UK Law... Is this actually a court of law or was this done through the Sheriff's department?
The concept of Free Speech is very quickly being eroded around the world. Ira Glasser, head of the ACLU throughout the 80s until the early 2000s, was on Bill Maher last Friday. He said that when citizens don't defend Freedom of Speech, then you basically rely on the government to tell you what you're allowed to say, and that's extremely dangerous. Then you get things like this, where people are convicted of tweeting and censorship.
That said, I don't know if the UK has protections for free speech the way the US does. As a Canadian I know that the freedom of speech is not held in high regard as the US, so maybe that comes from its UK heritage.
- atdrummond 5y agoIt would help in the US if the ACLU still primarily focused on freedom of speech and other historically core civil rights cases. They've massively expanded their purview.
- scsilver 5y agoCan you give some concrete examples?
- atdrummond 5y agoI'm happy to discuss over e-mail if you want but I feel like my specific thoughts here might cause an unnecessary and vitriolic side argument. (For what it is worth, I've been supporting, involved with and a donator to the ACLU since I was 15. I'm not a detractor of the organisation or their history.)
- denotational 5y ago> I'm unfamiliar with UK Law... Is this actually a court of law or was this done through the Sheriff's department? Interestingly there isn't really such a thing as UK Law; there is the Law of England and Wales, the Law of Northern Ireland, and Scots Law, the final one being applicable here. These three systems are markedly different, and for criminal cases there is not even a shared supreme court for the three jurisdictions. In Scots Law the term "Sheriff" has a different meaning to how the term is used in US law enforcement. It refers to the Sheriff Court [0], a Sheriff being a judge. > That said, I don't know if the UK has protections for free speech the way the US does. It doesn't. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_court