Moral Rights in Law
Sep. 5th, 2015 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI'm reading Ronald Dworkin's "Taking Rights Seriously" for one of my classes. From that piece (and referring to the charges against the "Chicago 7" under an anti-riot law):
"A man cannot express himself freely when he cannot match his rhetoric to his outrage, or when he must trim his sails to protect values he counts as nothing next to those he is trying to vindicate. It is true that some political dissenters speak in ways that shock the majority, but it is arrogant for the majority to suppose that the orthodox methods of expression are the proper ways to speak, for this is a denial of equal concern and respect. If the point of the right [to free speech] is to protect the dignity of the dissenters, then we must make judgments about the appropriate speech with the personalities of the dissenters in mind, not the personality of the 'silent' majority for whom the anti-riot law is no restraint at all."
It's impossible not to think of recent protests and expressions of political sentiment in light of Dworkin's thoughts. If we are to take a right such as free speech seriously, he argues, it cannot be abridged because it violates some form of right of the majority. Strong moral rights of the type that the United States claims free speech to be can only be curtailed when they infringe directly on someone else's individual moral rights. To do otherwise is to reject that these are moral rights at all.
"A man cannot express himself freely when he cannot match his rhetoric to his outrage, or when he must trim his sails to protect values he counts as nothing next to those he is trying to vindicate. It is true that some political dissenters speak in ways that shock the majority, but it is arrogant for the majority to suppose that the orthodox methods of expression are the proper ways to speak, for this is a denial of equal concern and respect. If the point of the right [to free speech] is to protect the dignity of the dissenters, then we must make judgments about the appropriate speech with the personalities of the dissenters in mind, not the personality of the 'silent' majority for whom the anti-riot law is no restraint at all."
It's impossible not to think of recent protests and expressions of political sentiment in light of Dworkin's thoughts. If we are to take a right such as free speech seriously, he argues, it cannot be abridged because it violates some form of right of the majority. Strong moral rights of the type that the United States claims free speech to be can only be curtailed when they infringe directly on someone else's individual moral rights. To do otherwise is to reject that these are moral rights at all.
