This chapter explores political rights under international human rights law. It covers the right to self-determination, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of association and assembly, electoral rights, and the right to participate in public affairs. The chapter examines the legal frameworks and standards for protecting these rights, the obligations of states to ensure their effective exercise, and the role of international bodies in monitoring and enforcing compliance. It also highlights the challenges in promoting political rights in different political and cultural contexts and the importance of fostering inclusive and participatory governance.

How should a constitutional state – one that respects subjects’ basic rights – treat civil disobedients? This chapter presents and critically engages with some of the most prominent answers legal scholars, political theorists, and philosophers have given to this question. On what I call punitive approaches, which I present in section 1, civil disobedience is first and foremost an act of resistance that threatens the constitutional order, and thus a public wrong worthy of punishment. Theorists of civil disobedience have challenged this approach since the 1960s, especially by conceiving of civil disobedience as a kind of dissent, which liberal democratic societies ought to and can ‘make room’ for. Sections 2 and 3 examine these ‘constitutionalizing’ approaches, with section 2 focusing on the case for leniency, and section 3 on the case for broad accommodation. Section 4 examines the costs of constitutionalizing approaches and reclaims the understanding of civil disobedience as a kind of resistance, alongside its uncivil counterparts, that is sometimes justified and even necessary in constitutional democracies.

Impartiality as a property of government is central to many of the major constitutional concerns of liberal democracy. This essay tersely considers the nature and implications of impartiality in three main areas: the rule of law; the distinction between the right and the good; and freedom of speech. Because of constraints of space, each of the discussions in this paper is no more than a sketch of the complex matters that are at issue in debates over impartiality.

This chapter examines both the regulatory and judicial aspects of artistic expression in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in an attempt to illustrate the fragility of the rule of law pertaining to art and culture in theory and practice. The chapter provides a brief historic overview of censorship since the 1979 Revolution, capturing the relative fluctuations in the application of the law over time, depending on the approach of the individuals in charge. In order to demonstrate the nature of the judiciary’s verdicts in light of the defendants’ artistic expression, the chapter also introduces examples of the cases of artists and writers prosecuted for their work both offline and online. Overall, the chapter highlights the multifaceted nature of the regulatory limitations on cultural and artistic expression and creativity.

This chapter discusses how AI technologies permeate the media sector. It sketches opportunities and benefits of the use of AI in media content gathering and production, media content distribution, fact-checking, and content moderation. The chapter then zooms in on ethical and legal risks raised by AI-driven media applications: lack of data availability, poor data quality, and bias in training datasets, lack of transparency, risks for the right to freedom of expression, threats to media freedom and pluralism online, and threats to media independence. Finally, the chapter introduces the relevant elements of the EU legal framework which aim to mitigate these risks, such as the Digital Services Act, the European Media Freedom Act, and the AI Act.

This chapter reviews the regulation of disinformation from an African human rights’ law perspective, focusing on the right to freedom of expression and the right to vote. It provides an overview of the African regional law framework, specifically the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights of 1981 (the African Charter) and corresponding jurisprudence. The chapter also analyses the way in which freedom of expression and disinformation laws have been applied in African countries, the aim being to contextualize and illustrate how African regional law plays out at the domestic level, but with an emphasis on the position in South Africa.

When analysing disinformation, commentators often focus on major platforms and their influence on content circulation. Some also examine institutional media, especially broadcasting. Platforms and media are both relevant; both are important in the communicative infrastructure underlying public speech. Whatever the focus, there is an almost endless examination of issues and suggestions regarding what to do about disinformation. Commentary defines false or misleading information in different ways, compares it with historic practices of propaganda and persuasion, considers the emergence of large language models and content they could generate, documents varied legal responses, and considers what should be done. Here, I examine something that is relevant to that work but often not considered directly.

In the digital age, the landscape of information dissemination has undergone a profound transformation. The traditional boundaries between information and news have become increasingly blurred as technology allows anyone to create and share content online. The once-exclusive realm of authoritative media outlets and professional journalists has given way to a decentralized public square, where individuals can voice their opinions and reach vast audiences regardless of mainstream coverage. The evolution of the digital age has dismantled the conventional notions of journalism and reshaped how news is obtained and interpreted. This shift has paved the way for the proliferation of fake news and online disinformation. The ease with which false information can be fabricated, packaged convincingly and rapidly disseminated to a wide audience has contributed to the rise of fake news. This phenomenon gained global attention during the 2016 US presidential election, prompting nations worldwide to seek strategies for tackling this issue.

The issue of mass disinformation on the Internet is a long-standing concern for policymakers, legislators, academics and the wider public. Disinformation is believed to have had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Concern about the threat of foreign – mainly Russian – interference in the democratic process is also growing. The COVID-19 pandemic, which reached global proportions in 2020, gave new impetus to the spread of disinformation, which even put lives at risk. The problem is real and serious enough to force all parties concerned to reassess the previous European understanding of the proper regulation of freedom of expression.

The content and enforcement mechanisms of constitutional legislation will radically differ in democratic and authoritarian regimes, whereas the informal rules will be homogenous across regimes and states. The philosophical task of this chapter is to work out some general principles that should be adopted, if science is valued positively and should be protected. These are principles for a quasi-autonomous science. Three of them are substantive and two procedural: (1) Guaranteeing freedom of expression. (2) Mutual rational control by critical discussion. (3) Appropriate steering of scientific competition. (4) Open access to the scientific community. (5) Appropriately fitting formal and informal institutions.

The chapter applies the theoretical resources discussed in the first two chapters to provide a first justification of the idea that internet access should be a human right. This justification is based on the claim that today internet access is practically indispensable for having adequate opportunities for the exercise and enjoyment of political human rights (e.g. the freedoms of expression, free assembly, and information) and civil human rights (e.g. right to life and security of person). Numerous practical examples such as the #MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movements, international political protests and boycotts, and open source intelligence crowdsourcing show that a person without internet access is unfairly limited in their chances to exercise these rights in digitalised societies. Rather, our human rights are greatly enhanced if a person can access the internet. Moreover, because the internet provides a modern, digital public sphere, not having online access is a form of political exclusion. The chapter also responds to the important objection that no new human right to internet access is needed because internet access is sufficiently protected by other human rights.

Media freedom is often curtailed in the wake of terrorist attacks. In this chapter, we ask whether constitutional provisions that are intended – directly or indirectly – to protect media freedom affect the degree to which press freedom is curtailed after terrorist incidents. We find that neither provisions explicitly protecting media freedom nor provisions that might protect media freedom indirectly (such as those guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary) mitigate the post-terror curtailment of press freedom.