Re:Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row es...
by dredmorbius on Friday September 09, 2016 @03:48PM
(#12465509)
"Freedom of expression" isn't specific to government-protected or limitations on government-censorship actions. It's a general principle. It's also not generally protected.
Specific legal structures protecting speech rights are government grants, within those legal constructs. The legal doctrine of the US First Amendment free speech tradition is that it is a broad, but not absolute, limit on government prior suppression of speech rights. It specifically doesn't apply to private individual or corporate limitations on speech.
The history of free speech protections in the US is complex and surprisingly recent. It wasn't until 1919 that Oliver Wendell Holmes in a Supreme Court dissent laid the basis for what would become seen as a very broad free-speech protection. Note that as a dissent, his views didn't carry at the time.
It wasn't until further cases in the 1930s and 1960s that the present regime of protected speech -- protected from government interference -- fully came into being in the US.
Specific legal structures protecting speech rights are government grants, within those legal constructs. The legal doctrine of the US First Amendment free speech tradition is that it is a broad, but not absolute, limit on government prior suppression of speech rights. It specifically doesn't apply to private individual or corporate limitations on speech.
The history of free speech protections in the US is complex and surprisingly recent. It wasn't until 1919 that Oliver Wendell Holmes in a Supreme Court dissent laid the basis for what would become seen as a very broad free-speech protection. Note that as a dissent, his views didn't carry at the time.
It wasn't until further cases in the 1930s and 1960s that the present regime of protected speech -- protected from government interference -- fully came into being in the US.
See: http://www.worldcat.org/title/great-dissent-how-oliver-wende...