The Ferret after It Is Prosecuted Under Section 5 as to How It Can Rel Essay

The Ferret after It Is Prosecuted Under Section 5 as to How It Can Rely Upon European Union Law and the European Convention on Human Rights - Essay Example On the first level, it must be noted that one area where judicial discretion is especially large is the area of free speech. While the right to free speech is a crystallized principle that has been placed almost since the beginning of time, enjoying a cherished position in the bill of rights of virtually all civilized legal systems, the interpretation of what constitutes free and protected speech still has yet to be perfectly refined. This provision has been invoked many times over in the course of history, whether within the European Union or outside, successfully and unsuccessfully; and Courts have had many opportunities to set standards and devise guidelines to determine if the speech in question should be protected or not. It becomes more difficult when the right to free speech competes with another right, in this case, the right of religious minority groups to tolerance and acceptance. In "easy" cases, all that should be done is look through jurisprudence until one finds the applicable case with similar facts. In "hard" cases with novel facts, the role of the judge becomes infinitely more difficult. The boundaries are ever-shifting; and internally, the judge will be trying not only to apply the law but to subject the text or speech in question to her own subjective inquiry in order to determine the intent of the message-bearer and what the material was trying to say. (De la Cruz, 2002) Social and political values inevitably come to the fore. To quote legal writer Thomas Streeter, "It is in the character of language, in other words, that a judge will never be able to look at the text of the Bill of Rights and legal precedents to decide whether or not flag burning is protected by the First Amendment; he will always in one way or another be forced to make a choice about whether or not he thinks it should be protected, and will always be faced with the possibility that a reasonable person could plausibly disagree." (Streeter, 1995) What distinguishes the area on free speech from other "legally-indeterminate" areas is that it is inextricably intertwined with and largely dependent on language which, as many eminent linguists have said, is arbitrary in the sense that meanings cannot be derived from anything logically-inherent in the words. These meanings are merely "assigned meanings" born of the collective experiences of people in a community and this system of interpretation is never static. As stated by Streeter, "Aside from language in general and perhaps some very deep-level aspects of syntax, there is very little that is universal, neutral, or mechanical about human languages." (IBID.) In this situation, it is clear that the European Convention on Human Rights secures both the right of the media to free speech, as well as the right of marginalized groups. But since the task is to find a basis to defend the newspaper in the existing Human Rights Convention, then it may be argued that the right to free speech is indeed a cherished ideal and is considered a sacrosanct freedom. If one compares the violation to the newspaper and the violation to the Muslims, without meaning to denigrate their suffering which we know is starkly real, the right against censorship and prior restraint appears to be more serious, than the right to "not be mocked."Â   Â   Â