A new policy paper from the UK-based Prosperity Institute, “Reversing Britain’s Free Speech Recession,” cites The Future of Free Speech’s Executive Director Jacob Mchangama on the European Court of Human Rights’ record. In the paper, barrister Jon Holbrook traces the decline of free expression in Britain to decades of speech-restrictive legislation and proposes a draft Free Speech Bill to reverse it. Arguing that the ECtHR offers little protection against hate speech laws, Holbrook draws on Mchangama’s finding that the Strasbourg court “has ruled against the speaker in 62% of hate speech cases brought before it.”
From the paper:
Thirdly, in the sort of cases that this paper is primarily concerned with, the ECtHR is not helpful. In particular, the ECtHR has been an enthusiastic supporter of hate speech laws, which in recent decades have become the primary threat to free speech in this country. As Jacob Mchangama notes, the ECtHR “has ruled against the speaker in 62% of hate speech cases brought before it.”
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Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).