research paper on freedom

Freedom and Happiness in Nations: A Research Synthesis

• Published: 14 June 2017
• Volume 13 , pages 435–456, ( 2018 )

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• Amanina Abdur Rahman   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2495-5269 1 &
• Ruut Veenhoven 2 , 3  

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An Erratum to this article was published on 29 August 2017

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Freedom is highly valued, but there are limits to the amount of freedom a society can allow its members. This begs the question of how much freedom is too much. The answers to that question differ across political cultures and are typically based on ideological argumentation. In this paper, we consider the compatibility of freedom and happiness in nations by taking stock of the research findings on that matter, gathered in the World Database of Happiness. We find that freedom and happiness are positively correlated in contemporary nations. The pattern of correlation differs somewhat across cultures and aspects of freedom. We found no pattern of declining happiness returns, which suggests that freedom has not passed its maximum in the freest countries.

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Change history

29 august 2017.

An erratum to this article has been published.

The six determinants are GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, generosity, freedom from corruption, and freedom to make life choices. Together, these six variables explain 74% of the variation (adjusted R-squared) in the national annual average ladder scores of countries (Helliwell et al. 2017 ).

A full description of the construction of the index is available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2016/methodology

This proposition, as well as the one in the previous paragraph are not new, and are built on past theories and literature that are not within the scope of our study. The publications by Inglehart, Welzel, and Klingemann are the most relevant to our study as they also provide empirical evidence of the human development syndrome. A detailed theoretical background is available in Welzel et al. ( 2003 ) and Welzel ( 2013 ).

The happiness measure used is the average response to the Cantril ladder question, which asks respondents to rate their quality of life on a scale of 0 to 10, with higher values meaning higher levels of happiness. It is the average response for the years 2013–2015, obtained from the World Happiness Report 2016 (Helliwell et al. 2016 ). The measure of economic freedom is on a scale from 1 to 10, where higher values indicate higher levels of economic freedom, obtained from the Economic Freedom of the World Report 2015 (Gwartney et al. 2015 ). The measure of perceived freedom is on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher values meaning higher levels of perceived freedom. It is obtained from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey, conducted in the years 2012–2014, and is described in detail in Section 2.3 above.

The link to the WDH finding page for the relationship between economic freedom and happiness in Gehring ( 2013 ) is: http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_cor/desc_cor.php?sssid=24018

This distinction is stated in the page that lists the research findings on the World Database of Happiness, accessible from the table by Control + Click on the symbols representing each association.

Findings in the World Database of Happiness: http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_cor/desc_cor.php?sssid=24018

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Department of Economics, School of Business, Monash University Malaysia, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, Bandar Sunway, 47500, Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Amanina Abdur Rahman

Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization (EHERO), Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Ruut Veenhoven

Opentia Research Program, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

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Correspondence to Amanina Abdur Rahman .

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The original version of this article was revised: modifications have been made to Tables 2, 3, and 4, captions to Figs. 2 and 3, and hyperlinks to the findings pages on the World Database of Happiness in page 11. Full information regarding corrections made can be found in the erratum for this article.

Ruut Veenhoven is on the Editorial Policy Board of the Applied Research in Quality-of-Life journal, and one of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Quality-of-Life Studies.

Appendix 1: Measures of Economic Freedom

Appendix 2: measures of political freedom.

Example of a findings page in the World Database of Happiness

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Abdur Rahman, A., Veenhoven, R. Freedom and Happiness in Nations: A Research Synthesis. Applied Research Quality Life 13 , 435–456 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-017-9543-6

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Received : 10 January 2017

Accepted : 24 April 2017

Published : 14 June 2017

Issue Date : June 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-017-9543-6

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5 Freedom and Equality

Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

• Published: 05 October 2016
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Freedom and equality are often viewed as conflicting values. But there are at least three conceptions of freedom-negative, positive, and republican-and three conceptions of equality-of standing, esteem, and authority. Libertarians argue that rights to negative liberty override claims to positive liberty. However, a freedom-based defense of private property rights must favor positive over negative freedom. Furthermore, a regime of full contractual alienability of rights-on the priority of negative over republican freedom-is an unstable basis for a free society. To sustain a free society over time, republican liberty must take priority over negative liberty, resulting in a kind of authority egalitarianism. Finally, the chapter discusses how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result is a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

Freedom and equality are typically presented as opposing values. In the quick version of the argument, economic liberty—the freedom to make contracts, acquire property, and exchange goods—upsets substantive economic equality ( Nozick, 2013 : 160–164). Suppose some people sail to an uninhabited island and divide its territory and the provisions they brought into shares of equal value. If they are free to produce, trade, and accumulate property, some would rapidly get richer than others due to good luck and good choices, while others would become poor due to bad luck and bad choices. Any attempt to enforce strict material equality across large populations under modern economic conditions would require a totalitarian state. Gracchus Babeuf, a radical of the French Revolution, and the first modern advocate of strict material equality under state communism, understood this perfectly. He saw that the only way to ensure strict material equality was for the state to run society like an army—to control all property and production, assign everyone to their jobs, and control everyone’s thoughts (lest some get the ideas that they deserve more than others, or that they should be free to choose their own way of life) ( Babeuf, 1967 ; Buonarroti, 1836 ). He thought such equality was worth the sacrifice of freedom. Few who have actually lived under communism agree.

While the quick argument is true and of great historical importance, it does not address moderate types of egalitarianism. Virtually no one today advocates strict material equality. Social democrats, particularly in northern Europe, embraced private property and extensive markets well before the collapse of communism. Friedrich Hayek (1944) argued that social democratic experiments would lead societies down the slippery slope to totalitarianism. His prediction failed: moderate egalitarianism of the social democratic type has proved compatible with democracy, extensive civil liberties, and substantial if constrained market freedoms.

To make progress on the question of normative trade-offs between freedom and equality within the range of options for political economy credibly on the table, we must clarify our concepts. There are at least three conceptions of freedom—negative, positive, and republican—and three conceptions of equality—of standing, esteem, and authority. Republican freedom requires extensive authority egalitarianism. To block arguments that freedom requires substantial material equality, libertarians typically argue that rights to negative liberty override or constrain claims to positive liberty. This chapter will argue that, to the extent that libertarians want to support private property rights in terms of the importance of freedom to individuals, this strategy fails, because the freedom-based defense of private property rights depends on giving priority to positive or republican over negative freedom. Next, it is argued that the core rationale for inalienable rights depends on considerations of republican freedom. A regime of full contractual alienability of rights—on the priority of negative over republican freedom—is an unstable basis for a free society. It tends to shrink the domains in which individuals interact as free and independent persons, and expand the domains in which they interact on terms of domination and subordination. To sustain a free society over time, we should accept the priority of republican over negative liberty. This is to endorse a kind of authority egalitarianism. The chapter concludes with some reflections on how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result will be a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

1. Conceptions of Freedom and Equality

Let us distinguish three conceptions of freedom: negative freedom (noninterference), positive freedom (opportunities), and republican freedom (nondomination). Sarah has negative freedom if no one interferes with her actions. She has positive freedom if she has a rich set of opportunities effectively accessible to her. She has republican freedom if she is not dominated by another person—not subject to another’s arbitrary and unaccountable will.

These three conceptions of freedom are logically distinct. They are also somewhat causally independent: one can enjoy high degrees of any two of these freedoms at substantial cost to the third. Lakshmi could have perfect negative and republican freedom on an island in which she is the only inhabitant. No one else would be interfering with her actions or dominating her. She would have little positive freedom, however, since most opportunities are generated in society with others. Maria could have high degrees of negative and positive freedom while lacking republican freedom. She could be the favorite of an indulgent king, who showers her with wealth and privileges, and permits her to say and do what she likes—but who could throw her in his dungeon at his whim. Finally, Sven could have high degrees of positive and republican freedom while being subject to many constraints on his negative liberty. He could reside in an advanced social democratic state such as Norway, where interpersonal authority is constrained by the rule of law (so he is not subject to anyone’s arbitrary will), and a rich set of opportunities is available to all, at the cost of substantial negative liberty constraints through high levels of taxation and economic regulation.

Traditionally, most discussions of freedom focused on the contrast between negative and positive freedom. The recent revival of the republican conception of freedom as nondomination adds an important dimension to thinking about the lived experience of unfreedom and the social conditions of freedom. Pettit (1997 : 22–25) stresses the contrast between negative and republican freedom in the case where a dominator could but chooses not to interfere with subordinates. He argues that such vulnerability to interference can make subordinates submissive, self-censoring, and sycophantic toward their superiors. It is also important to consider some differences between negative liberty constraints imposed by a dominating power and those imposed in accordance with the rule of law by a liberal democratic authority. Domination is often personal: think of the husband under the law of coverture or the violent husband today, the slaveholder, the bullying, micromanaging boss. Rule-of-law constraints are impersonal and of general applicability. This arm’s-length character of the rule of law often relieves people of the humiliation of submission to domination, since they know “it’s not about me.” Dominating interference can arrive unannounced. Rule-of-law constraints must be publicized in advance, giving people time to figure out how to pursue their projects in ways that avoid interference. Dominating interference does not have to justify itself. Rule-of-law constraints in a liberal democratic order must appeal to public reasons, which limits the constraints that can be imposed. Dominating interference is unaccountable. Applied rule-of-law constraints in a democracy are subject to appeal before an impartial adjudicator, and those who enact them can be removed from power by those to whom the constraints apply.

These remarks apply to ideal types only. Actually existing formally liberal democratic regimes have devised innumerable ways to exercise domination under the guise of the rule of law. It is possible to devise a set of impersonal, generally applicable, publicized laws that regulate conduct so minutely that almost anyone innocently going about their business could be found to have run afoul of one of them. Such is the case with traffic laws in the United States. If enforcement action on the trivial infringements were limited to mere warnings or token fines, as in police stops to warn drivers that their tail lights are broken, they could be a service to the drivers and others on the road. Often, however, such traffic stops are a mere pretext for police exercise of arbitrary power to harass, intimidate, invade privacy, and seize people’s property without due process of law. 1 In other cases, impersonal rule-of-law regulations impose constraints so out of touch with local conditions, with such draconian penalties for noncompliance, that enforcement amounts to domination. Such is the case with the high-stakes testing regime imposed by the federal government under No Child Left Behind, with uniform arbitrary progress goals foisted on local school districts without any empirical research demonstrating that these goals were feasible. In some cases, the NCLB regime has created a culture of intimidation and cheating ( Aviv, 2014 ). This is a centralized planning regime akin to the five-year plans of communist states. In both cases, the imposition of goals plucked out of thin air in combination with severe sanctions is premised on the assumption that lack of sufficient will is the primary obstacle to progress—an assumption that rationalizes domination of those required to meet the goals.

We should be skeptical of attempts to operationalize the conditions for nondomination in formal terms. Powerful agents are constantly devising ways to skirt around formal constraints to dominate others. Republican freedom is a sociologically complex condition not easily encapsulated in any simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions, nor easily realized through any particular set of laws.

Turn now to equality. In other work, I have argued that the conceptions of equality relevant for political purposes are relational: they characterize the types of social relations in which members of society stand to one another ( Anderson, 2012b ; Anderson, 2012a ). Relational equality is opposed to social hierarchy. Three types of hierarchy—of standing, esteem, and authority—are particularly important. In hierarchies of standing, agents (including the state) count the interests of superiors highly, and the interests of inferiors for little or nothing. In hierarchies of esteem, some groups monopolize esteem and stigmatize their inferiors. In hierarchies of authority, dominant agents issue arbitrary and unaccountable commands to subordinates, who must obey on pain of sanctions. Egalitarians oppose such hierarchies and aim to replace them with institutions in which persons relate to one another as equals. For example, they want members of society to be treated as equals by the state and in institutions of civil society (standing); to be recognized as bearing equal dignity and respect (esteem); to have equal votes and access to political participation in democratic states (authority). Each of these conceptions of relational equality is complex and implicates numerous features of the social setting.

These three types of hierarchy usually reinforce each other. Groups that exercise power over others tend to enjoy higher esteem, and often use their power to exact special solicitude for their interests from others. Sometimes they come apart. Upper-class married women under the law of coverture enjoyed high esteem and standing, but had little authority and were subordinate to their husbands and to men generally. Some ethnic minorities, such as Chinese Malaysians, enjoy high standing and authority through their ownership and control of most businesses in Malaysia, but are racially stigmatized in Malaysian society.

Given this array of distinct conceptions of freedom and equality, it is harder to argue that freedom and equality are structurally opposed. There is a deep affinity between republican freedom as nondomination and authority egalitarianism. These are not conceptually identical. Domination can be realized in an isolated, transient interpersonal case (consider a kidnapper and his victim). Authoritarian hierarchy is institutionalized, enduring, and group-based. Yet authority hierarchies cause the most important infringements of republican freedom. Historically, the radical republican tradition, from the Levellers to the radical wing of the Republican party through Reconstruction, saw the two causes of freedom and equality as united: to be free was to not be subject to the arbitrary will of others. This required elimination of the authoritarian powers of dominant classes, whether of the king, feudal landlords, or slaveholders. Republican freedom for all is incompatible with authoritarian hierarchy and hence requires some form of authority egalitarianism.

Authority egalitarianism so dominates public discourse in contemporary liberal democracies that few people openly reject it. However, conservatives have traditionally supported authority hierarchy, and continue to do so today, while often publicizing their views in other terms. For example, conservatives tend to defend expansive discretionary powers of police over suspects and employers over workers, as well as policies that reinforce race, class, and gender hierarchies, such as restrictions on voting, reproductive freedom, and access to the courts.

The connections between relational equality and conventional ideas of equality in terms of the distribution of income and wealth are mainly causal. Esteem egalitarians worry that great economic inequality will cause the poor to be stigmatized and the rich glorified simply for their wealth. Authority egalitarians worry that too much wealth inequality empowers the rich to turn the state into a plutocracy. This radical republican objection to wealth inequality is distinct from contemporary notions of distributive justice, which focus on the ideas that unequal distributions are unfair, and that redistribution can enhance the consumption opportunities of the less well off. 2 The latter notions are the concern of standing egalitarianism. Concern for distributive justice—specifically, how the rules that determine the fair division of gains from social cooperation should be designed—can be cast in terms of the question: what rules would free people of equal standing choose, with an eye to also sustaining their equal social relations? The concern to choose principles that sustain relations of equal standing is partly causal and partly constitutive. In a contractualist framework, principles of distributive justice for economic goods constrain the choice of regulative rules of property, contract, the system of money and banking, and so forth, and do not directly determine outcomes ( Rawls, 1999 : 47–49, 73–76). From this point of view, certain principles, such as equality of rights to own property and make contracts, are constitutive of equal standing.

Absent from this list of conceptions of equality is any notion of equality considered as a bare pattern in the distribution of goods, independent of how those goods were brought about, the social relations through which they came to be possessed, or the social relations they tend to cause. Some people think that it is a bad thing if one person is worse off than another due to sheer luck ( Arneson, 2000 ; Temkin, 2003 ). I do not share this intuition. Suppose a temperamentally happy baby is born, and then another is born that is even happier. The first is now worse off than the second, through sheer luck. This fact is no injustice and harms no one’s interests. Nor does it make the world a worse place. Even if it did, it would still be irrelevant in a liberal political order, as concern for the value of the world apart from any connection to human welfare, interests, or freedom fails even the most lax standard of liberal neutrality.

2. A Freedom-based Justification of Property Must Favor Positive or Republican over Negative Freedom

The conventional debate about freedom and distributive equality is cast in terms of the relative priority of negative and positive freedom. If negative liberty, as embodied in property rights, trumps positive freedom, then taxation for purposes of redistribution of income and wealth is unjust ( Nozick, 2013 : 30–34, 172–173; Mack, 2009 ).

One way to motivate the priority of negative freedom is to stress the normative difference between constraints against infringing others’ liberties, which do not require anyone to do anything (merely to refrain from acting in certain ways), and positive requirements to supply others with goods, which carry the taint of forced labor. This argument applies at most to taxation of labor income. Nozick (2013 : 169) tacitly acknowledged this point in claiming that “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor” (emphasis added). People receive passive income (such as interest, mineral royalties, capital gains, land rents, and bequests) without lifting a finger, so taxation of or limitations on such income does not amount to forcing them to work for others. Such taxation is the traditional left-libertarian strategy for pursuing distributive equality consistent with negative liberty constraints. Land and natural resource taxes can be justified in Lockean terms, as respecting the property rights in the commons of those who lost access to privately appropriated land. Paine’s classic version of this argument (1796) claims that Lockean property rights should be unbundled: just appropriation entitles owners to use the land and exclude others, but not to 100 percent of the income from land rents. Citizens generally retain rights to part of that income stream. This grounds a moderate egalitarianism without resort to the extravagant premises needed to support a more demanding distributive equality in libertarian terms, as for instance in Otsuka (1998) .

Arguments for the priority of negative over positive freedom with respect to property rights run into more fundamental difficulties. A regime of perfect negative freedom with respect to property is one of Hohfeldian privileges only, not of rights. 3 A negative liberty is a privilege to act in some way without state interference or liability for damages to another for the way one acts. The correlate to A’s privilege is that others lack any right to demand state assistance in constraining A’s liberty to act in that way. There is nothing conceptually incoherent in a situation where multiple persons have a privilege with respect to the same rival good: consider the rules of basketball, which permit members of either team to compete for possession of the ball, and even to “steal” the ball from opponents. If the other team exercises its liberty to steal the ball, the original possessor cannot appeal to the referee to get it back.

No sound argument for a regime of property rights can rely on considerations of negative liberty alone. Rights entail that others have correlative duties. To have a property right to something is to have a claim against others, enforceable by the state, that they not act in particular ways with respect to that thing. Property rights, by definition, are massive constraints on negative liberty: to secure the right of a single individual owner to some property, the negative liberty of everyone else—billions of people—must be constrained. Judged by a metric of negative liberty alone, recognition of property rights inherently amounts to a massive net loss of total negative freedom. The argument applies equally well to rights in one’s person, showing again the inability of considerations of negative liberty alone to ground rights. “It is impossible to create rights, to impose obligations, to protect the person, life, reputation, property, subsistence, or liberty itself, but at the expense of liberty” ( Bentham, 1838–1843 : I.1, 301).

What could justify this gigantic net loss of negative liberty? If we want to defend this loss as a net gain in overall freedom, we must do so by appealing to one of the other conceptions of freedom—positive freedom, or republican freedom. Excellent arguments can be provided to defend private property rights in terms of positive freedom. Someone who has invested their labor in some external good with the aim of creating something worth more than the original raw materials has a vital interest in assurance that they will have effective access to this good in the future. Such assurance requires the state’s assistance in securing that good against others’ negative liberty interest in taking possession of it. To have a claim to the state’s assistance in securing effective access to a good, against others’ negative liberty interests in it, is to have a right to positive freedom .

Considerations of republican freedom also supply excellent arguments for private property. In a system of privileges alone, contests over possession of external objects would be settled in the interests of the stronger parties. Because individuals need access to external goods to survive, the stronger could then condition others’ access on their subjection to the possessors’ arbitrary will. Only a system of private property rights can protect the weaker from domination by the stronger. The republican argument for rights in one’s own body follows even more immediately from such considerations, since to be an object of others’ possession is per se to be dominated by them.

Thus, there are impeccable freedom-based arguments for individual property rights. But they depend on treating individuals’ interests in either positive or republican freedom as overriding others’ negative liberty interests. Against this, libertarians such as Nozick could argue that the proper conception of negative liberty is a moralized one, such that interference with others’ negative freedom does not count as an infringement of liberty unless it is unjust . Such a moralized view of liberty is implicit in Nozick’s moralized accounts of coercion and voluntariness (1969: 450; 2013: 262–263). Hence, no genuine sacrifice of others’ negative liberty is involved in establishing a just system of property rights.

In response, we must consider what could justify claims to negative liberty rights in property. The problem arises with special clarity once we consider the pervasiveness of prima facie conflicts of property rights, as in cases of externalities settled by tort law or land use regulation. Whenever prima facie negative liberty rights conflict, we must decide between them either by weighing their value in terms of non-liberty considerations, or in terms of some other conception of freedom—positive or republican. If we appeal to considerations other than freedom, we treat freedom as subordinate to other values. For example, desert-based arguments for property rights, which point to the fact that the individual created the object of property, or added value to it through their labor—treat freedom as subordinate to the social goal of rewarding people according to their just deserts. Similarly, Nozick’s resolution of conflicting claims in terms of a moralized notion of negative liberty covertly imports utilitarian considerations to do the needed normative work ( Fried, 2011 ). To base the justification of property rights on considerations of freedom itself, we must regard freedom as a value or interest and not immediately as a right. That is, we must regard freedom as a nonmoralized consideration. Otherwise we have no basis in freedom for justifying property rights or resolving property disputes when uses of property conflict.

A contractualist framework can offer a freedom-based justification of private property rights that departs from libertarian premises. In this picture, the principles of right are whatever principles persons would rationally choose (or could not reasonably reject) to govern their interpersonal claims, given that they are, and understand themselves to be, free and equal in relation to one another. If they chose a regime of privileges only, this would amount to anarchist communism, in which the world is an unregulated commons. Such a regime would lead to depleted commons—razed forests, extinct game, destroyed fisheries. It would also give everyone a greater incentive to take what others produced than to produce themselves. Few would invest their labor in external things, everyone would be poor, and meaningful opportunities would be rare. By contrast, adoption of an institutional scheme of extensive private property rights, including broad freedoms of exchange and contract, would create vastly richer opportunities for peaceful and cooperative production on terms of mutual freedom and equality. All have an overwhelming common interest in sustaining an institutional infrastructure of private property rights that generates more positive freedom —better opportunities—for all.

This argument justifies rights to negative freedom with respect to external property in terms of positive freedom. It does not suppose, as libertarian arguments do, that the liberty interests of the individual override the common interest. Rather, it claims that people have a common interest in sustaining a regime of individual rights to property. On this view, individual rights are not justified by the weight of the individual interest they protect, but by the fact that everyone has a common interest in relating to each other through a shared infrastructure of individual rights ( Raz, 1994 ). The infrastructure of private property rights is a public good, justified by its promotion of opportunities—of positive freedom—for all. A well-designed infrastructure provides a framework within which individuals can relate to one another as free and equal persons.

So far, the argument is one of evaluative priority only. It has been argued that if one wants to justify private property rights in terms of freedom, one must grant evaluative priority to positive or republican over negative freedom. Discussion of the implications of this argument for the content of a just scheme of private property rights—to whether a just scheme would look more libertarian, or more egalitarian—will be postponed to the last section of this chapter.

3. Republican Freedom and the Justification of Inalienable Rights

If negative freedom were the only conception of freedom, it would be difficult to offer a freedom-based justification of inalienable rights. If Sarah’s right is inalienable, then she is immune from anyone changing her right. This could look attractive, except that it entails that she is disabled from changing her own right—that she lacks the power to waive others’ correlative duties to respect that right ( Hohfeld, 1913–1914 : 44–45, 55). This is a constraint on her higher-order negative liberty. This liberty is higher-order because it concerns not the liberty to exercise the right, but the liberty over the right itself.

Inalienable rights might also leave the individual with an inferior set of positive freedoms than if her rights are alienable. Contracts involve an exchange of rights. There is a general presumption that voluntary and informed contracts produce gains for both sides. To make Sarah’s right inalienable prevents her from exchanging it for rights she values more, and thereby reduces her opportunities or positive freedom.

However, there are strategic contexts in which individuals can get much better opportunities if some of their rights are inalienable ( Dworkin, 1982 : 55–56). In urgent situations, when one party cannot hold out for better terms, the other can exploit that fact and offer terms that are much worse than what they would otherwise be willing to offer. Peter, seeing Michelle drowning, might condition his tossing her a life ring on her agreeing to become his slave, if her rights in herself were fully alienable. But if she had an inalienable right to self-ownership, Peter could not exploit her desperation to subject her to slavery, but would offer her better terms.

Such considerations leave libertarians torn between accepting and rejecting the validity of voluntary contracts into slavery. 4 Those tempted by the negative liberty case in favor of full alienability of rights should recall the antislavery arguments of the Republican Party before the Civil War. Republicans objected to slavery because it enabled slaveholders to subordinate even free men to their dominion. The Slave Power—politically organized proslavery interests—undermined the republican character of government. It suppressed the right to petition Congress (via the gag rule against hearing antislavery petitions), censored the mail (against antislavery literature), and forced free men, against their conscience, to join posses to hunt down alleged fugitive slaves. It violated equal citizenship by effectively granting additional representation to slaveowners for their property in slaves (via the three-fifths rule for apportioning representatives). By insisting on the right to hold slaves in the territories, the Slave Power threatened the prospects of free men to secure their independence by staking out individual homesteads. Slave plantations would acquire vast territories, crowding out opportunities for independent family farms. Chattel slavery of blacks threatened to reduce whites to wage slaves, subordinate to their employers for their entire working lives ( Foner, 1995 ).

The Republican antislavery argument is similar to the positive liberty argument above: it stresses how the constitution of a scheme of liberty rights provides the public infrastructure for a society of free and equal persons. The critical point is to institute a scheme of individual rights that can sustain relations of freedom and equality—understood as personal independence and nondomination—among persons. While the Republican Party limited its arguments to securing relations of nondomination among men, feminist abolitionists extended their arguments to married women, who, like slaves, lacked the rights to own property, make contracts, sue and be sued in court, keep their earned income, and move freely without getting permission from their masters (husbands) ( Sklar, 2000 ). Like the positive liberty argument for individual rights, it recognizes how individuals have a vital stake in other people’s liberty rights being secure against invasion or appropriation by others. The stability of this public infrastructure of freedom depends on individual rights being inalienable.

It is to no avail to reply that a libertarian scheme of fully alienable rights that permits voluntary slavery would reject the forced slavery of the antebellum South, along with the violations of free speech and republican government needed to secure the institution of slavery against state “interference.” For the Republicans’ antislavery argument was about the stability of certain rights configurations under realistic conditions. It was that a society that enforces rights to total domination of one person over another will not be able to sustain itself as a free society of equals over time. How the dominators acquired those rights, whether by force or contract, is irrelevant to this argument. Slaveholders, in the name of protection of their private property rights, used the immense economic power they gained from slavery to seize the state apparatus and crush republican liberties. This is a version of the classical republican antiplutocratic argument against extreme wealth inequality. But it was also directed toward the threat that slavery posed to economic independence of free men—to their prospects for self-employment, for freedom from subjection to an employer.

Debra Satz ( 2010 : 180, 232n40), citing Genicot (2002) , offers a similar argument against debt bondage, adapted to contemporary conditions. Two dynamics threaten the ability of workers to maintain their freedom if they have the power to alienate their right to quit to their creditor/employer. First, the availability of debt bondage may restrict opportunities to obtain credit without bondage. Bondage functions as a guarantee against destitute debtors’ default: they put up their own labor as collateral. However, the institution of debt bondage makes it more difficult to establish formalized credit and labor markets by which alternative methods of promoting loan repayment (such as credit ratings and garnishing wages) make credit available without bondage.

Second, living under conditions of bondage makes people servile, humble, and psychologically dependent—psychological dispositions that they are likely to transmit to their children. Servile people lack a vivid conception of themselves as rights-bearers and lack the assertiveness needed to vindicate their rights. Moreover, the poor are unlikely to hang on to their freedom for long, given their strategic vulnerability when others are already giving up their alienable rights under hard bargaining. A system of fully alienable libertarian rights is thus liable to degenerate into a society of lords and bondsmen, unable to reproduce the self-understandings that ground libertarian rights. A free society cannot be sustained by people trained to servility and locked into strategic games where some individuals’ alienation of their liberty rights puts others’ liberties at risk ( Satz, 2010 : 173–180).

This argument generalizes. Workers may have a permanent interest in retaining other rights besides the formal right to quit, so as to prevent the authority relations constitutive of employment from conversion into relations of domination. For example, they have a permanent interest against sexual and other forms of discriminatory harassment. Under U.S. law, workers have inalienable rights against such degrading treatment. In addition, since lower-level workers have minimal freedom at work, but spend their workdays following others’ orders, they have a vital interest in secure access to a limited length of the working day—in having some hours in which they act under their own direction. This is the purpose of maximum hours laws, which forbid employers from conditioning a job offer on having to work too many hours per week. The logic in both cases is strategic: once employers are free to make such unwelcome “offers” (or rather, threats), the decision of some to accept removes better offers from other workers’ choice sets, and thereby deprives them of both positive and republican freedom.

As in the case of contractual slavery, libertarians are divided over this type of argument. Mill (1965 : XI, §12) supported maximum hours laws as an exception to laissez faire, on strategic grounds. The early Nozick would probably have accepted laws against sexual harassment, because conditioning a job on putting up with a hostile atmosphere or compliance with the boss’s sexual demands makes workers worse off relative to a normative baseline of not being subject to unwelcome sexual affronts, and hence counts as coercive. 5 However, the Nozick of Anarchy, State, and Utopia would have rejected such laws as interfering with freedom of contract, given that he accepted contractual slavery. Eric Mack (1981) also upholds an absolute principle of freedom of contract, and so would be committed to the alienability of rights against sexual harassment and even assault in labor contracts.

Mack recognizes that it is disingenuous to claim that restraints on freedom of contract that improve workers’ choice sets violate their freedom of contract. Hence minimum wage laws, if they only raise wages and do not increase unemployment, do not violate workers’ rights. His complaint is that such restraints violate employers’ rights, coercing them into offering better terms to workers than they wanted to make. They treat employers as mere resources to be used by others in pursuit of goals the employer does not share ( Mack, 1981 : 6–8). This argument, if applied to laws against sexual harassment and similar forms of personal domination, is bizarre. One would have thought that employers who threaten their workers with job loss if they do not put up with sexual subordination are treating them as mere resources to be used by the employer in pursuit of goals the workers do not share.

Mack contrasts a morality of “social goals” with one of deontological side constraints, claiming that the former treats people as mere means and the latter treats people as ends in themselves. A deontology of complete alienability of rights in one’s person, however, leads to a society in which some are made others’ partial or total property, reduced to instruments of the others’ arbitrary wills, and deprived of all three kinds of freedom. That they entered such a state by choice does not undermine the conclusion. Rather, it proves that liberty does not only upset equality—it also upsets liberty. To be more precise: negative liberty upsets liberty.

Suppose our “social goal” is to sustain a society in which individuals relate to each other as free persons—which is to say, as equal and independent, not subject to the arbitrary will of others? That would seem to be not merely unobjectionable to a libertarian, but the very point of a libertarian view. The scheme of rights required to realize such a society cannot be devised without tending to the likely consequences of choices made within it. The infrastructure of rights needed to sustain a society in which individuals relate to each other as free persons requires that the rights most fundamental to the ability to exercise independent agency be inalienable, so that no one becomes subject to another’s domination. Thus, the fundamental freedom-based rationale for inalienable rights is based on considerations of republican freedom. It entails that a free society requires substantial authority egalitarianism.

4. Freedom, Equality, and the Definition of Property Rights

I conclude with some remarks on the definition of property rights. Much libertarian writing supposes that as soon as an argument is given to justify a right to private property in something, this justifies all the classical incidents of property—including rights to exclude, use, alter, and destroy it, to give, barter, or sell all or any parts of it or any rights to it, to rent, loan, or lease it for income, all with unlimited duration ( Honoré, 1961 ). Why is a separate argument not required for each of these incidents? Shouldn’t the nature and function of the property in question play a role in determining which rights are attached to it, and for how long? For example, while the right to destroy is easily granted to most chattels, the positive liberty of future generations provides compelling reasons to deny it to property in land and water resources. Such interests also justify limits on dividing property into parcels or rights bundles too small to use ( Heller, 1998 ). It is also questionable how any case for intellectual property rights can be grounded in considerations of negative liberty, given that a regime of universal privilege with respect to ideas does not interfere with the liberties of authors and inventors to create and use their works. A freedom-based case for intellectual property can only be made on positive liberty grounds, and then only justify limited terms for copyrights and patents, given the role of the intellectual commons in expanding cultural and technological opportunities.

A just system of legal rules of property, contract, banking, employment, and so forth constitutes a public infrastructure that can sustain a free society of equals over time. Since, in a well-ordered society, members sustain this infrastructure by paying taxes and complying with its rules, each member has a legitimate claim that the rules secure their access to opportunities generated by that infrastructure. The case is no different from the system of public roads. Fair distributions of access to opportunity matter here, too. A system of roads that accommodates only cars, with no pedestrian sidewalks, crosswalks, and stop lights, denies adequate opportunities for freedom of movement to those without cars. It would be absurd for drivers to object to pedestrian infrastructure because it interferes with their negative liberty. They have no claim that the publicly supported infrastructure be tailored to their interests alone.

Arguments over the rules defining private property rights are comparable. Since everyone needs effective access to private property to secure their liberty interests, property rules should ensure such access to all. Such distributive concerns might be partially secured, for example, by way of estate taxes, the revenues of which are distributed to all in the form of social insurance. As Paine (1796) argued, such taxes do not infringe private property rights, but rather constitute a partial unbundling of property rights to secure the legitimate property rights of others. That one of the incidents of property (protecting wealth interests) partially expires upon the death of the owner is no more a violation of property rights than the fact that patents expire after twenty years: such rules simply define the scope of the right in the first instance.

Three features of the public infrastructure of economic rights in social democratic orders promote, and arguably are needed to secure, decent opportunities for all to live on terms of republican freedom and hence authority egalitarianism with respect to everyone else. First, as argued above, individuals need a robust set of market inalienable rights, to avoid domination by their employers. Second, as Paine argued, they need a universal system of social insurance to secure their independence in cases of inability to work or to find work ( Anderson, 2008 ). Third, under modern conditions, they need free, universal education, to avoid domination by parents and others, and to secure a self-conception as someone with rights of personal independence. Each of these can be understood as individual property rights, secured via partial unbundling of classical private property rights. None require state ownership or management of productive enterprises, or bureaucratic administration of individuals’ lives. They merely constitute an alternative type of private property regime. It is superior to a libertarian one on grounds of freedom , because it better secures positive and republican freedom for all. Since any credible freedom-based argument for private property rights must already recognize the normative priority of positive and republican freedom over negative freedom, it is hard to run credible freedom-based arguments against these core institutions of social democracy at the level of abstraction at which these arguments proceed in political philosophy. Of course, the details of any particular implementation of these institutions may have many objectionable features, as is also true of private employment relations. Because the conditions of republican and positive freedom are sociologically complex, we cannot expect arguments at a high level of abstraction to settle disputes over the details of a property regime suitable for a free society of equals. The current chapter demonstrates that the ideal of a free society of equals is not an oxymoron: not only is relational equality not fundamentally opposed to freedom, in certain senses equality is needed for freedom. Inequality upsets liberty.

Ferguson, Missouri, the site of protests triggered by the police homicide of a black man stopped for jaywalking, illustrates this phenomenon. With a declining tax base, Ferguson turned to police to raise revenue by incessantly harassing mostly black citizens with traffic citations. They turned citations into the second-highest source of city revenue by issuing an average of three warrants and $321 in fines per household . Poor individuals who cannot pay the fines and fail to appear in court to explain why are often arrested and thrown into jail for weeks ( Tabarrok, 2014 ). By comparison to such gross violations of republican freedom, the negative liberty constraints of a regular tax raising the same total revenue are trivial.

Rawls clearly distinguished the republican concern that extreme wealth inequality leads to plutocracy from the egalitarian interest in the fair division of income and wealth as such. This is why he grounded progressive inheritance taxes in the principle of equal basic liberties (including the fair value of political liberties—an antiplutocratic principle), rather than the difference principle, which takes the fair distribution of income and wealth as its direct object ( Rawls, 1999 : 245, 70).

For the classic distinction between privileges and rights, see Hohfeld, 1913–1914 : 30–44.

For libertarians who oppose contractual slavery, see Mill (1859 : 184) and Rothbard (1998 : 40–41). For those who think slave contracts should be enforceable, see Nozick (2013 : 331), Alexander (2010) , and Block (2003) . Locke, an inspiration to libertarians, rejected contractual slavery; see Locke, 1824b : §23 and more aptly Locke, 1824a : §42. However, both his arguments rely on non-libertarian premises: in the Second Treatise , against a right to suicide; in the First Treatise , asserting a positive right to charity.

Nozick (1969) argues that a proposal can count as a threat, and hence be coercive, even if the proposer has a legal right to carry out the negative consequence for the recipient (452), and that such cases of coercion can include employer threats to fire workers if they fail to comply with the employer’s wishes (for example, by voting to be represented by a union) (453). Hence, in his early view, employers can coerce workers even if workers have exit rights and employers have the right to fire them at will. See also Flanigan (2012) , arguing that sexual harassment at work constitutes wrongful coercion if the empirical expectation for the job does not include sex work. This allows employers to get off the sexual harassment hook simply by listing sexual harassment in boilerplate contractual language for all employees, even for jobs such as cashier and carpenter that have nothing to do with performing sexual services. Still, it reflects some appreciation by a libertarian, however ambivalent, of the reality of workplace coercion.

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• Published: 14 August 2018

Individual liberty and the importance of the concept of the people

• Regina Queiroz 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  4 , Article number:  99 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Through publically agreed laws that correspond to a common set of public restrictions, the ‘people as a sovereign body’ serves to protect against violations of individual liberty and despotic power. Where no such common body exists, individuals are deprived of this protection. In such cases, individuals must obey without liberty, while those in power command under a state of license. Neoliberal theorists maintain that any common personality, with its corresponding set of public and arbitrary positive and negative restrictions on liberty, undermines individual liberty. Neoliberal theory only allows for private restrictions on liberty. Against these neoliberal assumptions, we argue that rejecting public restrictions on liberty does not promote individual liberty. To the contrary, it creates conditions in which free individuals become servile and political inequality becomes entrenched, where citizens are divided into those who obey and those who command. Tracing the consequences of neoliberalism, we argue that unless we take seriously both the people as a political category and the right to equal and reciprocal coercion, individual liberty will be at risk. The article argues that neoliberalism ultimately leads to the total exclusion of certain citizens under the veil of full liberty . With the vanishing of the people’s will comes the utter disappearance of certain citizens , who live in a spontaneous society as if they were stateless or lawless persons. To better understand the connections between the rejection of the concept of the people, private restrictions on liberty and the fostering of the servile citizen, this paper considers the political philosophy of Hayek and Nozick. It also considers key ideas from Locke and Kant—theorists who, despite the differences between their philosophical perspectives, and despite the fact that they both provided crucial inspiration for Hayek’s political economy and Nozick’s libertarianism, stressed the protective role of the people with regard to individual liberty.

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Introduction

Through publically agreed laws that correspond to a common set of public restrictions, the ‘people as a sovereign body’ serves to protect against violations of individual liberty and despotic power (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). Where no such common body exists, individuals are deprived of this protection. In such cases, individuals must obey without liberty, while those in power command under a state of license, i.e., a state of unrestricted liberty. Neoliberal theorists maintain that any common personality, with its corresponding set of public restrictions on liberty, undermines individual liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Therefore, in addition to promoting the idea of private, atomized individuals and denying the existence of “the people” (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), neoliberal theory permits only private restrictions (positive and negative) on liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ).

Against this neoliberal assumption (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), we shall argue that rejecting the concept of the people and public restrictions on liberty while preserving the general law, its protective function, and coercive institutions and instruments for enforcing neoliberal law poses a serious threat to individual liberty and ultimately risks reducing the majority of free individuals to servile—and in some cases lawless—persons.

The literature has already demonstrated the incompatibility between neoliberalism and the notion of the people as a political category and reality (Brown, 2015 ; Dean, 2008 ). The impact of neoliberalism’s exclusion of the people and its reliance on the concept of publicity without a public has also been demonstrated (Queiroz, 2017 ). Related to this, the literature has addressed how neoliberalism fosters the development of a docile and disciplined citizenry (Foucault, 2008 ). Nonetheless, the political consequences of the exclusion of the people and the protective role it plays in the preservation of the political state—namely the transformation of free individuals into servile, and ultimately lawless, persons—has yet to be addressed, in particular from a political-philosophical point of view.

The importance of this issue is clear. There has been much emphasis on the economic nature of neoliberalism, which has obscured the fact that, more than an economic position, neoliberalism is a political outlook and reality (Bruff, 2014 ). Although neoliberalism has become deeply tied to economics (Hall, 2011 ; Read, 2009 ), this is mainly due to the fact that its theoretical understanding of the state as a political institution is made in analogy with the economic market and the subsequent political redefinition of the latter’s aims and scope (Foucault, 2008 ). Thus, without neglecting the significance of neoliberal economic analysis, in shifting the focus to neoliberalism’s political character we aim to disclose its political-philosophical foundations and to translate its allegedly purely economic aspects to the political sphere. As we will see, the imposition of fiscal equilibrium, fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions (Barro, 2009 ) are connected not only to the rise of poverty and inequality but also to the transformation of free citizens into dependent and servile persons.

The underlying philosophical principles formulated in Hayek’s political economy, political philosophy and legal theory, as well as in Nozick’s libertarianism, have spilled over into politics. Although, as empirical studies frequently show, there is always a gap between theoretical statements and practical reality, these principles now provide, at a national and international level, the law’s substantive content (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ).

For these reasons, we do not intend to evaluate the “exegetical” value of Hayek’s and Nozick’s philosophical views (for example Hayek’s mistaken reading of Kant’s ethical and political philosophy; Gray, 1989 ). At the same time, we cannot here explore the important material basis of neoliberal ideology, namely concrete neoliberal activities, processes and powerful neoliberal social and political forces, such as multinational corporations (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Harvey, 2005 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ). Instead, we aim to show that the philosophical assumptions underlying Hayek’s political economy and Nozick’s libertarianism allow us to clarify the connection between the exclusion of the people as a political category and neoliberalism’s promotion of a servile citizenry.

To better understand this connection, this paper will consider the Lockean and Kantian concepts of the people. Despite the differences between Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies (Gray, 1989 ; Williams, 1994 ), for both thinkers the people serves the function of protecting individual liberty against despotic power, a condition which is commonly referred to as political obligation under liberty. Hayek and Nozick explicitly refer to the Lockean and Kantian foundations of their views, for example the Kantian universalization test for establishing the validity of the abstract rules of the market state (Hayek, 1976 ). Nozick’s use of the Kantian understanding of the person as an end in itself to justify the rejection of substantive principles of justice (Nozick, 1974 ) provides an additional reason to consider Locke’s and Kant’s conceptions of the people in detail.

There are of course important differences between our current social, political and technological context, which is characterized by globalization, and Locke and Kant’s modern nation states. We ought also to consider the differences between how we conceive of the people, e.g., whether we define peoples in terms of national commonality (Miller, 2000 ) or whether we ought to stress the role of democratic politics in creating this sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ). Equally significant is the fact that, contrary to neoliberalism, Locke’s liberalism depends on homo politicus and juridicus rather than homo economicus , which generates significant tensions between his rights-based view and modern views based on interests (Foucault, 2008 ). Equally, we wish to overlook neither Locke’s and Kant’s controversial statements and practices, for example Kant’s exclusion of non-property-owners from the social contract (Kersting, 1992 ), nor the limits of Locke’s and Kant’s theoretical constructions of political personality (Badiou, 2016 ). The weaknesses of past democracies, expressed in the exclusion of woman from equal citizenship, the existence of slavery, and contemporary populist perversions of democracy, do not entail that we must abandon the ideal of democratic political power, however. The negative aspects of Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies should not erase their strong commitment, from a liberal perspective, to the importance of the concept of the people when it comes to protecting individual liberty.

Finally, we do not wish to ignore past conceptions of the people, such as Greco-Roman conceptions, republican conceptions (Cicero, 1999 ; Habermas, 2000 ; Rousseau, 1762 (1964)), Marxist conceptions (Badiou, 2016 ), and other current alternatives. Despite their differences, they share certain features with the liberal approach, such as assigning a protective role to the people. In the face of the political consequences of neoliberalism’s exclusion of the people, we should appeal to what Rawls ( 1993 ) calls overlapping consensus, i.e., agreement on the people as a political category on different grounds.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 provides a brief presentation of the main concepts and neoliberalism’s rejection of public restrictions on liberty and the right to equal and reciprocal coercion. In the second section, we show that, contrary to neoliberal assumptions, far from fostering individual liberty, the exclusively private restriction of liberty implies a political distinction between those who obey and those who rule. It also entails the division of citizens into those who obey and those who command, where the latter are given unequal protection by the government and thus an unequal share in the public coercive power. Similarly, it involves the introduction of two familiar political categories, originally deployed in neoliberal political society: self-serfdom on the one hand and invisible, voiceless citizenship on the other. At the end of the paper, we provide a brief account of the protective role of the people as a political body when it comes to individual liberty. We show that by ensuring the equal and reciprocal right of coercion, the people as a body protects individual liberty.

The people vs. the private coercion of liberty under neoliberalism

As an imprecise and nebulous concept, there is no single “pure” form of neoliberalism. Instead, there are varied articulations that make up an extraordinarily messy amalgam of neoliberal ideas and policies at multiple sites (Latin America, Europe, China; Harvey, 2005 ), on multiple scales (national, international, transnational, global; Brown, 2015 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ), and within the many versions of the welfare state (Kus, 2006 ). Additionally, according to England and Ward’s ( 2016 ) taxonomy, neoliberalism can be thought of as a form of statecraft that promotes the reduction of government spending while increasing economic completion (Mudge, 2008 ), or as a form of governmentality that comprises social, cultural and economic practices that constitute new spaces and subjects (Foucault, 2008 ). In addition, neoliberalism can be seen as a reaction to the disenchantment identified by Weber, ( 1978 ) following the rise of bureaucracy. Neoliberalism expresses a kind of re-enchantment with the exclusively individual rational actor, who claims a non-alienable space of liberty against a bureaucratic “iron cage”. Although some see neoliberalism as a privatized version of economic and bureaucratic despotism (Lorenz, 2012 ) or as a totalizing global bureaucracy (Hickel, 2016 ), this re-enchantment can explain the enthusiastic endorsement of neoliberal principles by a wide spectrum of political and ideological forces, for example by the Labour party under Blair in Great Britain, the SPD under Schröder in Germany, and followers of Pinochet in Chile.

Finally, neoliberalism has been viewed as a conception of the world, or a “total view of reality” (Ramey, 2015 , p. 3), which is meant to be applied to the political realm and the entirety of human existence. Integrated into common sense, its main ideas stem from the everyday experience of buying and selling commodities on the market, a model that is then transferred to society. As a total view of reality, neoliberalism entails “a new understanding of human nature and social existence [and] the way in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects” (Read, 2009 , p. 28; see also Foucault, 2008 ).

While acknowledging the disparate criteria for defining and assessing neoliberal theory and practice, we maintain that neoliberalism is a political outlook and reality (Bruff, 2014 ) which has evolved in part in accordance with the framework of the theoretical premises of Hayek’s, ( 1976 ) political economy and Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) philosophical libertarianism. For instance, neoliberal theoretical principles now provide, at a national and international level, substantive content to political constitutions (McCluskey, 2003 ), the establishment of laws governing the executive (Foucault, 2008 ; Read, 2009 ), and the reformulation of laws governing citizens (LeBaron, 2008 ; McCluskey, 2003 ; Supiot, 2013 , p. 141; Wacquant, 1999 ). They also shape our comprehension of the world and ourselves (for example the reduction of the citizen to an entrepreneur; Peters, 2016 ). Thus, although there is no purely neoliberal society or state—neoliberalism evolves within various societies in different ways (see Harvey, 2005 )—neoliberal political theory allows us to clarify the political premises that underlie the disparate versions of neoliberalism.

In preserving the political state, neoliberal individualistic premises do not accommodate the notion of the people , i.e., the citizens of a given political community or a unitary political body ( demos or populus ), understood as an ultimate intentional lawmaker or sovereign (Locke, 1679 (1960)). The category of the people is a political criterion, which refers to the main act of the people’s sovereignty: their giving law to themselves, in the form of rights and duties (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Rousseau, 1762 (1964); Sieyes, 1789 (1989)). Putting to the side the relationship between political (Dahl, 1998 ; Rawls, 1999 ; Sieyes, 1789 [1989]) and ethnic (Habermas, 2000 , 2008 ) criteria, this act unifies individuals who belong to different ethnicities, cultures, and linguistic traditions. The results of this act are the civic, political and social human rights which have traditionally been the privileged content of the laws of peoples (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Marshall, 1950 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1999 ).

It is true that women and slaves have historically been excluded from the category of the people. It is also undeniable that such exclusion has not been completely overcome and that new categories of exclusion have emerged, such as ageism and digital exclusion. Important political differences within peoples on the axes of class (Badiou, 2016 ), gender (Elstain, 1981 ), race (Wilson, 2012 ), and citizenship remain. Nonetheless, the content of the laws of peoples has provided political criteria for denouncing and reducing, if not eliminating, these exclusions (e.g., in South Africa with the end of Apartheid).

Despite the complexity of the relationship between the state and the sovereignty of the people (Habermas, 2008 ), the political criterion stresses the subordination of the state to the sovereign people. It also points to the reformulation of the powers of states, “specifying that their legislators must not make certain laws, or must advance certain objectives” (Pyke, 2001 , p. 205). For example, instead of exclusively preserving peace or economic and financial efficiency, states ought to ensure the well-being of their citizens. In the absence of such restrictions, the overestimation of states’ economic goals (such as low inflation, the removal of trade barriers and foreign currency control, and minimal regulation of the economic labor market) can result in the undermining of welfare at the national (Brodie, 2007 ) and international level (Beck, 2002 ).

Some argue that nation states provide a criterion for determining political belonging (Miller, 2000 ). However, the political criterion points to the fact that one’s relation to a given nation state should be based on common laws, not ethnic or cultural differences. Rawls’s, ( 1999 ) liberal approach to international relationships argues against cosmopolitan principles of justice that are blind to the political (and moral) differences between peoples, for example the difference between liberal and decent peoples, where the former is based on an individualistic tradition and the latter on a ‘corporative’ tradition. Despite the perils of extending sovereign power to the global order (e.g., populism) and people’s incomprehension of the full import of economic and political factors, this order should respect the sovereignty of peoples. Neoliberalism’s “global policy of boundary removal” (Beck, 2002 , p. 78) undermines the sovereignty of the people (Beck, 2002 ; Overbeek, 1993 ). Indeed, the growth of international law affects domestic legal systems, limiting the political choices of legislators and voters, and competition in globalized markets does not allow nations or states to regulate their industries and workplaces. As Hickel notes, for example, financial liberalization creates conditions under which “investors can conduct moment-by-moment referendums on decisions made by voters and governments around the world, bestowing their favor on countries that facilitate profit maximization while punishing those that prioritize other concerns, like decent wages” (Hickel, 2016 , p. 147).

Peoples are the main ‘actors’ in the international and global arena, their sovereignty, along with their constitutional power, cannot dispense with common laws. Despite the crucial issue of the existence of mechanisms for enforcing those laws, human rights such as freedom from slavery and serfdom, mass murder and genocide can provide their content (Rawls, 1999 ). Although the political manipulation of the law by national-hegemonic principles (Beck, 2002 ) and the enforcement issue (Lane, et al. 2006 ) must be kept in mind, the human rights approach is relevant to Locke’s and Kant’s concepts of the people. There is a difference between the national order underlying Locke’s and Kant’s approaches to the sovereignty of the people and our contemporary international and global order, human rights can create, at the national, international and global level, a sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ; Lane et al. 2006 ; Rawls, 1999 ). As political criteria, human rights preclude resolving persistent political conflicts on the basis of ethnic or national criteria, as occurs with populism and nationalism, respectively.

Given this intricate theoretical framework, as well as the complexity of the notion of a sovereign people (Butler, 2016 ; Morgan, 1988 ; Morris, 2000 ), we stress that whatever its scope, the sovereign people plays a protective role with regard to citizens’ liberties in general and against despotic power in particular (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). Locke, ( 1679 (1960)) and Kant, ( 1793 ([1977)) assume that the sovereign people guarantees individual liberty in any human association. Both thinkers hold both that human associations (or societies) of free persons cannot deny the political facts of power, obedience and command (Locke, 1679 ([1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)) and that, in natural (rather than political) conditions, individual liberty is unrestricted. Since in the state of nature it is possible for one to obey unconditionally, having only duties, while the other in turn commands unconditionally, having only rights, the unrestrictedly obedient enjoy no protection against unrestricted power, at least concerning their right to life (Locke, 1679 ([1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). From this perspective, i.e., from the perspective of individual liberty, the practical (as opposed to theoretical) challenge consists in conceiving of an alliance between individuals that does not undermine their individual liberty. The people as a political body expresses precisely this alliance: an inter-protective construction that replaces the state of unconditional obedience and command.

Following the controversial model of the contractual act (Gough, 1957 ), individuals transfer to the political power their unrestricted natural right to liberty. This transfer transforms them into “one people, one body politic” (Locke, 1679 (1960), II, p. 89). As members of the people, individuals equally consent to restricting their liberty under a political order and to preserving an equal coercive power, which prevents them from being reduced to servile persons and, correlatively, prevents any one of their numbers from becoming a despotic lord (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). As such, they establish public law —a system of laws for a people, i.e., an aggregate of human beings, or an aggregate of peoples (Kant, 1793 (1977))—which allows them to live in a lawful state.

Through public law, i.e., laws based on their will, the people provides to each individual a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods and imposes on each a unique set of restrictions (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). When pursuing their personal well-being, as members of the people, individuals cannot ignore this common set of rights and restrictions. When pursuing their well-being, individuals are also, but not exclusively, bound to demands that are independent of their individual interests.

Public vs. private law

Neoliberal theory and practice does not preclude a common law (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ). The common law that it involves is not, however, a law of the people that provides liberties (rights) and imposes a unique set of restrictions (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Indeed, neoliberal political theory does not allow for the transformation of individual personalities or isolated natural selves into a collective or single public, viewed as the ultimate intentional lawmaker, which is the model we find, for example, in Locke, ( 1679 (1960)), Kant, ( 1793 (1977)), and Rawls, ( 1971 ). In Nozick’s political theory, when private persons establish a contract to govern their use of the possessions over which they have a private right (Nozick, 1974 )—this conception of rights includes both material possessions and natural talents—they are always separate units that remain separate even when they form associations (Nozick, 1974 ). They do not constitute a common person subject to common legislation that defines and regulates political authority and applies equally to all persons. This mirrors Hayek’s suggestion that it is absurd to speak of rights as claims which no one has an obligation to obey, or even to exercise (Hayek, 1976 ). On this view, human rights result from personal interests, and persons cannot be bound to claims that are independent of their private interests. These claims presuppose a public obligation (or the possibility of coercion), which involves a political organization in which decision-makers act as collective agents: as members of a people rather than individuals. Yet on the neoliberal conception, collective deliberation of this sort limits, and even undermines, individual liberty (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), leading to oppression (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ), if not to serfdom (Hayek, 1960 ).

Viewed from the neoliberal standpoint as a meaningless or mystical political category (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 )—“a fairy tale” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 35)—the political deliberation of the people imposes obligations on individuals, undermining their liberty and well-being. The people as a political body is based on the supposition that someone (the people) can intentionally prevent or promote certain results, which, via end-rules, guiding organizations can compel individuals to attain. In addition to their “epistemological impossibility” (Gray, 1993 , p. 38), however—individuals’ multiple interactions produce unpredictable and unforeseen results—end-rules interfere with individual liberty and worsen the positions of all (Hayek, 1976 ), in particular those who are better off (Nozick, 1974 ). Interference (or intervention), which is “by definition an […] act of coercion” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 129), is “properly applied to specific orders [that aim] at particular results” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128). Moreover, interference and intervention occurs “if we changed the position of any particular part in a manner which is not in accord with the general principle of its operation” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128).

The general principle of the operation of the spontaneous society is negative liberty, or “the absence of a particular obstacle—coercion by other men” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 18) in one’s pursuit of maximal individual well-being. Requiring that the situation of the less well off be improved via the principle of the equality of opportunity, for example, involves restricting individual liberty in order to improve the situations of others (Hayek, 1960 , 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). This improvement is thought to be unacceptable because, in addition to presupposing that we can determine the circumstances under which individuals pursue their aims, binding persons to claims that are independent of their private interests constitutes an interference in their liberty (Hayek, 1976 ). Even if it is admitted that the principle of equal opportunity entails neither complete control over the circumstances in which individuals pursue their well-being (Rawls, 1971 ), nor equality of results (Rawls, 1971 ), nor the worsening of the position of the better-off (see Rawls’s principle of difference, Rawls, 1971 ), the fact that it involves changing the positions of individuals via a public rule means that it constitutes the imposition of an illegitimate obligation on individuals (Hayek, 1960 ; 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). The public law limits the overall sum of well-being—the greater the privatization, the greater the well-being—and restricts the unlimited intensification of individuals’ purely private interests (see Hayek’s, ( 1976 ) and Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) criticism of the utilitarian and Rawlsian theories of social justice). “Inconsistent” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 129) with individual liberties from the perspective of negative liberty and with the unlimited intensification of individuals’ purely private interests, public rules are transformed into private rules (commands or end-rules).

On the neoliberal view, the pursuit of individual ends ought to be based on historical principles (Nozick, 1974 ) or Hayek’s abstract rules, which only set out the procedures for acquiring and preserving individual well-being and which do not refer to a common purpose, such as social justice: “Freedom under the law rests on the contention that when we obey laws, in the sense of general abstract rules irrespective of their application to us; we are not subject to another man’s will and are therefore free” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 11). Under this negative conception of liberty, abstract rules allow for the improvement of “ the chances of all in the pursuit of their aims”; they are therefore truly public rules :

To regard only the public law as serving general welfare and the private law as protecting only the selfish interests of the individuals would be a complete inversion of the truth: it is an error to believe that only actions, which deliberately aim at common purposes, serve common needs. The fact is rather that what the spontaneous order of society provides for us is more important for everyone, and therefore for the general welfare, than most of the particular services which the organization of government can provide, excepting only the security provided by the enforcement of the rules of just conduct . (Hayek, 1960 , p. 132 emphasis added).

Neoliberal “public” rules are therefore abstract rules that exclude common concern . Organizations “sanction” the rights resulting from individuals’ interactions under abstract rules (Hayek, 1976 ). This means not only that governments ought to mirror that order—they cannot provide any rights of themselves—but also that the judicial system ought to be redesigned to fit with the Great Society. Indeed, Hayek critiques the enslavement of law by “false economics” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 67), i.e., economics that are dependent on the existence of public goods, and “prophetically” foresees the disappearance of this law in the spontaneous society (Hayek, 1960 ). Other neoliberal theorists have conceived of the neoliberal impact on law in similar terms, envisaging a legal system based on “true neoliberal economics”, which transforms the law into a bond “oblig[ing] one party to behave according to the expectations of the other” (Supiot, 2013 , p. 141; see also LeBaron, 2008 ; McCluskey, 2003 ; Wacquant, 1999 ).

This model cannot accommodate the idea of a public person, the people, to whom individuals belong; indeed, the role of ultimate intentional lawmaker is taken from the people and given to the spontaneous order , the Great or Open Society. Understood in analogy with the economic market, and equating to abstract rules applied to “an unknown number of future instances” (Hayek, 1976 : 35), this spontaneous order constitutes the sovereign lawmaker (Queiroz, 2017 ).

Neoliberal political intervention under private law

Under the negative conception of liberty, individual freedom is compatible with impediments and constraints (liberty is not bare license, which ultimately undermines negative liberty; Berlin, 1958 ). Abstract rules allow for private restrictions on liberty, and neoliberal governmental organizations ought to ensure that any restrictions on liberty are limited to the private realm. Neoliberal theorists do not understand this protection as a form of intervention or interference, however. Hayek, ( 1960 ), for example, argues for this notion by establishing a distinction between repairing and intervening. When a person oils a clock, they are merely repairing it, securing the conditions required for its proper functioning. In turn, when a person changes “the position of any particular part in a manner which is not in accord with the general principle of its operation” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128), for example by shifting the clock’s hands, this counts as intervention or interference. In other words, just as oiling a clock provides the conditions required for its proper functioning, so governmental protection of the private scope of restrictions on liberty allows for the proper functioning of the Great Society. Both merely create the conditions under which individual wellbeing can be maintained, if not increased. In turn, just as shifting the hands of a clock is not in accord with the general principle of the clock’s operation, public rules, which impose illegitimate obligations on individuals, constitute an intervention into the functioning of the spontaneous society.

When establishing the particular character of organizations’ rules, and excluding “the security provided by the enforcement of the rules of the just conduct” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 132), this enforcement means that neoliberal politicians intentionally intervene, but only to prevent the auto-destruction of the “mechanism” itself. They permanently adjust the rules to the neoliberal common law.

Consider a situation in which two people, A and B, are involved in cooperative activity and in which both establish a common rule to safeguard the maximization of their interests. Under this rule, A and B both contribute to the maximization of their own well-being. Although it accepts the interdependence of individuals when pursuing their personal well-being, neoliberal reparation does not allow for a common right to the results of that cooperative interdependence (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). In denying the existence of a public person, a public will, and in ultimately challenging the idea that there is a common right to a share in the total well-being that results from the contributions of all, neoliberalism not only allows, but also requires , that one party has a claim to the exclusively private enjoyment of the benefits of their mutual relationship. Accordingly, neoliberal repair (a metaphor for neoliberal government) ought to remove public law, which allows for the common right to well-being, and should replace it with private law. In this way, the proper functioning of the Great Society—which permits the unrestricted preservation and increasing of individuals’ private wellbeing—can be reestablished. The resulting intensification of poverty and inequality (Greer, 2014 ; Matsaganis and Leventi 2014; Stiglitz, 2013 ), the diminishing security of employment and income (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ), and growing authoritarianism (Brown, 2015 ; Bruff, 2014 ; Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl, 2015 ; Orphanides, 2014 ; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2014 ) are not problems in themselves. To the contrary, to the extent that it undermines individual liberty, any attempt to redress these effects violates the law of the neoliberal state, which, Hayek would say, is based on “true economics”. Accordingly, when choosing between the intensification of poverty and inequality and allegiance to the right of non-interference, non-interference must prevail, thus preventing political and social action to reduce (or compensate for) poverty and inequality. Notwithstanding the underlying theoretical debate on the legitimacy and justice of the acquisition of private rights (Hayek, 1976 ; Marx, 2000 ; Nozick, 1974 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ), enforcing the rules of the Open Society deprives one part of that society of the right to their well-being and to their contribution to the general well-being . Under the neoliberal model of government and law, certain citizens are deprived of the right to enjoy the public goods that result from their collective activity, while others enjoy a private right to goods that result from the contribution of all. Since those who benefit are not able to acknowledge the contribution of others, they erase it and privatize the public law. This privatization shows that the neoliberal trinity of privatization, flexibilization and deregulation ultimately results from the original privatization of the public or common law .

Private restrictions on liberty and coercive positive liberty

Aside from the controversy concerning the epistemological value of the distinction between negative and positive liberty (Berlin, 1958 [1997]; Gray, 1993 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ; Taylor, 1979 ), theoretical disagreement about their meanings (Taylor, 1979 ), and the caricatures by which they are often understood (e.g., positive liberty as a form of being “forced-to-be-free”; Taylor, 1979 ), governmental protection of private restrictions on liberty under neoliberalism shows that neoliberal political theory does not dispense with the coercive feature of positive liberty (see Gray, 1989 for a reading of Hayekian freedom as more than merely negative).

This not a negligible issue; neoliberal political philosophers establish a relationship between the main act of the people’s sovereignty, or its constitutional power—establishing a public law that provides to each person a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods and imposes on each a unique set of restrictions—and the violation of individual liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). The replacement of the people’s sovereignty with the spontaneous order is thought to be justifiable because “when we obey laws, in the sense of general abstract rules irrespective of their application to us, we are not subject to another man’s will and are therefore free” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 11). When arguing against the oppressive nature of the rules that issue from the people, neoliberalism relies on the positive meaning of liberty (freedom to be one’s own “master”; Berlin, 1958 (1997)). A private right to a good that results from the (perhaps unequal) contribution of all constitutes a coercive act of positive liberty—“coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest” (Berlin, 1958 (1997), p. 397). Similarly, the imposition of that right on society as a whole through legislation, including those who have been deprived of their well-being, also constitutes positive coercion . Citizens who are deprived of their well-being must simply accept the neoliberal diktat , i.e., the transference of their well-being to the few (Stiglitz, 2013 ). In a paternalistic way—according to Berlin, ( 1958 (1997)), positive liberty is always paternalistic in some sense—neoliberal politicians argue that there is no alternative (TINA) to neoliberal political legislation (the government knows best). Consequently, under the veil of state juridical and political violence, neoliberal politicians present governmental rules as an ultimatum , precluding consent, i.e., forcing individuals to give up their political right to challenge that deprivation (see the political meaning of TINA , Queiroz 2016 ; Queiroz 2017 ). The rejection of all public right, i.e., the exclusion of peoples, introduces into the core of the theory (and its practice) the despotic feature that neoliberalism attributes to the general will. In other words, the neoliberal political order mirrors the despotic nature that neoliberals attribute to the meaningless or mystical general will (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ).

The neoliberal ultimatum not only protects those citizens who apparently do not need the state’s intervention but also ensures that the law only protects their interests (which constitutes the privatization of legal protection). Neoliberal theorists understand public rules as means of protection, as if private interests were not highly dependent on law. Indeed, Nozick’s distinction between ‘public’, “paternalistically regulated” citizens (Nozick, 1974 , p. 14) and free citizens, who dispense with state intervention, obscures the existence of private, “paternalistically regulated” citizens. These citizens are protected by the reparations of neoliberal “public” law. In addition, however, rather than accepting the collective protective scope of the law, they demand a monopoly on it. Although neoliberalism casts them as utterly independent actors—lone Robinson Crusoes—they are highly dependent not only on the contributions of others for their well-being but also on the positive law. This shows that unless there is a common law to prevent others from interfering with one’s liberty and to provide certain means, negative liberty is an empty claim.

Insofar as the protective function of the government and the positive law include both legislative and coercive power, instead of coercing others for one’s own sake, neoliberal positive liberty allows private individuals to impose, without consent, public restrictions for the sake of their private interests. Neoliberal positive liberty thus leads to the establishment of legal and political inequality: some command without consent, i.e., without restriction, while others obey without consent, i.e., without liberty. Ultimately, making use of the benefits of negative liberty depends on the (political) attribution to individuals of certain legal and political statuses, under which they can make use of their liberty.

Moreover, the positive liberty that underlies the spontaneous order not only deprives certain citizens of their share of the general well-being but also leaves no room to claim a right against that deprivation. Besides protecting negative liberty in the maximization of individuals’ well-being, this order does not provide any concrete rights. Hayek explicitly says that it “is meaningless to speak of a right in the sense of a claim on the spontaneous order” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 102, II). Indeed, although framed by abstract rules, rights are always obtained under particular circumstances, i.e., in terms of differences between “individuals”, for example natural and social talents (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Despite the interdependence of all individuals, individuals always remain separate unities and are thus deprived of the right to claim a common share of the fruits of their relationships—as if belonging to a common body entailed personal indifference and the abandonment of private interests. Accordingly, if the Great Society, which replaces the will of the people, does not provide rights to citizens, and if those citizens do not obtain them from their private interactions, it is meaningless to claim such a right or to complain that such a right has been denied them. There is nothing to claim or to complain about . In other words, where there are no rights, there can be no deprivation of rights.

Even if individuals wish to complain about the deprivation of their rights, the neoliberal state—which considers such rights imaginary, fictitious, mystical—does not contain institutions that can address such complaints. Under the neoliberal state, both the people and public institutions vanish into thin air. As Beck stresses with regard to neoliberal globalization, neoliberalism is the power of Nobody (Beck 2002 ). Alluding to Odysseus’s clever escape from the cyclops Polyphemus in the Odyssey (Homer, 1996 , 9, pp. 414–455), Beck suggests that the Nobody created under neoliberalism does not establish, protect or enforce equal individual rights. Even though Nozick (unlike Hayek) accepts the existence of natural rights and liberties, his rejection of a public person and public restrictions shows that the assumption of natural rights does not guarantee their enjoyment. In other words, when the will of the people becomes a mirage, individuals’ natural rights are also rendered illusory, as the neoliberal spontaneous society illustrates. Accordingly, instead of allowing for the “creat(ion of) conditions likely to improve the chances of all in the pursuit of their aims” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 2), private restrictions on liberty deprive certain citizens of the chance to pursue their aims (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ; Stiglitz, 2013 , 2016 ). Instead of protecting individual liberty, the rejection of the “fairy tale” of the people allows for the emergence of two familiar political statuses, originally deployed in neoliberal political society: those who live under free self-serfdom on the one hand and the invisible and voiceless on the other.

Free self-serfdom and voiceless persons

A free serf is someone who, although deprived of political protection—whether this is understood as it was in the medieval era (Bloch, 1961 ), which made a distinction between the protector and the protected, or as it was understood in the liberal tradition (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)), in which each person is simultaneously protector and protected—can still satisfy their bodily needs through selling themselves or their labor. Neoliberal private restrictions on liberty cannot override the unrestricted autocratic deliberation of those who, in the absence of public law, can freely renounce their liberty in situations of extreme need, thus voluntarily enslaving themselves. The rejection of a public limit to individual liberty, along with the overlapping of public law and private interests, allows for unrestricted orders and, correlatively, for obedience without liberty (on work precariousness see Gill and Pratt, 2008 ; on work conditions in sweat shops, see Bales 1999 ). Consequently, neoliberal political theory and practice allow for the creation of a situation in which some citizens (serfs) only obey while others (lords) only command.

One may argue that despite social and economic differences, along with their non-negligible impact on individual liberty (Marx 2000 ; Rawls, 1971 ), neoliberalism’s Great or Open Society is not compatible with serfdom. Regardless of the lack of clear political criteria for defining an individual’s legal and political status (Bloch, 1961 ), human relationships have evolved under conditions of legal and political inequality (for example the superior free person vs. the inferior serf or vassal). This legal and political inequality is at work, for example, in systems where lords offer protection in exchange for total obedience (on the part of serfs and vassals) (Bloch, 1961 ). From the perspective of neoliberal theory, we are all equal: neoliberal society does not contain legal or political inequality and does not divide citizens into those who are superior and those who are inferior. It also does not include “protective relationships” or juridical and political obligations. To be at the disposal of someone else who can do whatever they please and to whom one owes unrestricted obedience entails neither that one has an inferior legal status nor that the political relationship at stake is one of a superior to an inferior. Persons have the same legal constitutional status (they all are seen as equally free), and all are equally entitled to pursue their private interests. Even if people sell themselves, this concerns the private restriction of liberty from the perspective of neoliberalism and does not conflict with the conditions required for the proper functioning of the spontaneous order, i.e., with individuals’ private liberty. Still, the private scope of individuals’ mutual service—the forbidding of serving others for the sake of those others’ well-being —does not prevent a person’s serving another as a means of ensuring their own private well-being, in which case it would not be appropriate to understand their relationship in terms of servant and seignior.

Besides entailing what is known in political philosophy as the liberty of slaves, i.e., the liberty of choosing either to comply with the orders of the master or to be beaten to death, the privatization of the well-being that results from individuals’ cooperation is based on the coercive restriction of liberty, under which some obey without liberty and others command without restriction. Thus, even if in neoliberal spontaneous societies people are not assigned explicitly different political statuses, which entail different political rights and duties, neoliberal political society does not prevent people from becoming servile or, correlatively, from becoming despotic. This fact reveals the extent to which neoliberalism entails a dangerous process of what some authors have called refeudalization (Supiot, 2013 ; Szalai, 2017 ), full analysis of which deserves examination of its own.

Nevertheless, when obeying without liberty , if citizens fail to acquire their rights they risk becoming something less than a free serf, i.e., a free excluded citizen. A free excluded citizen is a citizen who lives in a free society without having the personal, social or institutional resources to make use of their own liberty . When the neoliberal spontaneous order does not provide any concrete rights, and when another’s wellbeing has no bearing on one’s own, one is unrestrictedly free to pursue one’s own wellbeing even to the detriment of others unilaterally (the fully alienated person can be thrown away). In this case, voiceless and invisible citizens can only enjoy purely negative liberty, in the absence of the personal, social and institutional resources with which they might otherwise achieve well-being. Neoliberalism also entails the continuous risk of passing from servile (or docile) citizenship into lawless personhood. As such, individuals’ social existence is excluded from the neoliberal subjectivation procedure itself (in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects, Foucault, 2008 ).

Neoliberalism does not reduce to fostering the entrenchment of political inequality: the division of citizens into those who obey and those who command. It also does not merely imply a situation in which some are protected by the state while others are not, where private interests have a monopoly on legal protection and rights while others are denied political protection and only have duties (on work precariousness see Gill and Pratt, 2008 ). Similarly, it does not exclusively entail political arbitrariness; the private reduction of the “public” law allows for the unilateral institution of the rules (or their revocation). Ultimately, neoliberalism risks leading to the total exclusion of some citizens under the veil of full liberty . The vanishing of the will of the people results in the invisibility of certain kinds of people, who are then forced to live in the spontaneous society as if they were stateless or lawless persons.

It is true that under the distinction between neoliberal theoretical premises and neo-liberal practice individuals’ lack of protection does not correspond to these extreme cases. There is a distinction between neoliberal theoretical premises and neoliberal governmental laws within the many versions of the welfare state, for example neoliberalism’s reshaping of previous (welfare) state policies along neoliberal lines (Kus, 2006 ). Neoliberalism has retained some of the elements of that state (such as the protection of the rights of the most vulnerable), although these elements have been reshaped by the market approach to social welfare (Hartman, 2005 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ). On this basis, neoliberal officials have assigned public goods and services to private market providers, redesigning social programs to address the needs of neoliberal labor markets rather than personal wellbeing and establishing partnerships between the state and the private sector (Brodie, 2007 ).

Moreover, some argue that neoliberalism’s market approach to social welfare was an attempt to overcome certain economic and social difficulties of the welfare state. For example, economic internationalization has affected the competitive viability of the welfare state (Boyer and Drache, 1996 ; Rhodes, 1996 ). Also, the expansion of the state weakened intermediate groups and jeopardized individual liberties, subjecting citizens to increasing bureaucratic controls (Alber, 1988 ). We shall not dwell on a full analysis of these developments. The neoliberal market approach is, however, incompatible with the very idea of a welfare state. Indeed, despite the differences between the socialist, conservative and liberal versions of that state (Esping-Andersen, 1990 ), welfare states protect social rights, such as the right to education and health, and therefore provide social policies to enforce them (Marshall, 1950 ; Esping-Andersen, 1990 ), such that “[t]he provided service, not the purchased service, becomes the norm of the social welfare” (Marshall, 1950 , p. 309). Moreover, the functioning of the welfare state requires the contribution of fellow citizens (Marshall, 1950 ; Esping-Andersen, 1990 ). By contrast, the market approach rejects in principle all social rights, such as the right to education and health, and requires that individual welfare be an exclusively private enterprise (Brodie, 2007 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ). Instead of being provided, such services ought to be purchased (Brodie, 2007 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ).

Moreover, if the economic market only identifies solvable needs, and if individuals cannot signal their lack of resources, the neoliberal welfare state cannot prevent individuals who have been deprived of their rights from becoming invisible, along with the resulting institutionalized insecurity (Brodie, 2007 ), intensified poverty and inequality, and diminishing of security of employment and income for many wage earners (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ). If the spontaneous society and its governments do not provide any rights, and if individuals do not acquire them in the economic market, there is no reason to claim such rights (including social rights). In this case, neoliberal social welfare reduces to charity (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Raddon, 2008 ; Mendes, 2003 ). Under this reduction, neoliberal theory fosters individuals’ dependence on the private goodwill of citizens who, after legislating with their own interests in mind, and after denying others the right to enjoy the fruits of their own contributions, then establish government spending as a “free lunch” of sorts (all the while paradoxically arguing that “government spending is no free lunch” (Barro, 2009 ); see Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) defense of charity)). The neoliberal conception of welfare also shows how neoliberal theory and practice do not prevent the subordination of certain individuals to non-consensual external mastery.

Neoliberalism is equally committed to state retrenchment or permanent austerity (Whiteside, 2016 ). By requiring fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions (Barro, 2009 ), austerity not only undermines all attempts to establish social security but also challenges the liberal and democratic basis of society. First, neoliberal austerity neglects people’s well-being. A Portuguese neo-liberal politician declared in 2013 that even if under austerity measures the well-being of the people had worsened, the country was better off Footnote 1 . The fact that neo-liberal policies have improved the state market is more relevant than the fact that the Portuguese people have been neglected and severely harmed (Legido-Quigley et al. 2016 ).

Second, neoliberalism excludes in principle the will of the people, i.e., it obliges citizens to obey private laws to which they have not consented. Consequently, it excludes citizens’ rejection of its harmful effects, such as poverty and inequality, and rejects all appeals to alternative policies. Following the political referendum of 2015, for example, where the people voted against neoliberal politics of austerity Footnote 2 , the Greek government nonetheless imposed a third harsh and austere economic program Footnote 3 .

Accordingly, neoliberal political principles, embedded in austerity policies, cannot prevent certain citizens from becoming invisible and voiceless citizens, i.e., Nobodies . As voiceless citizens, their preferences can only be registered through illiberal and antidemocratic channels, such as populism. Only following the election of US President Trump did the deteriorating life conditions of American citizens living in the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin become widely known (Walley, 2017 ). Treated as nothing, and having becoming Nobodies, these citizens face the oppressive and violent institutional neoliberal Nobody, with its no less violent and oppressive political body.

The rise of populism

There is a lack of consensus on the definition of populism (Collier, 2001 ). It can, however, be described as an organizational or a strategic approach (Weyland, 2001 ) and ideology (Freeden, 2016 ; MacRae, 1969 ; Mudde, 2013 ; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013 ). The organizational perspective of populism stresses the importance of the personal leader, who bases his or her power on direct, unmediated, and institutionalized relationships with unorganized followers (Weyland, 2001 ). In turn, as an ideology, i.e., a set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and ideas, populism combines (not always coherently and clearly) political, economic, social, moral, and cultural features with several characteristics that appear together, such as emphasis on the leader’s charisma: “the populist can demand the highest principles in the behavior, moral and political, of others while being absolved him or herself from such standards” (MacRae, 1969 , p. 158). Beyond these features, however, and despite the fact that the concept of the “pure” people and the corrupted elite can be framed in different ways (Canovan, 1999 ), the pure and homogenous people and the corrupt and homogenous elites are core concepts that underlie populist ideology (Mudde, 2004 ).

Since neo-liberal officials do not consider citizens’ and peoples’ political claims and are not entitled to address the political, economic, and social consequences of their policies, the perception that neo-liberal politicians are corrupt elites has been on the increase (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013 ). This has helped populist leaders to replace neo-liberal politicians, allowing populism to fill the emptiness that has resulted from the failure of those in power to address the people’s claims.

Although the relationship between neoliberalism and populism deserves its own examination, the exclusion of the people, along with the right to reciprocal coercion, is a point of tacit agreement between neoliberalism and anti-liberal, anti-democratic political forces (Weyland, 1999 ). Populist leaders have employed modern, rational models of economic liberalism—such as fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions to undermine intermediary associations, entrenched bureaucrats and rival politicians who seek to restrict their personal latitude, to attack influential interest groups, politicians, and bureaucrats, and to combat the serious crises in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s (Weyland, 1999 ). In turn, neoliberal experts use populist attacks on special interests to combat state interventionism and view the rise of new political forces, including populists, as crucial for determined market reform (Weyland, 1999 ). We therefore ought to be careful not to criticize neoliberal authoritarianism while neglecting the hidden powers that secretly support neoliberalism’s disdain for the people, such as mafias (Schneider and Schneider, 2007 ). Indeed, those who do so may take pleasure in seeing the blame for authoritarianism fall exclusively on the shoulders of neoliberal theory and practice, even though they too endorse a form of governance and the administration of the state apparatus that does away with the people.

When individuals’ relationships evolve in the absence of the people and of laws to protect against despotic and abusive power, an increase in illiberal and antidemocratic forms of resistance to neoliberal policies can only be expected (Gill, 1995 ; Hickel, 2016 ). As Locke, ( 1679 (1960): II, p. 225) put clearly:

Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slip s of human frailty will be born by the People, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; ’tis not to be wonder’d, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected.

If we accept that (a) impoverishment and inequality are on the increase; (b) governments are refusing to provide political remedies for this impoverishment; (c) and citizens’ political choices are being neglected in a long series of abuses, it is not surprising that voiceless citizens may try to put the ruling power into illiberal hands that will achieve the purpose for which government was first established: securing the common public good. Under the neoliberal transformation of private rules into public rules, citizens are witnessing a continuous disregard for their collective well-being (see the relationship between the election of Donald Trump and the deteriorating life conditions of American citizens living in the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; Walley, 2017 ).

Instead of welcoming populist reactions, however, we should be clear that the anti-liberal and antidemocratic hijacking of the citizens’ revolt against neoliberalism in no way respects the need for public rules. A call for the establishment and protection of public law is a call for personal and institutional liberal and democratic sovereignty , which differs fundamentally from populism and the neoliberal model of sovereignty (Dean, 2015 ; Foucault, 2008 ). This claim also rejects the political (and nightmarish) choice between neoliberalism and populism. Indeed, even if the relationship between liberal democracy and populism deserves investigation of its own, liberal and democratic sovereignty does away with the distinction between the pure and homogenous people against corrupt and homogenous elites. It also rejects the idea of the personal and benevolent leader/protector, who bases their power on direct, unmediated, and institutionalized relationships with unorganized followers.

First, although the distinction between corrupt elites and the pure people rightly points to the problem of the legitimacy of the rulers’ power, the people is not a homogeneous or pure body, whatever the criterion of belonging (ethical, ethnic, racial, economic). Far from referring to an undifferentiated and homogeneous corpus , the people is a heterogeneous political body, which includes gender, racial, and economic differences (along with disagreement about personal and collective ends), and which ultimately entails non-alienable individual rights and duties (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Sieyes, 1789 (1989)).

Second, the solution to this gap is not its elimination through the immediate relationship between the leader and the pure, homogeneous people. In the liberal political tradition, there is no immediate political power. Rawls’s, ( 1993 ) political liberalism, for example, points to the gap between the political principles of society (e.g., the principles of justice), which are embedded in its basic political institutions (e.g., constitutions) and in “executive” institutions (parliaments, courts, governments), and the individuals in everyday life. Accordingly, the sovereignty of the people ultimately means that, whether at the political, local, national, international, or global level, citizens’ relationships are always mediated by law embedded in their public institutions (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Rawls, 1993 ).

Even if there are many points of ideological disagreement concerning the concept of the people, sparked mainly by its use by controversial figures from the standpoint of liberalism, such as Rousseau’s concept of the general will, in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophy the sovereignty of the people does not mean that the people can pursue its immediate and unbridled wishes. A charter of rights or constitutional principles always binds the will of the people (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). In the absence of such restrictions, the people can itself become a despot, a danger which has been acknowledged since at least the time of Aristotle, ( 2002 ; see also Cicero 1999 ; Locke, 1679 (1960); Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ).

Third, in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies, the protective role of the people aims to ensure a political society of free and equal persons, not a society of minor and inferior subjects who need benevolent protectors, such as populist leaders (see Locke’s claim concerning the constitutional protection of individuals’ political rights (Locke, 1679 (1960)) and Kant’s rejection of paternalistic and despotic political power (1793 (1977)).

Liberal theory challenges the underlying neoliberal and populist Manichean opposition between personal interests and the general will of the people (“either there is a general will or individual liberty is repressed”, “if there is individual liberty, the general will is excluded”). If, when protecting the homogenous people against corrupt elites, populists endorse the first alternative, and if the neoliberal exclusion of the people corresponds to the second, both approaches remain blind to the political responsibility of free persons. Ultimately, whether by imposing on others the unrestrictedly and selfish pursuit of well-being or by appealing to the unlimited will of the people, both undermine individuals’ political freedom.

For these reasons, personal and institutional liberal and democratic sovereignty is more than a childish claim to state protection against political irresponsibility and blindness to public contributions to individual private well-being. It is a claim to one’s own political responsibility, for oneself and others, as this claim is clearly formulated in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies.

The social safety net

Although Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies do not require individuals under public law to positively foster others’ social, economic and cultural well-being, their perspectives on the public challenge indifference towards the increasing poverty and inequality that we are currently witnessing under neoliberalism (Greer, 2014 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ). They also speak against the state authoritarianism that neoliberalism engenders (Brown, 2015 ; Bruff, 2014 ; Kreuder–Sonnen and Zangl, 2015 ; Orphanides, 2014 ; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2014 ). Of course, we may disagree on the extent of the success or failure of Locke’s and Kant’s theoretical political constructions of a political personality, understood in analogy with a single body. Some criticize the illiberal nature of Kant’s general will (for example the representatives’ betrayal of the people’s interest in the liberal social contract; Badiou, 2016 ). Nevertheless, these weaknesses challenge neither individual liberty, nor the people, nor the inter-protective role of the people and public law. Indeed, they remind us of the political meaning of ‘the body politic’.

Despite their strong commitment to the protective role of the people, along with their awareness of our political responsibility for the fairness of the public rules that affect us all , Locke and Kant do not fully explain the necessity of the notion of the people when it comes to producing a social safety net created by the will of the sovereign people. They also do not consider democratic procedures for arriving at collective support for a social safety net. With the differences between ancient and modern democracies acknowledged (Bobbio, 1988 ), the fact that Locke and Kant endorse democracy’s core feature, the existence of a people (the entire body of citizens) with a right to make collective decisions (Bobbio, 1988 ), does not make them democrats, at least in our modern sense (Bobbio, 1988 ).

Following our premises, and acknowledging the various ways in which globalization impacts states and people, democratic governments should establish democratic procedures at the national and international level to secure collective support for the political and social safety net. These include public laws based on the will of the people that provide each person with a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods which impose on each a unique set of restrictions. These liberties and restrictions will ensure that individuals have an equal coercive power to prevent their becoming servile persons and, correlatively, to prevent any one of them from becoming a despotic lord. They also require the assumption of the cooperative nature of individual well-being, and therefore the pursuit of social justice with regards to the fruits of that cooperation. The political translation of the common right to the results of social cooperation through public policies that protect social rights, such as the right to education and health, is also desirable. This requires the “direct or indirect participation of citizens, and the greatest possible number of citizens, in the formation of laws” (Bobbio, 1988 , p. 38). Again, it is necessary to recast the political principle of provided (not purchased) services as a norm of public and social welfare. Finally, it requires awareness of the fact that in the absence of a political body to protect and enforce individual liberties, individuals will lack the personal, social and institutional resources to make use of their own liberty .

We have shown that neoliberalism’s rejection of the existence of the people seriously harms individual private liberty and does not prevent the transformation of the majority of free individuals into servile persons. More specifically, we have shown that forbidding the public restriction of liberty (which is inherent in the concept of the people) while exclusively defending private restrictions of liberty (a) deprives the majority of citizens of the equal right of coercion, and therefore of equal liberty, and (b) promotes the rise of different political statuses, a division between those who obey and those who command. We have also shown that neoliberalism lacks the resources to prevent the total alienation of liberty.

In comparing neoliberalism to Locke and Kant’s political philosophies, we have shown how the protective role of the people is compatible with individual liberty. Since it requires an equal right of coercion, it allows for the protection of individual liberty. We have also shown that this is not an exclusively collective task. It also depends on each citizen. In Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies, the protective role of the people aims to ensure that political society is free and equal, not a society of minor and inferior subjects who need benevolent protectors (Locke, 1679 (1960)); Kant, ( 1793 (1977)). We concluded that, against neoliberalism’s faith in the powers of the spontaneous order, individual political autonomy depends on the public safeguarding of liberties. We also pointed out that unless there is a political turn toward the acknowledgement of the people or peoples, along with recognition of the significance of their political deliberation, neo-liberalism cannot be separated from illiberal and antidemocratic political choices. Similarly, if individuals’ relationships evolve beyond the existence of the people and lack laws to protect against despotic and abusive power, we cannot prevent the development of slavish and servile relationships among citizens. The fact that these relationships remain politically forbidden in neoliberal states, for example in the European Union, only reveals that neoliberalism’s dismantling of liberal and democratic political institutions has not fully succeeded. In the absence of the people, human rights depend exclusively on individuals’ interests; the spontaneous order thus cannot prevent neoliberalism from descending into slavery and serfdom, i.e., self-slavery and self-serfdom.

Future research should ascertain how, in the aftermath of neoliberalism’s devastating social and political effects on public cohesion, it might be possible to reconstitute a sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ) and the sovereignty of the people (Pyke, 2001 ) under globalization.

Future research should also continue to evaluate the dangerous process of what many are calling refeudalization under neoliberalism (Supiot, 2013 ; Szalai, 2017 ). It is worth comparing the feudal alienation of political liberty, for example the different perspectives on vassalage (Bloch, 1961 ), with contemporary forms of inferior political status.

Finally, future research could evaluate how, as a reaction to the disenchantment with the rise of bureaucracy identified by Weber, ( 1978 ), neoliberalism might express a kind of re-enchantment with the exclusively individual rational actor, who claims a non-alienable space of liberty against the bureaucratic “iron cage”.

Data availability

All data analyzed is included in the paper.

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267 Freedom Essay Topics & Examples

Need freedom topics for an essay or research paper? Don’t know how to start writing your essay? The concept of freedom is very exciting and worth studying!

📃 Freedom Essay: How to Start Writing

📝 how to write a freedom essay: useful tips, 🏆 freedom essay examples & topic ideas, 🥇 most interesting freedom topics to write about, 🎓 simple topics about freedom, 📌 writing prompts on freedom, 🔎 good research topics about freedom, ❓ research questions about freedom.

The field of study includes personal freedom, freedom of the press, speech, expression, and much more. In this article, we’ve collected a list of great writing ideas and topics about freedom, as well as freedom essay examples and writing tips.

Freedom essays are common essay assignments that discuss acute topics of today’s global society. However, many students find it difficult to choose the right topic for their essay on freedom or do not know how to write the paper.

We have developed some useful tips for writing an excellent paper. But first, you need to choose a good essay topic. Below are some examples of freedom essay topics.

Freedom Essay Topics

• American (Indian, Taiwanese, Scottish) independence
• Freedom and homelessness essay
• The true value of freedom in modern society
• How slavery affects personal freedom
• The problem of human rights and freedoms
• American citizens’ rights and freedoms
• The benefits and disadvantages of unlimited freedom
• The changing definition of freedom

Once you have selected the issue you want to discuss (feel free to get inspiration from the ones we have suggested!), you can start working on your essay. Here are 10 useful tips for writing an outstanding paper:

• Remember that freedom essay titles should state the question you want to discuss clearly. Do not choose a vague and non-descriptive title for your paper.
• Work on the outline of your paper before writing it. Think of what sections you should include and what arguments you want to present. Remember that the essay should be well organized to keep the reader interested. For a short essay, you can include an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Do preliminary research. Ask your professor about the sources you can use (for example, course books, peer-reviewed articles, and governmental websites). Avoid using Wikipedia and other similar sources, as they often have unverified information.
• A freedom essay introduction is a significant part of your paper. It outlines the questions you want to discuss in the essay and helps the reader understand your work’s purpose. Remember to state the thesis of your essay at the end of this section.
• A paper on freedom allows you to be personal. It should not focus on the definition of this concept. Make your essay unique by including your perspective on the issue, discussing your experience, and finding examples from your life.
• At the same time, help your reader to understand what freedom is from the perspective of your essay. Include a clear explanation or a definition with examples.
• Check out freedom essay examples online to develop a structure for your paper, analyze the relevance of the topics you want to discuss and find possible freedom essay ideas. Avoid copying the works you will find online.
• Support your claims with evidence. For instance, you can cite the Bill of Rights or the United States Constitution. Make sure that the sources you use are reliable.
• To make your essay outstanding, make sure that you use correct grammar. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable. Restructure a sentence if you think that it does not sound right. Check your paper several times before sending it to your professor.
• A short concluding paragraph is a must. Include the summary of all arguments presented in the paper and rephrase the main findings.

Do not forget to find a free sample in our collection and get the best ideas for your essay!

• Freedom of Expression Essay For one to be in a position to gauge the eventuality of a gain or a loss, then there should be absolute freedom of expression on all matters irrespective of the nature of the sentiments […]
• Freedom of Speech in Social Media Essay Gelber tries to say that the history of the freedom of speech in Australia consists of the periods of the increasing public debates on the issue of human rights and their protection.
• Freedom Writers: Promoting Good Moral Values The movie portrays a strong and civilized view of the world; it encourages development and use of positive moral values by people in making the world a better place.
• Philosophy and Relationship between Freedom and Responsibility Essay As a human being, it is hard to make a decision because of the uncertainty of the outcome, but it is definitely essential for human being to understand clearly the concept and connection between freedom […]
• Rio (2011) and the Issue of Freedom As a matter of fact, this is the only scene where Blu, Jewel, Linda, Tulio, and the smugglers are present at the same time without being aware of each other’s presence.
• Human Will & Freedom and Moral Responsibility Their understanding of the definition of human will is based on the debate as to whether the will free or determined.
• Freedom and equality According to Liliuokalani of Hawaii, the conquest contravened the basic rights and freedoms of the natives and their constitution by undermining the power of their local leaders.
• Human Freedom in Relation to Society Human freedom has to do with the freedom of one’s will, which is the freedom of man to choose and act by following his path through life freely by exercising his ‘freedom’).
• Freedom and Determinism On the other hand, determinism theory explains that there is an order that leads to occurrences of events in the world and in the universe.
• The Efforts and Activities of the Paparazzi are Protected by the Freedom of the Press Clause of the Constitution The First Amendment of the American constitution protects the paparazzi individually as American citizens through the protection of their freedom of speech and expression and professionally through the freedom of the press clause.
• Four Freedoms by President Roosevelt Throughout the discussion we shall elaborate the four freedoms in a broader way for better understating; we shall also describe the several measures that were put in place in order to ensure the four freedoms […]
• “Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela In the fast developing world, advances and progress move countries and nations forward but at the same time, some things are left behind and become a burden for the people and evolution to better life […]
• Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
• Mandela’s Leadership: Long Walk to Freedom The current paper analyses the effectiveness of leadership with reference to Nelson Mandela, the late former president of South Africa, as depicted in the movie, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
• Rousseau and Kant on their respective accounts of freedom and right The difference in the approaches assumed by Kant and Rousseau regarding the norms of liberty and moral autonomy determine the perspective of their theories of justice.
• Voices of Freedom The history of the country is made up of debates, disagreements and struggles for freedom that have seen the Civil War, and the Cold War which have changed the idea of freedom in the US.
• Fighting for the Right to Choose: Students Should Have the Freedom to Pick the Courses They Want Consequently, students should be allowed to pick the subjects which they are going to study together with the main one. Thus, students should be allowed to choose the subjects they need in accordance with their […]
• Freedom in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” Literature Analysis In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the main character, Nora is not an intellectual, and spends no time scouring books or libraries or trying to make sense of her situation.
• Jean-Paul Sartre’s Views on Freedom For example, to Sartre, a prisoner of war is free, existentially, but this freedom does not exist in the physical realm.
• 70’s Fashion as a Freedom of Choice However, with the end of the Vietnam War, the public and the media lost interest in the hippie style in the middle of the decade, and began to lean toward the mod subculture. The 70’s […]
• “Gladiator” by Ridley Scott: Freedom and Affection This desire to be free becomes the main motive of the film, as the plot follows Maximus, now enslaved, who tries to avenge his family and the emperor and regain his liberty.
• Freedom of Expression in the Classroom The NEA Code of Ethics establishes a link between this Freedom and a teacher’s responsibilities by requiring instructors to encourage “independent activity in the pursuit of learning,” provide “access to diverse points of view,” and […]
• Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus An annotated version of “Protecting Freedom of Expression on the Campus” by Derek Bok in The Boston Globe.*and these stars are where I have a question or opinion on a statement* For several years, universities […]
• Freedom, Equality & Solidarity by Lucy Parsons In the lecture and article ‘The Principles of Anarchism’ she outlines her vision of Anarchy as the answer to the labor question and how powerful governments and companies worked for hand in hand to stifle […]
• Human Freedom: Liberalism vs Anarchism It is impoverished because liberals have failed to show the connection between their policies and the values of the community. More fundamentally, however, a policy formulated in such a way that it is disconnected from […]
• Social Values: Freedom and Justice It is evident that freedom and justice are mutually exclusive, as “the theory of justice signifies its implications in regards to freedom as a key ingredient to happiness”.
• Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
• Freedom and the Role of Civilization The achievements demonstrated by Marx and Freud play a significant role in the field of sociology and philosophy indeed; Marx believed in the power of labor and recognized the individual as an integral part of […]
• Balance of Media Censorship and Press Freedom Government censorship means the prevention of the circulation of information already produced by the official government There are justifications for the suppression of communication such as fear that it will harm individuals in the society […]
• “Human Freedom and the Self” by Roderick Chisholm According to the author, human actions do not depend on determinism or “free will”. I will use this idea in order to promote the best actions.
• “Freedom Riders”: A Documentary Revealing Personal Stories That Reflect Individual Ideology The ideal of egalitarianism was one of the attractive features of the left wing for many inquiring minds in the early decades of the 20th century.
• Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World The writer shows that women had the same capacities as those of men but were not allowed to contribute their ideas in developing the country.
• Art and Freedom. History and Relationship The implication of this term is that genus art is composed of two species, the fine arts, and the useful arts. This, according to Cavell, is the beauty of art.
• Power and Freedom in America Although it is already a given that freedom just like the concept love is not easy to define and the quest to define it can be exhaustive but at the end of the day what […]
• Freedom of Speech in Modern Media At the same time, the bigoted approach to the principles of freedom of speech in the context of the real world, such as killing or silencing journalists, makes the process of promoting the same values […]
• Philosophy in the Freedom of Will by Harry Frankfurt Why? Frankfurt’s arguments are very applicable to the case of the ‘Amputees by Choice.’ His first argument is that of persons and nonpersons.
• Concept of Individual Freedom Rousseau and Mill were political philosophers with interest in understanding what entailed individual freedom. This paper compares Rousseau’s idea of individual freedom with Mill’s idea.
• Predetermination and Freedom of Choice We assume that every happens because of a specific reason and that the effects of that event can be traced back to the cause.
• Freedom and Social Justice Through Technology These two remarkable minds have made significant contributions to the debates on technology and how it relates to liberty and social justice.
• Personal Understanding of Freedom Freedom is essential for individual growth and development, and it helps individuals to make informed decisions that are in alignment with their values and beliefs.
• Balancing Freedom of Speech and Responsibility in Online Commenting The article made me perceive the position of absolute freedom of speech in the Internet media from a dual perspective. This desire for quick attention is the creation of information noise, distracting from the user […]
• The Effect of Emotional Freedom Techniques on Nurses’ Stress The objectives for each of the three criteria are clearly stated, with the author explaining the aims to the reader well throughout the content in the article’s title, abstract, and introduction.
• The Freedom Summer Project and Black Studies The purpose of this essay is to discuss to which degree the story of the Freedom Summer project illustrates the concepts of politics outlined in Karenga’s book Introduction to black studies.
• Democracy: The Influence of Freedom Democracy is the basis of the political systems of the modern civilized world. Accordingly, the democracy of Athens was direct that is, without the choice of representatives, in contrast to how it is generated nowadays.
• Freedom of Speech as a Basic Human Right Restricting or penalizing freedom of expression is thus a negative issue because it confines the population of truth, as well as rationality, questioning, and the ability of people to think independently and express their thoughts.
• Kantian Ethics and Causal Law for Freedom The theory’s main features are autonomy of the will, categorical imperative, rational beings and thinking capacity, and human dignity. The theory emphasizes not on the actions and the doers but the consequences of their effects […]
• Principles in M. L. King’s Quest for African American Freedom The concept of a nonviolent approach to the struggles for African American freedom was a key strategy in King’s quest for the liberation of his communities from racial and social oppressions.
• Technology Revolutionizing Ethical Aspects of Academic Freedom As part of the solution, the trends in technology are proposed as a potential solution that can provide the necessary support to improve the freedom of expression as one of the ethical issues that affect […]
• The Journey Freedom Tour 2022 Performance Analysis Arnel Pineda at age 55 keeps rocking and hitting the high notes and bringing the entire band very successfully all through their live concert tour.
• Freedom of Speech and Propaganda in School Setting One of the practical solutions to the problem is the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy for balanced free speech in the classroom.
• Twitter and Violations of Freedom of Speech and Censorship The sort of organization that examines restrictions and the opportunities and challenges it encounters in doing so is the center of a widely acknowledged way of thinking about whether it is acceptable to restrict speech.
• Freedom of the Press and National Security Similarly, it concerns the freedom of the press of the media, which are protected in the United States of America by the First Amendment.
• The Views on the Freedom from Fear in the Historical Perspective In this text, fear is considered in the classical sense, corresponding to the interpretation of psychology, that is, as a manifestation of acute anxiety for the inviolability of one’s life.
• Freedom of Speech in Social Networks The recent case of blocking the accounts of former US President Donald Trump on Twitter and Facebook is explained by the violation of the rules and conditions of social platforms.
• Emotion and Freedom in 20th-Century Feminist Literature The author notes that the second layer of the story can be found in the antagonism between the “narrator, author, and the unreliable protagonist”.
• Analysis of UK’s Freedom of Information Act 2000 To preserve potentially disruptive data that must not be released to the public, the FOIA integrates several provisions that allow the officials to decline the request for information without suffering possible consequences.
• Fight for Freedom, Love Has No Labels, and Ad Council: Key Statement The most important part of the message, to me, is the fact that the freedoms mentioned in the PSA are not available to every American citizen, despite America being the land of freedom.
• Teachers’ Freedom of Speech in Learning Institutions The judiciary system has not clearly defined the limits of the First Amendment in learning institutions, and it’s a public concern, especially from the teachers.
• Is There Press Freedom in Modern China? There is a large body of literature in the field of freedom of the press investigations, media freedom in China, and press freedom and human rights studies.
• Freedom of the Press in the Context of UAE It gives the people the ability to understand the insight of the government and other crucial activities happening within the country.
• Freedom of the Press in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) According to oztunc & Pierre, the UAE is ranked 119 in the global press freedom data, classifying the country as one of the most suppressive regarding the liberty of expression.
• Mill’s Thesis on the Individual Freedom The sphere of personal freedom is an area of human life that relates to the individual directly. The principle of state intervention is that individuals, separately or collectively, may have the right to interfere in […]
• Privacy and Freedom of Speech of Companies and Consumers At the same time, in Europe, personal data may be collected following the law and only with the consent of the individuals.
• Review of “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” From the youth, Mandela started to handle the unfairness of isolation and racial relations in South Africa. In Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Chadwick’s masterful screen memoir of Nelson Mandela passes on the anguish as […]
• Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
• Power, Property, and Freedom: Bitcoin Discourse In the modern world, all people have the right to freedom and property, but not all have the power to decide who may have this freedom and property.
• Religious Freedom Policy Evaluation Ahmed et al.claim that the creation of the ecosystem can facilitate the change as the members of the community share their experiences and learn how to respond to various situations.
• The Concepts of Freedom and the Great Depression Furthermore, blacks were elected to construct the constitution, and black delegates fought for the rights of freedpeople and all Americans. African-Americans gained the freedom to vote, work, and be elected to government offices during Black […]
• Freedom of Choices for Women in Marriage in “The Story of an Hour” The story describes the sentiments and feelings of Louisa Mallard when she learns the news about her husband. The readers can see the sudden reaction of the person to the demise of her significant other.
• Freedom of Speech in Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech Even though the First Amendment explicitly prohibits any laws regarding the freedom of speech, Congress continues to make exceptions from it.
• Personal Freedom: The Importance in Modern Society To show my family and friends how important they are to me, I try contacting them more often in the way they prefer.
• Economic Freedom and Its Recent Statements Economic freedom is an important indicator and benchmark for the level of income of companies or individual citizens of a country.
• The Freedom Concept in Plato’s “Republic” This situation shows that the concept of democracy and the freedom that correlates with it refers to a flawed narrative that liberty is the same as equality.
• Freedom of Speech as the Most Appreciated Liberty In the present-day world, the progress of society largely depends on the possibility for people to exercise their fundamental rights. From this perspective, freedom of speech is the key to everyone’s well-being, and, in my […]
• The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom In the introductory part of the book, the author discusses his main theses concerning the link between the development of networks and shifts in the economy and society.
• Freedom of Association for Radical Organizations This assertion is the primary and fundamental argument in the debate on this topic – radical groups should not use freedom of association to harm other people potentially.
• Freedom of Expression on the Internet Randall describes the challenges regarding the freedom of speech raised by the Internet, such as anonymity and poor adaptation of mass communication to the cyber environment.
• Black Sexual Freedom and Manhood in “For Colored Girls” Movie Despite the representation of Black sexual freedoms in men and women and Black manhood as a current social achievement, For Colored Girls shows the realities of inequality and injustice, proving womanism’s importance in America.
• Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom Review He criticizes that in spite of the perceived knowledge he was getting as a slave, this very light in the form of knowledge “had penetrated the moral dungeon”.
• The Essence of Freedom of Contract The legal roots of the notion of freedom of contract are manifested in the ideals of liberalism and theoretical capitalism, where the former values individual freedom and the latter values marker efficiency and effectiveness.
• Why Defamation Laws Must Prioritize Freedom of Speech The body of the essay will involve providing information on the nature of defamation laws in the USA and the UK, the implementation of such laws in the two countries, and the reason why the […]
• Pettit’s Conception of Freedom as Anti-Power According to Savery and Haugaard, the main idea that Pettit highlights in this theory is the notion that the contrary to freedom is never interference as many people claim, but it is slavery and the […]
• Domination in the Discussion of Freedom For this reason, the principle of anti-power should be considered as the position that will provide a better understanding of the needs of the target population and the desirable foreign policy to be chosen.
• Freedom or Security: Homeland Issues In many ways, the author sheds light on the overreactions or inadequate responses of the US government, which led to such catastrophes as 9/11 or the war in Iraq.
• War on Terror: Propaganda and Freedom of the Press in the US There was the launching of the “Center for Media and Democracy”, CMD, in the year 1993 in order to create what was the only public interest at that period. There was expansive use of propaganda […]
• The Freedom of Expression and the Freedom of Press It is evident that the evolution of standards that the court has adopted to evaluate the freedom of expression leaves a lot to be desired. The court has attempted to define the role of the […]
• Information and Communication Technology & Economic Freedom in Islamic Middle Eastern Countries This is a unique article as it gives importance to the role ecommerce plays in the life of the educationists and students and urges that the administrators are given training to handle their students in […]
• Is the Good Life Found in Freedom? Example of Malala Yousafzai The story of Malala has shown that freedom is crucial for personal happiness and the ability to live a good life.
• The Path to Freedom of Black People During the Antebellum Period In conclusion, the life of free blacks in 19th century America was riddled with hindrances that were meant to keep them at the bottom of society.
• Civil Rights Movement: Fights for Freedom The Civil Rights Movement introduced the concept of black and white unification in the face of inequality. Music-related to justice and equality became the soundtrack of the social and cultural revolution taking place during the […]
• Voices of Freedom: Lincoln, M. L. King, Kirkaldy He was named after his grandfather Abraham Lincoln, the one man that was popular for owning wide tracks of land and a great farmer of the time.
• Freedom: Malcolm X’s vs. Anna Quindlen’s Views However, in reality, we only have the freedom to think whatever we like, and only as long as we know that this freedom is restricted to thought only.
• Net Neutrality: Freedom of Internet Access In the principle of Net neutrality, every entity is entitled access and interaction with other internet users at the same cost of access.
• The Golden Age of Youth and Freedom However, it is interesting to compare it to the story which took place at the dawn of the cultural and sexual revolution in Chinese society.
• Academic Freedom: A Refuge of Intellectual Individualism Also known as intellectual, scientific or individual freedom, academic freedom is defined as the freedom of professionals and students to question and to propose new thoughts and unpopular suggestions to the government without jeopardizing their […]
• The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
• John Stuart Mill on Freedom in Today’s Perspective The basic concept behind this rose because it was frustrating in many cases in the context of the penal system and legislation and it was viewed that anything less than a capital punishment would not […]
• Conformity Versus Freedom at University To the author, this is objectionable on the grounds that such a regimen infringes on the freedom of young adults and that there is much to learn outside the classroom that is invaluable later in […]
• US Citizens and Freedom As an example of freedom and obtaining freedom in the US, the best possible subject would be the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, particularly during 1963-64, as this would serve as the conceptual and […]
• Value of Copyright Protection in Relation to Freedom of Speech The phrase, freedom of expression is often used to mean the acts of seeking, getting, and transfer of information and ideas in addition to verbal speech regardless of the model used. It is therefore important […]
• Social Factors in the US History: Respect for Human Rights, Racial Equality, and Religious Freedom The very first years of the existence of the country were marked by the initiatives of people to provide as much freedom in all aspects of social life as possible.
• Freedom of Speech and the Internet On the one hand, the freedom of expression on the internet allowed the general public to be informed about the true nature of the certain events, regardless of geographical locations and restrictions.
• Freedom Definition Revision: Components of Freedom That which creates, sustains, and maintains life in harmony with the natural cycles of this planet, doing no harm to the ecology or people of the Earth- is right.
• Freedom of Information Act in the US History According to the legislation of the United States, official authorities are obliged to disclose information, which is under control of the US government, if it is requested by the public.
• Media Freedom in the Olympic Era The Chinese government is heavily involved in the affairs of the media of that country. In the past, it was the responsibility of government to fund media houses however; today that funding is crapped off.
• Managing the Internet-Balancing Freedom and Regulations The explosive growth in the usage of Internet forms the basis of new digital age. Aim of the paper is to explore the general role of internet and its relationship with the society.
• Ways Liberals Define Freedom Liberals are identified by the way they value the freedom of individuals, freedom of markets, and democratic freedoms. The term freedom is characterized by Liberals as they use it within the context of the relationship […]
• Boredom and Freedom: Different Views and Links Boredom is a condition characterized by low levels of arousal as well as wandering attention and is normally a result of the regular performance of monotonous routines.
• The Idea of American Freedom Such implications were made by the anti-slavery group on each occasion that the issue of slavery was drawn in the Congress, and reverberated wherever the institution of slavery was subjected to attack within the South.
• Liberal Definition of Freedom Its origins lie in the rejection of the authoritarian structures of the feudalistic order in Europe and the coercive tendencies and effects of that order through the imposition of moral absolutes.
• Newt Gingrich Against Freedom of Speech According to the constitution, the First Amendment is part of the United States Bill of rights that was put in place due to the advocation of the anti-federalists who wanted the powers of the federal […]
• Freedom is One of the Most Valuable Things to Man Political philosophers have many theories in response to this and it is necessary to analyze some of the main arguments and concepts to get a clearer idea of how to be more precise about the […]
• The Enlightment: The Science of Freedom In America, enlightment resulted to the formation of the American Revolution in the form of resistance of Britain imperialism. In the United States of America, enlightment took a more significant form as demonstrated by the […]
• Determinism and Freedom in the movie ‘Donnie Darko’ The term determinism states, the all the processes in the world are determined beforehand, and only chosen may see or determine the future.
• Spinoza’ Thoughts on Human Freedom The human being was once considered of as the Great Amphibian, or the one who can exclusively live in the two worlds, a creature of the physical world and also an inhabitant of the spiritual, […]
• Political Freedom According to Machiavelli and Locke In this chapter, he explains that “It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than […]
• Freedom From Domination: German Scientists’ View He made the greatest ever attempt to unify the country, as Western Europe was divided into lots of feudal courts, and the unification of Germany led to the creation of single national mentality and appearing […]
• The Freedom of Speech: Communication Law in US By focusing on the on goings in Guatemala, the NYT may have, no doubt earned the ire of the Bush administration, but it is also necessary that the American people are made aware of the […]
• Freedom of Speech and Expression in Music Musicians are responsible and accountable for fans and their actions because in the modern world music and lyrics become a tool of propaganda that has a great impact on the circulation of ideas and social […]
• American Vision and Values of Political Freedom The significance of the individual and the sanctity of life were all central to the conceptions of Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero.
• Democracy and Freedom in Pakistan Pakistan lies in a region that has been a subject of worldwide attention and political tensions since 9/11. US influence in politics, foreign and internal policies of Pakistan has always been prominent.
• Spanish-American War: The Price of Freedom He was also the only person in the history of the United States to have attained the rank of Admiral of the Navy, the most senior rank in the United States Navy.
• Male Dominance as Impeding Female Sexual Freedom Therefore, there is a need to further influence society to respect and protect female sexuality through the production of educative materials on women’s free will.
• Interrelation and Interdependence of Freedom, Responsibility, and Accountability Too much responsibility and too little freedom make a person unhappy. There must be a balance between freedom and responsibility for human happiness.
• African American History: The Struggle for Freedom The history of the Jacksons Rainbow coalition shows the rise of the support of the African American politicians in the Democratic party.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Definition of Freedom The case of Nicola Sacco can be seen as the starting point of the introduction of Roosevelt’s definition of freedom as liberty for all American citizens.
• Freedom of Speech and International Relations The freedom of speech or the freedom of expression is a civil right legally protected by many constitutions, including that of the United States, in the First Amendment.
• Canada in Freedom House Organization’s Rating The Freedom in the World Reports are most notable because of their contribution to the knowledge about the state of civil and political liberties in different countries, ranking them from 1 to 7.
• Philosophy of Freedom in “Ethics” by Spinoza Thus, the mind that is capable of understanding love to God is free because it has the power to control lust.
• Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
• Japanese-American Internment: Illusion of Freedom The purpose of this paper is to analyze the internment of Japanese-Americans in Idaho as well as events that happened prior in order to understand how such a violation of civil rights came to pass […]
• The Existence of Freedom This paper assumes that it is the cognizance of the presence of choices for our actions that validates the existence of free will since, even if some extenuating circumstances and influences can impact what choice […]
• Philosophy, Ethics, Religion, Freedom in Current Events The court solely deals with acts of gross human rights abuses and the signatory countries have a statute that allows the accused leaders to be arrested in the member countries.
• Mill’s Power over Body vs. Foucault’s Freedom John Stuart Mill’s view of sovereignty over the mind and the body focuses on the tendency of human beings to exercise liberalism to fulfill their self-interest.
• Rousseau’s vs. Confucius’ Freedom Concept Similarly, the sovereignty of a distinctive group expresses the wholeness of its free will, but not a part of the group.
• The Importance of Freedom of Speech In a bid to nurture the freedom of speech, the United States provides safety to the ethical considerations of free conversations.
• Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
• Freedom in the Workplace of American Society In the workplace, it is vital to implement freedom-oriented policies that would address the needs of each employee for the successful performance of the company which significantly depends on the operation of every participant of […]
• 19th-Century Marxism with Emphasis on Freedom As the paper reveals through various concepts and theories by Marx, it was the responsibility of the socialists and scientists to transform the society through promoting ideologies of class-consciousness and social action as a way […]
• Political Necessity to Safeguard Freedom He determined that the existence of the declared principles on which the fundamental structure of equality is based, as well as the institutions that monitor their observance, is the critical prerequisite for social justice and […]
• Aveo’s Acquisition of Freedom Aged Care Portfolio The mode of acquisition points to the possibility that Freedom used the White Knight defense mechanism when it approached the Aveo group.
• Aveo Group’s Acquisition of Freedom Aged Care Pty Ltd The annual report of AVEO Group indicated that the company acquired Freedom Aged Care based on its net book value. It implies that the Aveo Group is likely to achieve its strategic objectives through the […]
• Freedom Hospital Geriatric Patient Analysis The importance of statistics in clinical research can be explained by a multitude of factors; in clinical management, it is used for monitoring the patients’ conditions, the quality of health care provided, and other indicators.
• Hegel and Marx on Civil Society and Human Freedom First of all, the paper will divide the concepts of freedom and civil society in some of the notions that contribute to their definitions.
• Individual Freedom: Exclusionary Rule The exclusionary rule was first introduced by the US Supreme Court in 1914 in the case of Weeks v.the United States and was meant for the application in the federal courts only, but later it […]
• History of American Conceptions and Practices of Freedom The government institutions and political regimes have been accused of allowing amarginalisation’ to excel in the acquisition and roles assigned to the citizens of the US on the basis of social identities.
• Canada’s Freedom of Speech and Its Ineffectiveness In the developed societies of the modern world, it is one of the major premises that freedom of expression is the pivotal character of liberal democracy.
• Freedom and Liberty in American Historical Documents The 1920s and the 1930s saw particularly ardent debates on these issues since it was the time of the First World War and the development of the American sense of identity at the same time.
• Anglo-American Relations, Freedom and Nationalism Thus, in his reflection on the nature of the interrelations between two powerful empires, which arose at the end of the 19th century, the writer argues that the striving of the British Empire and the […]
• American Student Rights and Freedom of Speech As the speech was rather vulgar for the educational setting, the court decided that the rights of adults in public places cannot be identic to those the students have in school.
• Singapore’s Economic Freedom and People’s Welfare Business freedom is the ability to start, operating and closing a business having in mind the necessary regulations put by the government.
• “Advancing Freedom in Iraq” by Steven Groves The aim of the article is to describe the current situation in Iraq and to persuade the reader in the positive role of the U.S.authorities in the promoting of the democracy in the country.
• Freedom: Definition, Meaning and Threats The existence of freedom in the world has been one of the most controversial topics in the world. As a result, he suggests indirectly that freedom is found in the ability to think rationally.
• Expression on the Internet: Vidding, Copyright and Freedom It can be defined as the practice of creating new videos by combining the elements of already-existing clips. This is one of the reasons why this practice may fall under the category of fair use.
• Doha Debate and Turkey’s Media Freedom He argued that the Turkish model was a work in progress that could be emulated by the Arab countries not only because of the freedom that the government gave to the press, but also the […]
• The Pursuit of Freedom in the 19th Century Britain The ambition to improve one’s life was easily inflated by the upper grade that focused on dominating the system at the expense of the suffering majority.
• The Story of American Freedom The unique nature of the United States traces its history to the formation of political institutions between 1776 and 1789, the American Revolution between 1776 and 1783 and the declaration of independence in 1776. Additionally, […]
• Military Logistics in Operation “Iraqi Freedom” It was also very easy for the planners to identify the right amount of fuel needed for distribution in the farms, unlike other classes of supply which had a lot of challenges. The soldiers lacked […]
• The Freedom of Information Act The Freedom of Information Act is popularly understood to be the representation of “the people’s right to know” the various activities of the government.
• The United States Role in the World Freedom The efforts of NATO to engage Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in the war resulted in the spreading of the war into the North West parts of Pakistan.
• Fighting Terrorism: “Iraqi Freedom” and “Enduring Freedom”
• Freedom of Speech: Julian Assange and ‘WikiLeaks’ Case
• Do Urban Environments Promote Freedom?
• Claiming the Freedom to Shape Politics
• US Progress in Freedom, Equality and Power Since Civil War
• Thomas Jefferson’s Views on Freedom of Religion
• Religious Freedom and Labor Law
• Gilded Age and Progressive Era Freedom Challenges
• Philosophical Approach to Freedom and Determinism
• The Life of a Freedom Fighter in Post WWII Palestine
• Fighting for Freedom of American Identity in Literature
• Philosophy of Freedom in “The Apology“
• Advertising and Freedom of Speech
• How the Law Limits Academic Freedom?
• The Issue of American Freedom in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
• The Jewish Freedom Fighter Recollection
• Kuwait’s Opposition and the Freedom of Expression
• Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom
• Freedom of Speech and Expression
• Multicultural Education: Freedom or Oppression
• “The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City” by Sharon Wood
• Information Freedom in Government
• Dr.Knightly’s Problems in Academic Freedom
• Mill on Liberty and Freedom
• Texas Women University Academic Freedom
• Freedom of speech in the Balkans
• Media Freedom in Japan
• Rivalry and Central Planning by Don Lavoie: Study Analysis
• Review of “Freedom Writers”
• Freedom Degree in Colonial America
• What Is ‘Liberal Representative Democracy’ and Does the Model Provide an Appropriate Combination of Freedom and Equality?
• Is the Contemporary City a Space of Control or Freedom?
• Native Americans Transition From Freedom to Isolation
• “The Weight of the Word” by Chris Berg
• What Does Freedom Entail in the US?
• Leila Khaled: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?
• Environmentalism and Economic Freedom
• Freedom of Speech in China and Political Reform
• Colonial Women’s Freedom in Society

✍️ Freedom Essay Topics for College

• The S.E.C. and the Freedom of Information Act
• African Americans: A Journey Towards Freedom
• Freedom of the Press
• Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Black Freedom Movement
• Freedom of Women to Choose Abortion
• Human Freedom as Contextual Deliberation
• Women and Freedom in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
• The Required Freedom and Democracy in Afghanistan
• PRISM Program: Freedom v. Order
• Human rights and freedoms
• Controversies Over Freedom of Speech and Internet Postings
• Gender and the Black Freedom Movement
• Culture and the Black Freedom Struggle
• Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right and the UN Declaration of Human Rights
• Personal Freedom in A Doll’s House, A Room of One’s Own, and Diary of a Madman
• Hegel’s Ideas on Action, Morality, Ethics and Freedom
• Satre human freedom
• The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
• Psychological Freedom
• The Freedom Concept
• Free Exercise Clause: Freedom and Equality
• Television Effects & Freedoms
• Government’s control versus Freedom of Speech and Thoughts
• Freedom of Speech: Exploring Proper Limits
• Freedom of the Will
• Benefits of Post 9/11 Security Measures Fails to Outway Harm on Personal Freedom and Privacy
• Civil Liberties: Freedom of the Media
• Human Freedom and Personal Identity
• Freedom of Religion in the U.S
• Freedom of Speech, Religion and Religious Tolerance
• Why Free Speech Is An Important Freedom
• The meaning of the word “freedom” in the context of the 1850s!
• American History: Freedom and Progress
• The Free Exercise Thereof: Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment
• Twilight: Freedom of Choices by the Main Character
• Frank Kermode: Timelessness and Freedom of Expression
• The meaning of freedom today
• Human Nature and the Freedom of Speech in Different Countries
• What Is the Relationship Between Personal Freedom and Democracy?
• How Does Religion Limit Human Freedom?
• What Is the Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Fluctuations in Welfare?
• How Effectively the Constitution Protects Freedom?
• Why Should Myanmar Have Similar Freedom of Speech Protections to the United States?
• Should Economics Educators Care About Students’ Academic Freedom?
• Why Freedom and Equality Is an Artificial Creation Created?
• How the Attitudes and Freedom of Expression Changed for African Americans Over the Years?
• What Are the Limits of Freedom of Speech?
• How Far Should the Right to Freedom of Speech Extend?
• Is There a Possible Relationship Between Human Rights and Freedom of Expression and Opinion?
• How Technology Expanded Freedom in the Society?
• Why Did Jefferson Argue That Religious Freedom Is Needed?
• How the Civil War Sculpted How Americans Viewed Their Nation and Freedom?
• Should Society Limit the Freedom of Individuals?
• Why Should Parents Give Their Children Freedom?
• Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a Legitimate and Just War?
• Could Increasing Political Freedom Be the Key To Reducing Threats?
• How Does Financial Freedom Help in Life?
• What Are Human Rights and Freedoms in Modern Society?
• How the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom Affects the Canadian Politics?
• Why Should Schools Allow Religious Freedom?
• Does Internet Censorship Threaten Free Speech?
• How Did the American Civil War Lead To the Defeat of Slavery and Attainment of Freedom by African Americans?
• Why Are Men Willing To Give Up Their Freedom?
• How Did the Economic Development of the Gilded Age Affect American Freedom?
• Should Artists Have Total Freedom of Expression?
• How Does Democracy, Economic Freedom, and Taxation Affect the Residents of the European Union?
• What Restrictions Should There Be, if Any, on the Freedom of the Press?
• How To Achieving Early Retirement With Financial Freedom?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Regions & Countries

Freedom of the press, most u.s. journalists are concerned about press freedoms.

57% of U.S. journalists surveyed say they are extremely or very concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms in the country.

The Role of Alternative Social Media in the News and Information Environment

In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms. Free speech ideals and heated political themes prevail on these sites, which draw praise from their users and skepticism from other Americans.

Journalists Sense Turmoil in Their Industry Amid Continued Passion for Their Work

A survey of U.S.-based journalists finds 77% would choose their career all over again, though 57% are highly concerned about future restrictions on press freedom.

How the political typology groups compare

Pew Research Center’s political typology sorts Americans into cohesive, like-minded groups based on their values, beliefs, and views about politics and the political system. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.

In Changing U.S. Electorate, Race and Education Remain Stark Dividing Lines

The gender gap in party identification remains the widest in a quarter century.

5 charts on views of press freedom around the world

To mark World Press Freedom Day, here are five charts that show how people globally see the freedom of the press.

Democratic Rights Popular Globally but Commitment to Them Not Always Strong

Majorities say the democratic principles tested on our survey are at least somewhat important. But often, underwhelming percentages describe democratic rights and institutions as very important.

Activism in the Social Media Age

As the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag turns 5 years old, a look at its evolution on Twitter and how Americans view social media's impact on political and civic engagement

Americans Favor Protecting Information Freedoms Over Government Steps to Restrict False News Online

U.S. adults are mostly against government action that could limit people’s ability to access and publish information online. There is more support for steps by technology companies.

Facts on Foreign Students in the U.S.

The U.S. has more foreign students enrolled in its colleges and universities than any other country in the world. Explore data about foreign students in the U.S. higher education system.

Refine Your Results

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Freedom Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on freedom.

Freedom is something that everybody has heard of but if you ask for its meaning then everyone will give you different meaning. This is so because everyone has a different opinion about freedom. For some freedom means the freedom of going anywhere they like, for some it means to speak up form themselves, and for some, it is liberty of doing anything they like.

Meaning of Freedom

The real meaning of freedom according to books is. Freedom refers to a state of independence where you can do what you like without any restriction by anyone. Moreover, freedom can be called a state of mind where you have the right and freedom of doing what you can think off. Also, you can feel freedom from within.

The Indian Freedom

Indian is a country which was earlier ruled by Britisher and to get rid of these rulers India fight back and earn their freedom. But during this long fight, many people lost their lives and because of the sacrifice of those people and every citizen of the country, India is a free country and the world largest democracy in the world.

Moreover, after independence India become one of those countries who give his citizen some freedom right without and restrictions.

The Indian Freedom Right

India drafted a constitution during the days of struggle with the Britishers and after independence it became applicable. In this constitution, the Indian citizen was given several fundaments right which is applicable to all citizen equally. More importantly, these right are the freedom that the constitution has given to every citizen.

These right are right to equality, right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion¸ culture and educational right, right to constitutional remedies, right to education. All these right give every freedom that they can’t get in any other country.

Value of Freedom

The real value of anything can only be understood by those who have earned it or who have sacrificed their lives for it. Freedom also means liberalization from oppression. It also means the freedom from racism, from harm, from the opposition, from discrimination and many more things.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Freedom does not mean that you violate others right, it does not mean that you disregard other rights. Moreover, freedom means enchanting the beauty of nature and the environment around us.

The Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is the most common and prominent right that every citizen enjoy. Also, it is important because it is essential for the all-over development of the country.

Moreover, it gives way to open debates that helps in the discussion of thought and ideas that are essential for the growth of society.

Besides, this is the only right that links with all the other rights closely. More importantly, it is essential to express one’s view of his/her view about society and other things.

To conclude, we can say that Freedom is not what we think it is. It is a psychological concept everyone has different views on. Similarly, it has a different value for different people. But freedom links with happiness in a broadway.

FAQs on Freedom

Q.1 What is the true meaning of freedom? A.1 Freedom truly means giving equal opportunity to everyone for liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Q.2 What is freedom of expression means? A.2 Freedom of expression means the freedom to express one’s own ideas and opinions through the medium of writing, speech, and other forms of communication without causing any harm to someone’s reputation.

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Malaya: Essays on Freedom

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• Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Anti-Racism Reading List
• Cinelle Barnes

“ From Cinelle Barnes, author of the memoir Monsoon Mansion , comes a moving and reflective essay collection about finding freedom in America. Out of a harrowing childhood in the Philippines, Cinelle Barnes emerged triumphant. But as an undocumented teenager living in New York, her journey of self-discovery was just beginning. Because she couldn ’ t get a driver ’ s license or file taxes, Cinelle worked as a cleaning lady and a nanny and took other odd jobs -- and learned to look over her shoulder, hoping she wouldn ’ t get caught. When she falls in love and marries a white man from the South, Cinelle finds herself trying to adjust to the thorny underbelly of ‘southern hospitality ’ while dealing with being a new mother, an immigrant affected by PTSD, and a woman with a brown body in a profoundly white world. From her immigration to the United States, to navigating a broken legal system, to balancing assimilation and a sense of self, Cinelle comes to rely on her resilience and her faith in the human spirit to survive and come of age all over again. Lyrical, emotionally driven, and told through stories both lived and overheard, Cinelle ’ s intensely personal, yet universal, exploration of race, class, and identity redefines what it means to be a woman–and an American–in a divided country. ” -- Provided by publisher .

Barnes, Cinelle. Malaya: Essays on Freedom . Little A, 2019.

• Freedom of Expression Research Paper

View sample communication research paper on freedom of expression. Browse research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution are commonly known as the “Bill of Rights.” While this grand title sounds impressive, it creates an erroneous impression about the text to which it refers. The title suggests that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution establish a uniform set of freedoms and privileges guaranteed to allAmericans. It suggests that there is a certain permanent quality about these protections; that these rights have a substance that can be touched. Moreover, it implies that the Founders of the republic, through the process of amendment, were able to perfect and articulate a shared understanding of “freedom” that is durable enough to transcend time, bridging their age with the 21st century.

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The problems associated with such images are obvious on close reading. The Bill of Rights does not delineate a set of perfectly understood and inalienable freedoms and privileges. Rather, it is a list of general statements declaring what rights citizens may claim in disputes with the government. The actual protection afforded by these rights is often vague and elusive, and this is particularly true of the freedom of expression. The pertinent guarantees are specified in the First Amendment, which emphatically proclaims,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

In this single sentence, the Founders defined the relationship between the government and the right of the people to criticize their elected officials. While the mandate expressed in the Free Speech Clause is absolute—“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”—the meaning of these 14 words is not as obvious as the words may suggest. Although the language is clear and straightforward, it is not as transparent as it seems. The very simplicity of the words is deceptive, so unequivocal that they have become equivocal, largely because it creates a right so absolute that it must necessarily be limited.

A comprehensive history of the Free Speech Clause is beyond the scope of this research paper. Suffice it to say that since the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, Congress has adopted and the Supreme Court has permitted restrictions on the content of speech. In many instances, the restrictions have been justified by asserting that the speech at issue has so little redeeming value that it is outweighed by the social interest in order or morality. This first half of the paper explores these areas, and having considered the nature of “low-value” speech, the second half of the paper identifies some general principles developed by the Supreme Court to assess the constitutionality of government restrictions on speech.

A Two-Tier Approach to Freedom of Expression

Walter Chaplinsky was a Jehovah’s Witness who attempted to distribute religious literature on the streets of Rochester, New Hampshire. Because his message was controversial— he promised to preach the “true facts of the Bible,” and he denounced organized religion as a “racket,” Chaplinsky was quickly surrounded by a hostile crowd. Believing that violence was imminent, a traffic officer asked Chaplinsky to accompany him back to the police station for his own protection. Along the way, the twosome met the Rochester City Marshal, whom Chaplinsky denounced as follows: “You are a God damned racketeer . . . [and] a damned Fascist and the whole government of Rochester are Fascists or agents of Fascists” ( Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942, p. 569).

Chaplinsky was promptly arrested and subsequently convicted by a jury for violating a New Hampshire statute that made it a crime to “address any offensive, derisive or annoying word to any other person who is lawfully in any street or other public place.” When Chaplinsky appealed his conviction, he found surprisingly little sympathy from either the New Hampshire Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court. What makes this case interesting is not the result—the Supreme Court unanimously upheld Chaplinsky’s conviction—but rather the sweeping language contained in Justice Frank Murphy’s opinion. While he only needed to argue that Chaplinsky’s intemperate outburst posed a threat to public safety in order to uphold the conviction, Justice Murphy’s opinion in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) includes a famous paragraph that seemingly places several broad categories of speech entirely beyond the protection of the First Amendment. In the pivotal passage, Justice Murphy notes,

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or fighting words—those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. (pp. 571–572)

These sweeping dicta, more than the decision in the case, offer a unique insight into the nature of freedom of expression in the United States.

Instead of focusing narrowly on fighting words, Justice Murphy laid the foundation for what scholars such as Harry Kalven (1988) have labeled a “two-tier theory” of the First Amendment. Speech in the higher tier, even if it is odious or distasteful, is entitled a full measure of First Amendment protection. At the same time, speech in the lower tier has minimal value, and it can be suppressed by the state with less judicial scrutiny. Lest there be any doubt about which speech lacks ideas and has no redeeming social value, Justice Murphy set out four neat categories: the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or fighting words. To illustrate the nature of such speech, it seems appropriate to briefly consider the categories singled out by Justice Murphy for diminished protection under the First Amendment.

The Lewd and Obscene

The first U.S. Supreme Court decision to consider whether sexually explicit speech was worthy of constitutional protection was Roth v. United States (1957). In a decision that he later came to regret, Justice William Brennan built a theory of obscenity premised on the twotier theory. Working from Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire ’s (1942) assumption that “all ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial issues, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guarantees,” Justice Brennan concluded that obscenity was outside the First Amendment as it was “utterly without redeeming social importance” (p. 484). As it was without value, Justice Brennan did not consider whether there were harms associated with obscenity that might justify its regulation. In short, obscene speech is so worthless that it does not deserve to be measured by the standards applied to speech containing legitimate content.

In the years since Roth v. United States (1957), the Supreme Court has never revisited this assumption. Instead, the Justices have spent their time searching for a workable definition of obscenity and setting standards for assessing laws regulating sexually explicit speech. The most recent effort to define obscenity is contained in Miller v. California (1973), a decision that limits obscenity “to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” (p. 24). To enforce this definition, the Supreme Court added some standards for laws regulating obscenity. First, the Miller decision requires the use of “contemporary community standards” to determine whether or not speech is obscene. This means that there is no national standard for obscenity; a work that is protected in one community might be obscene and unprotected in another community. Second, the Miller decision also adds a requirement that state laws must be clear and specific in describing the type of sexual conduct that is prohibited. Finally, the Miller decision allows “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” to redeem an otherwise obscene work.

In recent years, the sexual exploitation of children has become a special problem, and the courts have been forced to consider the constitutionality of a variety of measures designed to combat child pornography. Since obscenity is unworthy of constitutional protection, a law targeting child obscenity would be permissible so long as it adhered to the Miller v. California (1973) definition of obscenity. Laws targeting child pornography are more complicated, however, as these measures often seek to ban the portrayal of minors in sexual performances, even if the performances are not legally obscene. The constitutionality of one such law was tested in NewYork v. Ferber (1982), a case involving a store owner convicted of selling films showing children under the age of 16 masturbating. The jury concluded that although the materials in questions were not legally obscene, the defendant was nonetheless guilty of violating New York State’s child pornography law. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the conviction, thereby establishing nonobscene child pornography as a new category of prohibited expression and giving legislators “greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic depictions of children” (p. 756).

The Profane

At first glance, it may seem that the profane should be grouped with the lewd and obscene as such speech often contains sexual references. Under closer inspection, however, most profanity is not erotic and could therefore never be obscene. While it may be offensive to some, the Supreme Court has shown a surprising tolerance toward profanity. This relaxed attitude is evident in the “motherfucker trilogy” of the early 1970s, three cases in which authorities sought to prosecute speakers for uttering this particularly distasteful phrase in public. In each instance, the Supreme Court vacated the conviction and held that speech could not be punished simply because it might be offensive to someone in the audience. The Justices then remanded the cases to the lower courts to determine whether the words might tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

The more difficult questions involving profanity today are related to the medium of expression. In Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), for example, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on indecent language broadcast over the public airwaves during a time of day when children would likely be in the audience. While acknowledging that “these words ordinarily lack literary, political, or scientific value,” the plurality opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens admitted that “they are not entirely outside the protection of the First Amendment” (p. 746). Citing precedent, Justice Stevens concluded that speech cannot be banned simply because it is offensive. The restriction on broadcast indecency was justified, however (1) because the broadcast media is pervasive and (2) because the broadcast media is uniquely accessible to children.

The Libelous

In New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of an Alabama law that allowed public officials to sue for defamation if the words are such as to “injure him in his public office, or impute misconduct to him in his office, or want of official integrity, or want of fidelity to a public trust” (p. 267). Unlike Roth v. United States (1957) , however, Justice William Brennan’s opinion in Sullivan denied the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) categories their “talismanic immunity” (p. 269). Instead of assuming that libelous utterances “are no essential part of any exposition of ideas,” Justice Brennan started from the premise that the “freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions” (p. 269). Since the speech at issue was protected political criticism, Justice Brennan fashioned an “actual malice” rule that would require public officials to prove that a defamatory statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not” (p. 280).

While the Sullivan decision has been applauded—one prominent scholar proclaimed it was an occasion for “dancing in the streets,” it is important to note that the Supreme Court has never held that libelous speech as a class is worthy of constitutional protection. In Gertz v. Welch (1974), for instance, the Court used language eerily reminiscent of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) when it suggested that “neither the intentional lie nor the careless error materially advances society’s interest in ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide open’ debate on public issues” because “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact” (p. 340). So, too, the Court has limited First Amendment protection in cases involving libelous statements about a private matter that is of no public concern.

In the years since Sullivan, the Supreme Court has expanded the actual malice rule to include both public figures as well as public officials, it has broadened the definition of public officials to include those who have substantial responsibility for the conduct of government affairs, and it has defined official conduct to include private matters that touch on a person’s fitness for public office. These protections have created a space for speech on matters of public concern, even speech that includes false statements. Defamatory statements regarding matters of public concern are only subject to liability if it can be shown that they are made with actual malice. It should be noted, however, that false statements of facts about private persons receive limited First Amendment protection.

Fighting Words

According to the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) opinion, fighting words consist of two classes of speech: words that by their very utterance inflict injury and words that tend to incite an immediate breach of peace. The Supreme Court eliminated the first class—words that by the very utterance inflict injury—in Cohen v. California (1971), a case that came about when Paul Robert Cohen entered the Los Angeles County Courthouse wearing a jacket bearing the words “Fuck the Draft” to protest the Vietnam War. Although no one complained about the language used on the jacket, Cohen was arrested by the police and charged with breach of peace. On appeal, the Supreme Court overturned Cohen’s conviction. Writing for the majority, Justice John Harlan concluded, “It cannot possibly be maintained that this vulgar allusion to the Selective Service System would conjure up psychic stimulation with anyone likely to be confronted with Cohen’s crudely defaced jacket” (p. 20). As Justice Harlan saw the case, Cohen was being punished for the offensive content of his jacket, not because of its erotic nature or for fear that it would trigger a violent reaction. In the words of Justice Harlan,

While the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because government officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual. (p. 25)

Because reasonable people might find different words objectionable, Justice Harlan concluded that it was unconstitutional to punish speech on the theory that its very utterance might inflict injury.

The Cohen v. California (1971) decision narrowed the fighting words exception to include only language that tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace. This would seem to require an abusive personal epithet, addressed to a specific individual and delivered in a faceto-face context, under circumstances likely to result in violence. It is difficult to imagine how written words, language addressed at large audiences or broad classes of people, or speech mediated through the Internet could ever be suppressed under the reformulated Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) test. The definition of fighting words is so narrow, in fact, that the Supreme Court has not upheld a single conviction for the use of fighting words since Chaplinsky was decided in 1942. Given that fact, scholars such as Kent Greenawalt (1995) have wondered whether any fighting words remain.

Beyond Chaplinsky

Over the years, the Supreme Court has gradually reduced the Chaplinsky list to obscenity, libelous speech made with actual malice, and fighting words that incite a breach of peace. These are not, however, the only categories of speech that have been singled out for reduced First Amendment protection. Perhaps the two most glaring omissions from Justice Murphy’s original list of low-value speech involve commercial speech and expressive conduct.

Although it is ubiquitous, commercial expression has historically received little First Amendment protection. In Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942), the Supreme Court unanimously declared that commercial advertising (in this case, handbills being distributed on the streets of New York City) was not essential public information but rather expression intended to produce a private profit. In a dismissive opinion that was only half a page in length, the Justices noted that while it was clear that public streets could be used “for the exercise of the freedom of communicating information and disseminating opinion,” it was equally clear that no such privilege protected “purely commercial advertising” (p. 54). For more than 30 years, the Valentine v. Chrestensen doctrine prevailed, and the state and federal courts consistently ruled that commercial speech was unworthy of First Amendment protection.

During the 1970s, however, the Supreme Court reversed direction and rehabilitated commercial speech in a series of remarkable opinions authored by Justice Harry Blackmun. One of Justice Blackmun’s more notable declarations occurred in Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council (1976), where he argued, “Advertising, however tasteless and excessive it sometimes may seem, is nonetheless dissemination of information as to who is producing and selling what product, for what reason, and at what price” (p. 765). By this reasoning, advertising is akin to high-value speech because a free-market economy allocates resources based on personal economic decisions. This argument does not, however, extend to false or misleading advertising, as it contains no such information. Nor does it mean that advertising receives the same measure of protection as noncommercial expression. Two years after Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council (1976) was decided, the Supreme Court stressed the point by emphasizing that commercial speech remains in a less protected category “commensurate with its subordinate position in the scale of First Amendment values” ( Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Association, 1978, p. 456). This is a notable distinction because it suggests the court will allow regulations on advertising that might not be permissible in the realm of noncommercial expression.

The Supreme Court has also held that speech plus — expression that is accompanied by conduct such as picketing, burning a draft card, or wearing an armband—receives less First Amendment protection than does “pure speech” (such as giving a talk to an audience in an auditorium). The general principle is that the more “plus” (conduct) in the act of expression, the less that expression is protected by the Constitution. An example occurred in United States v. O’Brien (1968), when the Supreme Court upheld David Paul O’Brien’s conviction for burning his draft card to protest the Vietnam War. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared, “We cannot accept the view that an apparently limitless variety of conduct can be labeled ‘speech’ whenever the person engaging in the conduct intends thereby to express an idea” (p. 376). When “speech” and “nonspeech” are combined in the same expressive conduct, Chief Justice Warren concluded, “a sufficiently important government interest in regulating the nonspeech element can justify incidental limitations on First Amendment freedoms” (p. 376).

Finally, it should be noted that some commentators have proposed adding new categories of speech to the original Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) list of low-value speech. Alexander Bickel (1975), for example, would add “filthy and violent rhetoric” and other forms of “assaultive speech” on the grounds that such discourse undermines our common moral environment. Catherine MacKinnon would add pornography because she views it as more insidious than obscenity. Not only does pornography have little social value but MacKinnon (1993) believes that it demeans women and validates attitudes that lead to discrimination and violence against the female half of the population. For similar reasons, Mari Mastuda would add racist hate speech to the Chaplinsky list. According to Matsuda (1989), this speech shares three identifying characteristics: (1) the message is of racial inferiority; (2) the message is directed against a historically oppressed group; and (3) the message is persecutorial, hateful, and degrading. Much as pornography denigrates women, Matsuda argues that racist hate speech has real consequences in the daily lives of the members of minority groups singled out for such verbal abuse.

Standards for Judicial Review

Having come this far, it might safely be concluded that Justice Murphy erred when he suggested that there are “certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” that are unworthy of First Amendment protection. These categories are neither well-defined nor are they limited. Ever since Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) was decided, the Supreme Court has struggled to find a workable definition of obscenity. At one point, an exasperated Justice Potter Stewart lamented the difficulty of “trying to define what may be indefinable.” He then added one of the more memorable lines about obscenity, “I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that” ( Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964, p. 197).

So too, the Justices have struggled with the categories that comprise the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) list. While obscenity remains outside the First Amendment, the Court has rehabilitated profane and libelous speech and narrowed the definition of fighting words. Although not on the original list, the Court has also held that commercial speech and speech plus are entitled to less protection than high-value speech. Even with these additions, it has been suggested by some that assaultive speech, pornography, and racist hate speech should receive less First Amendment protection.

There is, however, a more fundamental problem with the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) dicta. With all due respect to Justice Murphy, the problem with low-value speech is not that “such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas” or that they “are of such slight social value as a step to the truth.” In fact, the problem is exactly the opposite. The Supreme Court singled out the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or fighting precisely because this speech clearly communicates messages that the Justices found objectionable. By discounting the value of such speech, Justice Murphy marginalized its value and avoided the need to assess its content.

This observation notwithstanding, the two-tier theory helps explain why some classes of speech receive more constitutional protection than other classes of speech. As the name implies, the two-tier theory creates a hierarchy of speech. Speech in the upper tier—high-value speech— receives a full measure of constitutional protection. Speech in the lower tier—low-value speech—necessarily receives less protection. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that low-value speech receives no constitutional protection. In R.A.V. v. St. Paul (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned that it is sometimes said that these categories of expression are “not within the area of constitutionally protected speech,” or that the “protection of the First Amendment does not extend” to them. Such statements must be taken in context, however, and are no more literally true than is the occasionally repeated shorthand characterizing obscenity “as not being speech at all” (p. 383).

In other words, while low-value speech is entitled to less First Amendment protection, it is not “invisible to the Constitution.”

To enforce the hierarchy of speech, the Supreme Court employs different standards of judicial review when assessing laws regulating speech. While the Supreme Court has never adopted an absolute interpretation of the Free Speech Clause, the Court has been reluctant to uphold restrictions on high-value speech. If speech falls in the upper tier, the Court employs a “strict scrutiny” test that requires that a restriction on speech be justified by a compelling state interest and achieved through the least restrictive means. Under this level of review, it is difficult to justify restrictions on high-value speech. In contrast, the Court employs “intermediate” or “minimal” scrutiny when reviewing restrictions on low-value speech. By design, these standards are more deferential to the government. For example, a regulation can be justified because it satisfies a “legitimate” instead of a “compelling” state interest. Rather than requiring the “least restrictive” means, the Court will accept “reasonable” means. Since these standards are easier to satisfy, the Court upholds most regulations on low-value speech.

Laws Regulating Freedom of Expression

The fact that speech has value does not, however, mean that it can never be regulated by the government. While the language of the First Amendment is absolute, the Supreme Court has upheld a variety of measures restricting the freedom of expression. It is, unfortunately, impossible to summarize First Amendment jurisprudence neatly as the Supreme Court has offered a variety of rules, tests, and standards for assessing efforts to regulate speech. The result is a complicated body of law that has befuddled some of the greatest legal minds. By way of illustration, the Court has created a four-pronged test for regulating commercial speech; there are three standards for assessing state laws regulating obscenity, three types of public forums, and multiple standards for judicial review. There are also unique rules for regulating speech in special settings such as schools, the military, and prisons.

While lengthy legal treaties have been devoted to the circumstances under which government can regulate expression, several broad principles can be identified. These principles are not transcendent, but they help explain how the Supreme Court approaches laws that restrict expression. Moreover, because they are not unique to specific areas, these principles can be broadly applied. The five principles hold that (1) prior restraints are generally unacceptable; (2) the advocacy of abstract ideas is protected; (3) restrictions on speech must be content neutral; (4) reasonable restrictions governing the time, place, and manner of communication are permissible; and (5) the freedom of speech must sometimes be balanced against competing constitutional rights or government interests.

Prior Restraints Are Generally Unacceptable

Prior restraint occurs when the government stops a message before it is communicated. This contrasts with another method of communication control referred to as post facto punishment, which means that the source of the message is punished after the communication has occurred. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it has significant practical consequences. If a theater is prohibited from screening a movie, prior restraint has occurred. If the theater is allowed to screen the film, after which it is prosecuted for “disseminating obscenity,” post facto punishment has occurred. The difference, of course, is that prior restraint prevents the audience from viewing the film, while post facto punishment occurs after the audience has seen the objectionable content.

While prior restraint has a long history in English law, the U.S. Supreme Court did not consider the constitutionality of prior restraints until Near v. Minnesota (1931). This case involved a challenge to a Minnesota statute that allowed local officials to obtain a court order that blocked publication of “obscene, lewd and lascivious” or “malicious, scandalous and defamatory” content. In response to partisan attacks, local officials invoked the law and obtained an order blocking publication of future issues of The Saturday Press, a newspaper published by Jay M. Near. When Near challenged the order, the Supreme Court declared that the Minnesota statute violated the FirstAmendment, in a narrow 5–4 decision.According to the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, “the general conception that liberty of the press, historically considered and taken up by the Federal Constitution, has meant, principally, although not exclusively, immunity from previous restraints or censorship” (p. 716).

While the decision was rightly heralded by Fred Friendly (1981) and others as a landmark victory for a free press, the holding is tempered by some important qualifications. First, Chief Justice Hughes was careful to note that the liberty of the press did not confer immunity against post facto punishments. So, while government officials might not be able to prevent publication of a libelous newspaper, aggrieved parties could sue the publisher for defamation after the paper was printed. Second, Chief Justice Hughes warned that in a limited number of circumstances, prior restraint would be permissible. To illustrate this possibility, Chief Justice Hughes noted that “no one would doubt but that a government might prevent . . . the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops” or act to protect the “security of community life . . . against incitements to acts of violence and the overthrow by force of orderly government” (p. 716).

Advocacy of Abstract Ideas Is Protected

While the First Amendment limits the use of prior restraints to extraordinary circumstances, the Supreme Court allows the post facto punishment of expression in certain instances. So, for example, the Court will allow the state to punish speech that advocates criminal activity. The modern standard for incitement was established in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), a case involving a speech given by a leader of the Ku Klux Klan of Ohio. The speech—which warned of “revengeance” against the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court—was recorded by a local television station. After hearing excerpts from the speech on the news, local officials arrested Brandenburg, who was tried and convicted for violating Ohio’s Criminal Syndicalism Act, a law that made it a crime to advocate the use of violence or terrorism in order to accomplish political or industrial reform. The Supreme Court overturned Brandenburg’s conviction on the grounds that

the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. (p. 447)

In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court set out a clear standard, stating that, to be punishable, antigovernment speech must have the intent of producing “imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” To sustain a conviction, the government must prove three things: (1) that the speaker advocates breaking the law, (2) that the speech calls for immediate lawless action, and (3) that the immediate lawless action is likely to occur. As Franklyn Haiman (1981) has observed, this is a challenging burden because it requires proof not only that the speech advocates illegal action but also that the action is likely to occur. Because of Brandenburg, the abstract advocacy of ideas, even dangerous ideas, is now protected by the First Amendment.

Restrictions on Speech Must Be Content Neutral

A third principle involves the distinction between content-based and content-neutral restrictions on expression. A law that is content-based singles out expression based on the content of the speech. So, for example, a law that banned wearing swastikas in Jewish neighborhoods or prohibited cross burning as an expression of racial animosity would be content-based because it targeted speech based on its message. In contrast, a law that banned all noisy activities outside a school or near a hospital would be content neutral because it applies to all speech, regardless of the message.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has shown little sympathy for content-based regulations on expression. One of the Court’s more emphatic declarations on the subject can be found in Police Department of the City of Chicago v. Moseley (1972). In an oft-quoted passage, Justice Thurgood Marshall declared, “Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content” (p. 95). In this instance, the Court held that a city ordinance that prohibited picketing near schools was unconstitutional. The flaw in the law, according to the majority, was due to the fact that the ordinance was not a flat ban on all picketing. Rather, that law contained an exception for labor picketing, and that meant that it singled out nonlabor picketing based on its content.

Under closer examination, it may seem odd that the Supreme Court is less sympathetic to content-based than to content-neutral restrictions. Both restrictions limit speech, but a content-neutral restriction will often be more restrictive than a content-based restriction as it reaches more speech. For example, a ban on all forms of solicitation at a municipal airport would be content neutral, yet it would restrict more speech than a narrow ban on religious solicitation at the same airport. The explanation for this seeming anomaly goes to the heart of the First Amendment. Content-based restrictions are problematic because, as Cass Sunstein (1993) has noted, they are often based on illegitimate reasons. This contrasts with content-neutral restrictions, which are usually justified by appeals to broader societal interests. So, for example, the ban on all forms of solicitation in airports might be justified based on security grounds. A ban on religious solicitation would nominally improve security, but such a ban would be problematic because the government seems more interested in singling out religious solicitors than in protecting travelers.

Finally, while the neutrality principle may seem intuitive, it is important to note that it is not absolute, as the Supreme Court has in fact upheld some content-based regulation of speech. An oft-cited example is Burson v. Freeman (1992), a case involving a Tennessee law that banned political speech within 100 feet of polling places on Election Day. At face value, this law seems problematic on two counts: first, it restricted high-value political speech, and second, it restricted speech on public streets and sidewalks, forums traditionally open for discussion and debate. Despite these concerns, the Supreme Court upheld the law, reasoning that it was a commonsense measure intended to prevent voter intimidation and election fraud.

Reasonable Restrictions Are Permitted on the Time, Place, and Manner of Communication

Taken together, the first three principles suggest that the government can exercise little control over expression. Prior restraints are generally unconstitutional, the advocacy of abstract ideas is protected, and restrictions on speech must be content neutral. This does not mean, however, that government has no power to regulate speech, as can be demonstrated by government restrictions on the time, the place, and the manner of communication. A restriction on time, for example, might prohibit parades on city streets during the evening rush hour when traffic is heavy. A restriction on place might ban demonstrations inside prisons or on military bases. Finally, a restriction on the manner of communication might limit how speakers communicate. Many municipalities prohibit the use of loud speakers in residential neighborhoods.

One of the great champions of political speech, Alexander Meiklejohn (1948), invoked the image of a New England town meeting to justify freedom of speech. The town meeting provides a place for neighbors to gather, to debate matters of common concern, and to vote on issues affecting the community. For this sort of deliberate democracy to work, freedom of expression must be guaranteed. At the same time, Meiklejohn also recognized that a town meeting would be a disaster without some limits on speech. That is why a moderator is selected, an agenda is negotiated, and all speakers must adhere to rules governing the order and length of speeches. Time, place, and manner restrictions can be analogized to the rules that govern a town meeting. If anyone were allowed to speak anytime, anywhere, and using any medium of communication, the result would be chaos. Much like the rules governing a town meeting, it is often argued that restrictions on the time, place, and manner of communication actually increase the freedom of speech.

As might be expected, government bodies have used their authority to impose a broad range of time, place, and manner restrictions, and many of these restrictions have been challenged in court. While a thorough review of these cases is beyond the scope of this research paper, several simple generalizations are possible. A time, place, or manner restriction that is content based would likely fail as the court would apply a strict scrutiny test. On the other hand, content-neutral restrictions on the time, place, or manner of communication would be subjected to intermediate scrutiny. To satisfy this standard, the government must show that the law serves an important interest, that the law is narrowly tailored, and that other means of communication are available. So, for example, the courts have consistently upheld content-neutral ordinances that require permits for holding parades on public streets or rallies in public parks, so long as the municipality has a clear policy that is consistently and equitably enforced.

A decision in a recent Supreme Court case involving time, place, and manner restrictions is instructive. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York v. Village of Stratton (2002) came about when Stratton, a village in Ohio, adopted an ordinance regulating canvassing and soliciting in residential neighborhoods. Under the ordinance, would-be canvassers had to request a free permit available from the mayor’s office. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society—more commonly known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses—challenged the law on First Amendment grounds. While village officials claimed that the ordinance was intended to prevent fraud and protect privacy, the Supreme Court found that the measure was overboard and unconstitutional. Not only did the ordinance restrict Jehovah’s Witnesses and door-to-door salesmen, but it also barred political candidates, Girl Scouts selling cookies, Halloween trick-or-treaters, and even neighbors from going from door to door without a permit.

Speech Rights Must Sometimes Be Balanced

The previous discussion treats freedom of expression in isolation. In many situations, however, the courts are required to balance competing constitutional rights. Anthony Lewis (2007), for example, has written about the tension between the constitutional guarantees of a free press and the right to a fair trial. A case in point is Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976), in which a local judge issued a gag order against the press before a murder trial as a way of preventing pretrial publicity that might prejudice the jury pool. In this instance, the First Amendment rights of the free press came into direct conflict with the Sixth Amendment right of the accused to a trial by an impartial jury. The Supreme Court refused to “establish a priority applicable in all circumstances” and balanced the two competing rights, both guaranteed by the Constitution. While acknowledging that the Sixth Amendment is important, the Court came down on the side of the free press and overturned the gag order.

It would be misleading, however, to suggest that the only circumstances in which speech might be limited is when another constitutional right is involved. Concerned legislators sometimes adopt measures that limit speech to address societal problems. In recent years, for example, the Supreme Court has been asked to consider a wide variety of measures restricting commercial speech. To handle such cases, the Supreme Court created an ad hoc balancing test that was first articulated in Central Hudson Gas and Electric v. Public Services Commission (1980). Under the Central Hudson test, courts must determine (a) whether the expression to be limited promotes legal products, services, or activities; (b) whether the government has a substantial interest in prohibiting or limiting the commercial speech; (c) whether the restriction directly advances the government interest; and (d) whether the restriction is only as broad as necessary to advance the government’s interest. Application of the Central Hudson test, in most instances, requires the court to balance the benefit of the proposed restriction (the second factor discounted by the third factor) against the burden imposed on the freedom of speech (the fourth factor). The results of ad hoc balancing using the Central Hudson test are case specific and cannot be generalized.

At first glance, balancing offers an easy way to resolve conflicts between free speech and other rights or interests. By assigning appropriate weights to both the right of a free press and the right of a fair trial, the Supreme Court was able to strike the appropriate balance in the Richmond Newspaper case. While the result in this instance makes intuitive sense, the balancing approach is not without its critics. The very flexibility that makes balancing so intellectually appealing means that it may threaten freedom of speech. For that reason, absolutists such as Justice Hugo Black (1960) rejected the idea of balancing First Amendment rights against asserted state interests.

Rodney Smolla (1992) cautions against simple answers to all questions related to the freedom of expression. While the language of the Free Speech Clause is unambiguous, academics and jurists have struggled to find bright lines for distinguishing between protected and unprotected expression. Even when it is possible to assign speech into discrete categories, transcendent legal principles remain elusive. Depending on the type of speech at issue and the circumstances, different rules apply. The Supreme Court has admitted as much, noting that “each method of communicating ideas is a ‘law unto itself’ and that law must reflect the ‘differing natures, values, abuses and dangers’of each method” ( Metromedia v. City of San Diego, 1981, p. 501). For every principle, the Supreme Court seems to have acknowledged one or more exceptions.

This does not diminish the importance of freedom of expression. On the contrary, Thomas Emerson (1963) suggests that the difficulty in developing a coherent theory and transcendent principles reflects the importance of the task. No single formula or rationale is sufficient. Rather, each controversy must be considered on its own merits. The Free Speech Clause expresses an ideal, but this ideal is challenged by speech that is hateful, prurient, and threatening. Thomas Jefferson recognized as much when he warned that the free and open discussion required for true democracy is not for the fainthearted, who might prefer the calm of despotism to sailing on the “boisterous sea of liberty.”

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