The Most Human Right: Why Free Speech Is Everything

by Eric Heinze

Overview

A bold, groundbreaking argument by a world-renowned expert that unless we treat free speech as the fundamental human right, there can be no others.

What are human rights? Are they laid out definitively in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the US Bill of Rights? Are they items on a checklist—dignity, justice, progress, standard of living, health care, housing? In The Most Human Right, Eric Heinze explains why global human rights systems have failed. International organizations constantly report on how governments manage human goods, such as fair trials, humane conditions of detention, healthcare, or housing. But to appease autocratic regimes, experts have ignored the primacy of free speech. Heinze argues that goods become rights only when citizens can claim them publicly and fearlessly: free speech is the fundamental right, without which the very concept of a “right” makes no sense.

Heinze argues that throughout history countless systems of justice have promised human goods. What, then, makes human rights different? What must human rights have that other systems have lacked? Heinze revisits the origins of the concept, exploring what it means for a nation to protect human rights, and what a citizen needs in order to pursue them. He explains how free speech distinguishes human rights from other ideas about justice, past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262547246
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.62(w) x 8.87(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities in the University of London and an internationally recognized authority on free speech and human rights. He is the author of Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship, The Concept of Injustice,and other books. He is a frequent guest speaker on radio, on television, and online, and his opinion pieces have appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, and many other publications.

Table of Contents

1 Introductions 1
2 What is the "Human" of Human Rights? 11
3 The Invention of the Individual 25
4 Going Global 51
5 The Most Human Right 73
6 Do All Opinions Count? 101
7 Conclusion 125
Acknowledgments 131
Appendix: Universal Declaration of Human Rights 133
Notes 139
Works Cited 159
Index 179

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Despite the recent controversies over free speech, few people have a clear idea of why it’s so fundamental. This insightful and penetrating analysis shows how free speech is not just another good thing we have a right to, like food and protection from abuse, but a prerequisite to the very concept of a ‘right.’ (If you disagree, would it be OK for authorities to prevent you from saying why?)”
—Steven Pinker, author of Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
 
“This engaging book makes a compelling case that freedom of speech constitutes an essential prerequisite for a regime in which other rights can be claimed by all individuals openly, candidly, and without fear, rather than bestowed by government as a matter of discretion.”
—Nadine Strossen, author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship
 
“A vitally important book about the most basic of human rights. We forget the importance of free speech to open and democratic societies at our peril.”
—James Bloodworth, journalist and author of Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain
 
“Human rights are often presented as a package—a set of interdependent and indivisible norms. Eric Heinze argues forcefully that free speech must have priority. Against the injustices of our world and the orthodoxies of reformers alike, Heinze has issued an articulate and provocative challenge.”
—Samuel Moyn, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
 
“Eric Heinze is one of our most thoughtful, informed, and imaginative scholars of freedom of speech. His book will reward a close reading.”
—Robert Post, author of Citizens Divided: Campaign Finance Reform and the Constitution

Editorial Reviews

Eric Heinze has produced a book which cuts through years of muddled thinking on the subject. It is required reading for anyone who allows the phrase 'human rights' to cross their lips . . . [Heinze] reconnects the idea of rights to the primacy of free speech . . . an ingeniously simple argument”
– Joe Humphreys, Irish Times

From the Publisher

03/11/2022

Heinze (law and humanities, Queen Mary, Univ. of London) argues that free speech is the most important human right and that all other rights are dependent on it. He begins with an historical overview that discusses how major thinkers—among them Aristotle, Plato, and Confucius—contributed to the modern construct of what we now call human rights. Much of the book grapples with the meaning of human rights and examines the difference among intrinsic rights, basic human survival needs, and the rights people gain through government management. The text also interrogates the concept of democracy and its relationship to free speech and offers a critical overview of the controversial Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Heinze's approach reads somewhat like a college lecture, at times tedious in its narrow focus but also thought-provoking and pragmatic in its exploration of such a lofty subject. VERDICT Best suited for a niche audience of human rights, philosophy, and legal experts who are engaged in high-level work on the topic.—Sarah Bartlett Schroeder

Library Journal

2021-12-29
A legal scholar argues that without the right to free speech, there is no such thing as human rights.

Using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a touchstone, Heinze approaches his argument methodically, considering historical systems of justice, offering a focused history of Western philosophy, and looking at how human rights are conceptualized on an international level before arriving at his thesis. It’s a dense, often plodding exploration, a quality acknowledged in the introduction when the author explains trying to “strike balances between different types of readers”; among his audience he includes those “unfamiliar with human rights.” In sketching out his theory so the latter sort of readers will be able to make sense of his thesis when he finally gets to it, the author deploys technical vocabulary couched in ordinary language. Heinze makes a distinction, for instance, between human goods—effectively, benefits that any government may decide to provide to its people, “such as fair trials or equal protection under the law”—and human rights. Similarly, he pairs the duty principle (making the provision of such goods obligatory under law renders them rights) to his discursive principle (individual citizens’ ability to discuss those duties is what makes the goods they provide rights). These definitions and distinctions are necessary for his argument, but they become tendentious with repetition. For all the careful lead-up to his discussion of free speech, he punts some of the most urgent questions of the day, seemingly throwing up his hands when touching on speech in the online arena, to which he devotes four paragraphs. Readers hoping for a consideration in the same lively and provocative vein as P.E. Moskowitz’s The Case Against Free Speech should look elsewhere. Still, portions of Heinze’s argument—such as the politicization of international rights monitoring agencies’ findings, and in particular the final chapter, when he looks at recent rights cases in the real world—offer some food for thought.

A topic that deserves a more captivating treatment.

Kirkus Reviews