Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights: Article 17, Memory Politics, and the ECtHR's Selective Silencing

The Right to be Remembered

While the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) safeguards an individual’s right to be digitally “forgotten,” what assurances exist regarding an individual’s—or a society’s—“right to be remembered?” A presentation at the International Telecommunications Society’s recent European Regional Conference held at Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom raised this issue. At the nub of the matter is the increasing reliance…

Hate Speech and the European Court of Human Rights: Article 17, Memory Politics, and the ECtHR's Selective Silencing

In this fourth guest entry on The Volokh Conspiracy, I examine a domain where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the now defunct European Commission on Human Rights (EComHR) has shown a bold willingness to restrict speech, namely speech related to totalitarianism and genocide. But the ECtHR's boldness in some cases is matched by inconsistency in others, raising a fundamental concern, when the memory of atrocity becomes a matter of le…