Paul Wragg

Do free speech rights apply against private actors? Free Speech Theory challenges contemporary thought on this issue. It champions free speech not for its contribution to epistemic advance or informed democratic participation, but as a product of individuality, located in a system of freedom from state control. This has wide-ranging implications for rights-claims directed against private actors concerning online, workplace, and public-interest based forms of speech. This innovative, rigorously researched, and comprehensive restatement of free speech principle is both topical and important. It has significance for policy makers, practitioners, and commentators around the world.

Do free speech rights apply against private actors? Free Speech Theory challenges contemporary thought on this issue. It champions free speech not for its contribution to epistemic advance or informed democratic participation, but as a product of individuality, located in a system of freedom from state control. This has wide-ranging implications for rights-claims directed against private actors concerning online, workplace, and public-interest based forms of speech. This innovative, rigorously researched, and comprehensive restatement of free speech principle is both topical and important. It has significance for policy makers, practitioners, and commentators around the world.

This book collects together extracts from key cases, legislation, international treaties and academic journal articles on commercial law, framed by guiding and explanatory commentary from the authors. It covers the core topics common to most commercial law syllabi with a focus on consumer law topics. The closing chapter looks at future directions for commercial law, including the very latest debates and developments. Suitable for use on optional twelve-week modules, the book is highly focused, up-to-date, and engaging.

This book collects together extracts from key cases, legislation, international treaties and academic journal articles on commercial law, framed by guiding and explanatory commentary from the authors. It covers the core topics common to most commercial law syllabi with a focus on consumer law topics. The closing chapter looks at future directions for commercial law, including the very latest debates and developments. Suitable for use on optional twelve-week modules, the book is highly focused, up-to-date, and engaging.

This thought-provoking book provides a systematic, philosophically-grounded reconceptualisation of press freedom and press regulation. In a major departure from orthodox norms, the book argues that press freedom and coercive independent press regulation are not mutually exclusive; that newspapers could be made to compensate their victims, through regulation, without jeopardising their free speech rights; that their perceived public watchdog status does not exempt them; and, ultimately, that mandatory press regulation is not unconstitutional. In doing so, the book questions our most deeply-held, intuitive beliefs about the press and its role in society. Why do we say the printed press has a duty to act as a public watchdog when there is no legally enforceable apparatus by which to ensure it does? Why does government constantly recommend that the press regulate itself when history shows this model always fails? Why do victims of press malfeasance continue to suffer needlessly? By deconstructing the accepted view of press freedom and mandatory regulation, this book shows that both are deeply misunderstood. The prevailing notion that the press must serve the public is an empty relic of Victorian ideology that is both philosophically incoherent and legally unjustifiable. The press is obliged to make good, not do good.

This thought-provoking book provides a systematic, philosophically-grounded reconceptualisation of press freedom and press regulation. In a major departure from orthodox norms, the book argues that press freedom and coercive independent press regulation are not mutually exclusive; that newspapers could be made to compensate their victims, through regulation, without jeopardising their free speech rights; that their perceived public watchdog status does not exempt them; and, ultimately, that mandatory press regulation is not unconstitutional. In doing so, the book questions our most deeply-held, intuitive beliefs about the press and its role in society. Why do we say the printed press has a duty to act as a public watchdog when there is no legally enforceable apparatus by which to ensure it does? Why does government constantly recommend that the press regulate itself when history shows this model always fails? Why do victims of press malfeasance continue to suffer needlessly? By deconstructing the accepted view of press freedom and mandatory regulation, this book shows that both are deeply misunderstood. The prevailing notion that the press must serve the public is an empty relic of Victorian ideology that is both philosophically incoherent and legally unjustifiable. The press is obliged to make good, not do good.