Judicial Lectures: Lord Walker’s Mansfield Law Society 60th Anniversary Lecture (Nov 2008)
10 Tuesday Nov 2009
Anthony Fairclough News Articles, Features
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This is the first in an occasional series of posts on lectures given by Supreme Court Justices (and former Law Lords) as well as foreign supreme court justices. 
The Right Honourable The Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe presented the Mansfield Law Society 60th Anniversary Lecture on 12 November 2008 on ‘The first amendment and article 10: sisters under the skin.’
The full text is available here.
Lord Walker’s argument is that despite “diverse backgrounds”, US and European protection of freedom of expression shares “an essential core of the same or similar values”. He discusses the balancing exercises necessary in human rights adjudication under the ECHR, and contrasts the leading US decisions in the field of free speech, considering sedition, libel, blasphemous and racially offensive speech and obscenity.