In The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression, Richard Moon argues that freedom of expression is valuable because human agency and identity emerge in discourse – in the joint activity of creating meaning. Moon recognizes that the social character of individual agency and identity is crucial to understanding not only the value of expression but also its potential for harm.

The book considers a range of issues, including the regulation of advertising, hate speech, pornography, blasphemy, and public protest. The book also considers the shift to social media as the principal platform for public engagement, which has added to the ways in which speech can be harmful while undermining the effectiveness of traditional legal responses to harmful speech. The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression makes the case that the principal threat to public discourse may no longer be censorship, but it is rather the spread of disinformation, which undermines public trust in traditional sources of information and makes engagement between different positions and groups increasingly difficult.

Richard Moon is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at the University of Windsor. In addition to this book, he is the author of The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (Toronto: UTP, 2024), Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Target of Hate Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) and The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (Toronto: UTP, 2000); the editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008); the co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (Oxford: Hart/Bloomsbury, 2016), Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (Toronto: UTP, 2024) and The Surprising Constitution (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024); and the contributing editor to Canadian Constitutional Law (Toronto: Emond-Montgomery, multiple editions).

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