The following is a guest post by Louis Myers, a legal reference librarian at the Law Library of Congress. Louis has authored several blog posts for In Custodia Legis, including New Acquisition: The Trial of Governor Picton, A Case of Torture in Trinidad, Indigenous Law Research Strategies: Settlement Acts, Looking into the Past: Space Telescopes and the Law of Outer Space, Law Library of Congress Report Explores Sanctions for Worldwide Human Rights Abuses, Law Library of Congress Report Discusses Tax and Investment Incentives, Guide to Law Online Nations Completed! and many more!
The Law Library of Congress is happy to announce our recent report Book and Media Censorship in Selected Countries. This report describes the legal frameworks from 22 countries related to their regulation of written materials. Researchers reviewing the report will find information about countries from North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. A slate of reasons exists for and against censorship of written materials, including historical, cultural, and philosophical justifications. Readers will find that countries use a variety of legal tools to satisfy both the protection of expression and to limit the most controversial materials, through legislation, regulation, and judicial enforcement.
Those of us who are used to the First Amendment protections of the U.S. Constitution will find several comparisons and quite a few contrasts in other countries’ protections of expression, especially as they pertain to written materials. However, each country in the report approaches the protection of expression differently. Some countries have legislated criminal penalties for materials deemed inappropriate for a variety of reasons, while other countries have extremely limited circumstances where they may censor material.
Publication of the Law Library’s report coincided with participation by the author in a panel discussion at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in Chicago. The program, “Obscenity, Authoritarianism, and Blasphemy: The Global Context of Book Banning” featured discussions on book banning in the United States and an introduction and explanation of the report.
This report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website). The Law Library also regularly publishes articles related to freedom of expression in the Global Legal Monitor.
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