Paul Kearns, Freedom of Artistic Expression: Essays on Culture and Legal Censure, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 260 pp, hb £50.00.
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | James Lowe |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12084_2 |
REVIEWS
Paul Kearns,Freedom of Artistic Expression: Essays on Culture and Legal
Censure, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 260 pp, hb £50.00.
In Freedom of Artistic Expression: Essays on culture and legal censure, artistic freedom
is aptly described by Kearns as: ‘the Cinderella of liberties, seldom in the
spotlight, and never in the limelight’ (150). Given the volume of ink spilled over
the topic of freedom of expression more generally it is curious that the matter of
specifically artistic expression has, by and large, escaped widespread academic
consideration, especially in the Anglo-European legal literature. However, as the
publication of this collection of essays clearly testifies, one notable exception is
Paul Kearns who has, for over a decade now, studiously sought to shed light on
the distinct issues emanating from the, more often than not, fraught relationship
between the artistic and legal realms.
The fruits of Kearns’ considerable labour to date are presented in the form of
thirteen substantive essays which, ordered in the main chronologically, offer a
contextualised and critical modern history of artistic freedom of expression, with
a principal focus on UK and European law. To that end, after an initial overview
in Part I of the development of a right to freedom of artistic expression in the
United Kingdom, the essays in Parts II and III examine the interplay between
artistic expression and perhaps two of its principal legal nemeses – namely
obscenity and blasphemy laws. Indeed, it is here that the value of compiling a
series of essays written at different times over a number of years is most apparent.
With Part II’s contributions having been written at the turn of the century, a
historical basis is established from which Part III, the essays of which were first
written between the mid to late-2000s, is allowed to develop, taking into
account the developments in the law in the intervening years, most notably the
introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the abolition of
the crime of blasphemy in 2008.
Part IV, under the heading ‘Highly Topical Legal Issues on the Regulation
of Artistic Freedom’, contains the three most recent essays. The first offers a
comparative examination of artists’ rights (in terms of both human and intel-
lectual property rights) in the suitably contrasting jurisdictions of England,
France and the USA, as well as under the ECHR, whilst the second focuses
in greater depth on the, limited though expanding, case law concerning spe-
cifically artistic expression emanating from the European Court of Human
Rights. Finally, the concluding essay of Part IV, titled ‘Controversial Art and
the Legal Enforcement of Morality in England’, (re)examines the underlying
issues and tensions relating to the vexing relationship between art and law
that prevail throughout Kearns’ essays and, in so doing, offers something of a
substantive summary of and conclusion to the preceding sections. Finally, and
breaking from the largely chronological order of the previous sections, Part V
proffers two essays dating from the early-2000s on artistic expression within
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© 2014 The Authors. The Modern Law Review © 2014 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2014) 77(5) MLR 823–829
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
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