La censure et la loi

In: Raisons politiques: études de pensée politique, Heft 17, S. 117-129

Abstract

Attorney Dominique de Leusse speaks in this interview about the legal & ethical parameters of censorship. De Leusse aims to dispel the idea that legal instruments such as France's law on freedom of the press from July 29, 1881 encompass a uniformly applicable & stable theory of the laws of free expression. Rather, as de Leusse suggests, the question of legal applicability in cases of disputed freedom of expression is based on the difficulty of the unforeseeable nature of disputed expression. The limits that are not to be crossed in expression become all the more diffuse when the alleged offense is one whose nature has not been rigidly established by law. This is particularly the case in literature, where one must balance the degree of non-reality encompassed in the literary work with the degree of reality on which it is based & to which it relates. The various modes of evaluation that come into play in both calls for censorship & the cases against censorship are discussed by de Leusse here, with reference made to several recent works of literature that were subject to calls for censorship. C Brunski