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 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 a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor. He has written extensively about freedom of expression and freedom of religion, publishing more than fifty articles and book chapters in Canada and abroad. He is also the author of The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (2000), editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (2008), and a contributing editor of Canadian Constitutional Law (2010).

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