Winfield Freedom of Expression Initiative

Where freedom of expression flourishes, democracy flourishes. Where freedom of expression dies, democracy dies. The centrality of that idea is captured in these words from a 1937 US Supreme Court decision, “Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.”

Since 2021, ISLP has put this idea to practical and effective use. ISLP lawyers, working pro bono, have defended journalists facing prosecution by the state for having criticized their politicians. Led by Richard (Dick) Winfield, they have defended journalists in Algeria, Great Britain, Iraq, Palestine, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, and Nigeria.

ISLP’s Media Law Working Group lawyers have intervened in appeals defending freedom of expression in the European Court of Human Rights, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Where ISLP has litigated to defend a case, not a single court has failed to acquit the journalist and set them free.

Our media defense lawyers have also trained hundreds of lawyers globally to defend journalists in their respective national courts, and have helped draft legislation to reform the media laws of several countries. We have given extensive training to lawyers in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Mozambique, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, China, Japan, Germany, Algeria, Russia, Kuwait, Bahrain, France, Hungary, Sweden, Great Britain, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Tunisia.

“This is…a new breed of secular missionaries – lawyers who, free of charge, take First Amendment freedoms to foreign lands. With humility and tenacity, they are arming courageous journalists against sedition, criminal defamation, contempt by ‘scandalizing the court,’ Napoleonic insult laws, and other colonial devices which governments use to silence and jail their critics.” – Geoffrey Robertson, QC, leading British human rights and media law barrister