Freedom of Speech and Expression: A Comparative Analyses of USA and India

Abstract

The majority of people in today's world believe that democracy is the ideal form of government and that the degree to which a sovereign nation's citizens are able to exercise their rights determines the status of that nation's democracy. Both India and the USA have proven to be among the largest democracies in the world. Both countries have adopted right-based jurisprudence, with India emphasizing the state is responsible to maintain and promoting to justice as a welfare state and the USA mainly focusing on securing rights of its citizens. Whereas, India’s focused on ensuring to individual freedoms of its citizens social justice. In both India and the USA, the fundamental rights freedom of expression has received in their Constitutions. However, the extent of these rights as they are governed by the separate governments and decided by the respective judiciaries. In both of these countries this right is not absolute. The boundaries between citizens' freedom to express their emotions and their liability if they do so outside of those boundaries vary in both. These differences as well as the factors that influence them in both of these countries is important to understand. After overall examining the status of this right in both nations, it has been observed that the expansion of this right for citizens in India is much wider than that of the citizen of the USA.