ABSTRACT
There is a ‘common good’ in maintaining free speech in a democracy, of course, and this has been strongly asserted by the ECtHR. A legal ban on the cartoons would therefore have been disproportionate in a democracy. But, as we have seen, a human rights approach routed in the ethics of the UDHR seeks to avoid manifesting rights in a way that is exterior to human beings or rides roughshod over human dignity, as the cartoonists did in the name of free speech.
