We are pleased to share with you our May occasional paper, entitled, “Market Failure? Re-examining the Metaphor of the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ in the Philippines”. Written by Atty. Jenny Domino, Fellow for Democracy and Human Rights of the Stratbase ADR Institute.

Her paper argues that metaphor of the “marketplace of ideas” remains a popular semantic tool used by Philippine courts to fashion the metes and bounds of allowable expression. The utility of the metaphor has remained unquestioned since its early jurisprudential usage to articulate the right to freedom of speech guaranteed in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. This paper will discuss how new developments in the Philippines – such as the large-scale and systematic violence brought by the “war on drugs” and the onset of social media – bring to light the limitations of the metaphor. It will suggest the possible dangers of mooring speech freedoms on the naïve wish that truth will prevail in an open and uninhibited speech market.

Further details can be found in the full text of the paper.

(DOWNLOAD HERE)