case study article 19

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution with Important Case Laws

• Constitutional Law Subject-wise Law Notes
• August 26, 2020

Article 19 guarantees to every Citizen of India the following six basic, fundamental freedoms-

(1) All citizens shall have the right

(a) to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;

(c) to form associations or unions;

(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;

(e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and

(g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business

(2) Nothing in sub clause (a) of clause ( 1 ) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence

(3) Nothing in sub clause (b) of the said clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it imposes, or prevent the State from making any law imposing, in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause

(4) Nothing in sub clause (c) of the said clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it imposes, or prevent the State from making any law imposing, in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order or morality, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause

(5) Nothing in sub clauses (d) and (e) of the said clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it imposes, or prevent the State from making any law imposing, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of any of the rights conferred by the said sub clauses either in the interests of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe

(6) Nothing in sub clause (g) of the said clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it imposes, or prevent the State from making any law imposing, in the interests of the general public, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause, and, in particular, nothing in the said sub clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it relates to, or prevent the State from making any law relating to,

(i) the professional or technical qualifications necessary for practising any profession or carrying on any occupation, trade or business, or (ii) the carrying on by the State, or by a corporation owned or controlled by the State, of any trade, business, industry or service, whether to the exclusion, complete or partial, of citizens or otherwise .

Ramesh Thaper v. State of Madras

The provincial government imposed a ban on the admission and circulation of the weekly newspaper “Cross Roads” printed and published in Bombay in Ramesh Thaper v. State of Madras in exercise of its powers in Section 9 (1-A) of the Act of Maintenance of the Public Order 1949. The majority of the Court of Justice ruled the Order invalid for the freedom provided for in point (a) of Article 19(1). Two US decisions were referred to by the Court. The following paragraph has been cited by the Supreme Court, with approval:

Freedom of expression as well as freedom of publishing is important to that right. The journal should also have a title meaning without dissemination.

The freedom of the press could not only be violated if the publication’s circulation is not directly prohibited, as was the case with Romesh Thapar, but also if some government action adversely affects the circulation of the publication.

Sakal Papers (P) Ltd. v. Union of India

In Sakal Papers (P) Ltd. v. Union of India , the Supreme Court held the right not only to the subject which it was entitled to disclose, but also to the volume of circulation to spread his ideas as granted by Article 19(1)(1).

Throughout this situation, the Laws of the Price and Page Act of 1956 allowed the Central Government, throughout relation to the pages and the scale of newspapers, to control rates and the distribution of advertising space. The Central Government released an Order for the Daily Newspapers in 1960 according to that law, which laid out the maximum number of pages that the journal might print on a price basis. A minimum price was determined and a number of pages were published by a newspaper.

The decree was protested as a breach of press rights, and by sicking up its implementation, the amount of pages was either reduced or the price was raised. The distribution rate of the publication would be decreased in that situation and thus the press rights would be infringed explicitly. The command was thus a double-edged sword. By limiting the space of the pages as a result of a reduction in the number of pages it cuts out circulation or publication or distribution of news, ideas and knowledge.

Bennett Coleman and Co. v. Union of India

The Supreme Court has, in the Bennettt Coleman case , checked the clear and relative effect on freedom of speech provided under Article 19(1)(a), of the challenged conduct. The Express Newspapers Pvt application of this exam. Ltd. v. Union of India, the supreme court held that the notice of re-entry upon the forfeiture of lease and of the threatened demolition of the Express Buildings, intended and meant to silence the voice of the Indian express and therefore, violative of Article, 19 (1) (a) read with Article 14 of the Constitution.

The applicant was allocated land plots for the construction of its presidential building under a lease agreement in this case. In contravention of municipal corporate law, the Lt. Governor of Delhi claimed that the New Express Building was built and served as a notice of re-entry and demolition. The relevant evidence in this situation was adequate to demonstrate that the notifications challenged were unreasonable and unenforceable. Accordingly, Articles 19(1) and 14 have been broken.

Hamdard Dawakhana (Wakf) lal kuan v. Union of India

In Hamdard Dawakhana (Wakf) lal kuan v. Union of India, it was held that “commercial advertisements” were not covered within the concept of freedom of speech and expression.

The 1954 Medicines and Magic Cures Act, which aimed at avoiding self-medication and self-care, was subsequently enacted by banning the printing of product ads containing mystical properties for the treatment of diseases. The activities have been brought into doubt in breach of the freedom of speech enshrined in Article 19(1). The Court found the Act to be constitutional and stated that it did not infringed on freedom of expression but that the purpose and object of the challenged Act, its true meaning and intent, was connected with commerce. In the public interest the terms of the Act imposed fair limits on the petitioner’s exchange and company and were repealed in compliance with Clause 19(6).

TATA Press Ltd. v Mahanagar telephone Nigam Ltd

The Supreme Court held in TATA Press Ltd. v Mahanagar telephone Nigam Ltd. that the security of Section 19(1) “economic speech” could not necessarily be refused if entrepreneurs made it.

The Tatas published the Tata Press Yellow Pages (“Tata-Pages”), which was a buyer’s guide to computation of advertising received by merchants, retailers and practitioners according to trade, sector or occupation. In this instance Tatas was invited to publish the paper.

The Supreme Court found that the Tata press yellow pages was a buyer’s guide that includes advertising and that only the advertiser should be a trader, businessman or professional was applied in the form of the basis / criterion for acceptance or advertising publication. The applicants thus were not willing to prevent the publishing of the “Tata Press Yellow Pages” by Nigam or the Union of India.

Union of India v. Assocaition for democratic reforms

This states that democracy is an evolving process and “a good society requires a ‘aware citizenship.'” The Apex Court for electoral changes in India vs Association rule that electors will have the right to be told about the biography of the party’s candidate contesting M.P. Or M.L.A. was essential and central to the society ‘s life. The Court held that, in the absence of free and reasonable elections and without accurate and far-reachingly educated electors, “democracy will live,” the elector had the right to material knowledge about a nominee who contested elections for a position that was extremely essential for democracy, was implied in the freedom of speech guaranteed by article 19(1)(a).

The Apex Court directed the Indian Election Commission to preserve purity of elections, particularly to provide clarity in the mechanism of elections, to call upon each candidate seeking election to parliament or a State Legislature, in accordance with Article 324, on an affidavit by issuing required orders, in exercise of his authority and as a required item of his nominations document.

Holding that the Court could not pass any order, directing the legislature to amend the law, the Delhi high Court in Association for democratic reforms v. Union of India directed in Election Commission to secure to voters, information pertaining to assets, education qualifications and antecedents of life of the candidates contesting election.

Ministry Information and broadcasting v. Cricket Association of Bengal

The Supreme Court in its Registrar, the Bengal Ministry of Information and Radio Cricket Association, rendered a huge breakthrough and held that, under Article 19(1)(a), a individual had a right to television and transmit to audience via the electronic media, television and radio, every significant case, and the State had no monopoly on electronic communication. It was found to be inconsistent with right of freedom of speech as a monopoly over broadcasting by either the government or any other body. Any monopoly could be created in such media precisely because, unlike Article 19(2), State monopolies under Article 19(6) will not be permitted to conform with Section 19(1)(g) of the Act.

It ordered the central government to take urgent measures to establish an independent public authority to regulate the usage of airwaves, to relieve Doordarshan or Akashvani of influence of the government and to ensure a full and efficient enjoyment of citizens’ freedom of speech and expression.

K.A. Abbas v. Union of India

Under this case it was before the Supreme Court that movies were constitutionalised as outlets of speech and their pre-censorship. In accordance with the 1952 clinematograph Act, films are classified as ‘U’ and ‘A’ films. Whereas ‘U’ movies are intended for unlimited displays. Only adults will view ‘A’ videos. The applicant did not obtain the ‘U’ certificate for the film ‘The Tale of Four Cities,’ and the laws set out below were challenged on the legitimacy of the Cinematograph Act of 1952.

The Supreme Court upheld the validity of the contested law and stated that a reasonable restriction on the precensorship of films was justified under Article 19(2). Films had to be treated separately from other forms of art and expression because a motion picture could reinforce emotion more deeply than any other art product. Consequently, it was deemed as true that the films were categorized into two categories – ‘U’ and ‘A’ films.

Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala

The Supreme Court in Emmanuel v. Kerala ruled that no one should be required to sign the National Anthem “unless he has sincere moral convictions on the grounds of his religious conviction.” Three girls, belonging to Jehovah ‘s witnesses in this case, were suspended, sang, and never joined the school for failing to sing the National Anthem.

The High Court of Kerala upheld their expulsion from school because they had a fundamental obligation to choose their National Hymn and committed an offense under the 1971 National Honorary Act, Prevention of Insults.

However, the Supreme Court overturned the High Court’s ruling and found that it had committed no violation. The expulsion of children from school in accordance with Article 19(1), subparagraph (a) was also a violation of their basic rights, which led to freedom of silence.

Chintaman Rao v. State of M.P

In Chintaman Rao c. M.P. State to provide adequate work in bidi production during agricultural seasons for agricultural purposes. The legislation was unconstitutional as the freedom to carry out the bidi manufacturing sector in such a region was unreasonably limited, because this was far outside the reach of the rule. In conclusion of the Supreme Court:

It goes well beyond the point …. The Law as it stands does not only place a prohibition on those who are interested in cultivation, but also forbids people who have no association with farming activities from participating in the sector of bidi development and thus earn a living.

Sushila Saw Mill v. State of Orissa

the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Orissa Saw mills and Saw Pit (Control) Act, 1991 under which a total was imposed on the right to carry on trade or business in saw milling operation sawing operation within the prohibited area. One of the few situations in which complete prohibition was needed was to protect woods, which were of growing public concern.

The matter that a ban should require ‘fair limitation’ relies on the extent of the mishap that the parliament attempts to address. Of eg, if the manufacture or selling of toxic liquors, the traffic in explosives and commerce is potentially hazardous, the traffic in tourism should be completely prohibited.

Author- PragyaJaishwal (Symbiosis Law School, Noida)

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A Critical Analysis of Article 19 with latest judicial interpretation

Written by admin

Updated on: July 29, 2020

Table of Contents

A Critical Analysis of Article 19 with latest judicial interpretation or Judgments 

Our Legal World Intern Written by: PREETKIRAN KAUR

INTRODUCTION

Rightly described as the “Magna Carta” of India, The Fundamental Rights are enshrined in Part III of the Indian Constitution from Articles 12 to 35. The rights conferred under Article 19 of the Constitution are the rights of a free man. These are natural law or common law rights and not created by a statute. As such every citizen is entitled to exercise such rights provided conditions to be imposed whenever so required by the State. 1

Every citizen of India has the personal liberty and freedom to exercise his/her fundamental rights, as enshrined in the Constitution. Article 19 is one of the key Articles that guarantee freedom of speech and expression. 

According to Article 19, every citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression, assemble peacefully (without arms), form associations or unions, move freely throughout the country, reside and settle in any part of India and practise any profession, or carry on any occupation title 19 explicitly states that the right to freedom of opinion and expression also includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and “to seek, receive and impart

DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLE OF STATE POLICY (DPSP) with case law

information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Article 19 (5) of the Constitution “purportedly empowers” the states to enact legislation of their own for  protecting indigenous people.

To protect the sovereignty, integrity and security of India, the states can enact any law that imposes “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of the rights as mentioned in Article . It is to be noted that the privileges under this article remain suspended during the proclamation of emergency.

  ARTICLE 19- RIGHT TO FREEDOM  

The Constitution of India contains the right to freedom in article 19 with a view of guaranteeing individual rights that were considered vital by the framers of the constitution. These rights have been provided to all citizens. However t, the state can check or control the above rights in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, public order, decency, defamation or friendly relation with foreign state or any other ground which it deems fit. This is the most disputed and comprehensive fundamental right which comprises of even the right of freedom of press and right to information.

  Article 19(1) guarantees to all citizens the six rights. These are: –

  a) Right to freedom of speech and expression

  Freedom of speech, considered the basic freedom by most philosophical thinkers, consists of several facets, including the right to express one’s conviction and opinions freely by words of mouth, writing, printing, pictures, photographs, cartoons or any

other mode. It means freedom of speech and expression is to express one’s convictions and opinions or ideas freely, through any communicable medium or visible representation, such as gesture, signs and the like. 2 It is one of the most basic and indivisible elements for a healthy and open-minded democracy. It allows people to freely participate in the social and political happenings of their country by opening up channels of free discussions of issues of concern. This right is available only to every citizen of India and not available to any person who is not a citizen of India i.e. foreign nationals. 3 Freedom of speech is the bulwark of a democratic Government because without its appeal to reason, which is the basis of democracy, cannot be made.

In Navtej Singh Johar v. UOI 4, it was held,

“Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and expression, which includes the freedom to express one’s sexual identity and personhood 3. Section 377, under the guise of targeting conduct, actually targets the identity of LGBT persons. Once it is accepted that homosexual orientation is innate, and not learned or deviant behaviour it follows that LGBT persons cannot  freely express themselves about their own sexual orientation and, therefore, their identity because they potentially become the target for criminal prosecution under Section 377. Article 19(1)(a), therefore, protects the fundamental freedom of LGBT persons to express their sexual identity, and orientation, through speech, manner of dressing, choice of romantic/sexual partner, expression of romantic/sexual desire, acknowledgement of relationships, or any other means.”  

In Romesh Thapar v. The state of Madras 5   and Brij Bhushan v. the State of Delhi 6 , the Supreme Court took it for granted the fact that the freedom of the press was an essential part of the right to freedom of speech and expression. Patanjali Sastri J . in  Romesh Thapar observed that freedom of speech and expression included propagation of ideas, and that freedom was ensured by the freedom of circulation.

  Freedom of speech and expression includes the following:

(i) Right to propagate one’s views as well as views of others.

(ii) Freedom of press.

In the famous case Express Newspapers (Bombay) (P) Ltd. v. Union of  India 7 court observed the importance of the press and held that “In today’s free world freedom of the press is the heart of social and politic intercourse. Press has rightly been described as the fourth pillar of democracy.

(iii) Freedom of commercial advertisements.

(iv) Right against tapping o telephonic conversation.

(v) Right to telecast, that is, the government has no monopoly on electronic media.

(vi) Right against bandh called by a political party or organisation.

(vii) Right to know about government activities.

Right to know is another facet of freedom of speech. The right to know, to receive and to impart information has been recognized within the ambit of right to freedom of speech and expression.

(viii) Freedom of silence. In the case of Bijoe Emmanuel v. the State of Kerala 8 , the appellants were three children belong to a sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses who worship only Jehovah-the Creator and none other.   

They refused to sing the National Anthem because they believed the singing of national anthem was against the tenets of their religious faith  They desisted from actual singing only because of their aforesaid honest belief and conviction but they used to stand up in respectful silence daily, during the morning assembly when the National Anthem was sung. However, under the instructions of Deputy Inspector of Schools, the Headmistress expelled the appellants from school. Supreme Court found their expulsion in violation both Articles 19 and 25 of the Constitution, holding that a reasonable limitation on the right to freedom of expression must be based on a “‘a law’ having statutory force and not a mere executive or departmental instruction.” 

Nature and Scope of Article 136 of the Constitution

(ix) Right against the imposition of pre-censorship on a newspaper.

(x) Right to demonstration or picketing but not right to strike.

The state can impose restrictions on the freedom to speech and expression mentioned in 19(2) on the following grounds:- 9

• Sovereignty and integrity of India
• Security of the state
• Public order
• Morality or decency
• Contempt of court
• Incitement to offence
• Friendly relations with foreign nations.

  Essential Elements of Restrictions

• Only by the authority of Law
• Judicial Review

b) Freedom of Assembly

Every citizen has the right to assemble peacefully without arms on public land. This right guarantees the right to hold public meetings, demonstrations and take out processions but not right to strike and any sort of violent, disorderly, riotous assemblies involving the use of arms and breach of public peace. Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (1973) empowers a magistrate to restrain an assembly or procession if it poses a threat to human life, safety or public peace. Under Section 141 of the Indian Penal Code, an assembly of five or more people can be declared unlawful if they :

• Resist the enforcement of any law
• Forcibly occupy the property of any person
• Commit criminal trespass,
• Force an illegal act on a person
• Acting as a hindrance in the lawful working of government officials.

However, it can be restricted on the following grounds as mentioned in 19(3):-

• Sovereignty and integrity of India.

  In the recent case of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v Union Of India 10 , a writ petition was filed by the NGO Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan . They challenged the arbitrary imposition of police orders under section 144 of CrPC by which the  entire Central Delhi area was declared a prohibited area for holding any public meeting, dharna or peaceful protest. It was held that such a restriction was violative of Article 19(1)(a) which confers freedom of speech and expression, Article 19(1)(b) which confers right to assemble and Article 19(1)(d) which ensures right to carry out a peaceful march.

In Babulal Parate v. State of Maharashtra 11 citizens’right to take out procession or to hold da demonstration or public meetings as part of the freedom to assemble peacefully and without arms and right to move freely anywhere in the territory of India. It was also held that section 144 of CrPC was constitutional and the magistrate had the power to prevent such activities which would obstruct the public interest and peace.

  c) Freedom of Association

  All the citizens have the right to form associations or unions or co-operative societies which includes the right to form political parties, companies, partnership firms, etc. It also covers the negative aspect i.e. not to form or join an association or union.

  Aristotle has rightly said, “Man is a social animal”. They also facilitate the exchange of different ideas and convictions and also encourage the free flow of opinions in a systematic and well-organized manner. They inculcate the feeling of confidence  among the people engaged in it and give a chance to them to express their own viewpoint They serve as a latent source of information and knowledge to everyone around. Participation in these groups and clubs help an individual to survive and grow socially. But at the same time, it is pivotal to note that these organizations or political parties should not engross themselves in any kind of illegal or unlawful activities leading to resentment among people. They should aim towards harmonizing all the sections of society to work for a better tomorrow.

However, reasonable restrictions can be imposed on the following grounds mentioned in 19(4):-

i) Sovereignty and integrity of India.

ii) Public order

iii) Morality

   In O.K.A. Nair v. Union Of India 12 , an important question arose whether “ civilian’’ employees, designated as ‘ non – combatants’ such as cooks, chowkidars, lasers, barbers, mechanics, boot- makers, tailors etc . attached to the Defence Establishments

have a right to form associations or unions. The Supreme Court rejected the contentions of the appellants and held that the civilian employees of the Defence Establishments answer the description of the members of the Armed Forces within the meaning of Article 33 and, therefore were not entitled to form trade unions.

  d) Freedom of movement

  This right guarantees every citizen the right to move freely throughout the country i.e. from one state to another or from one place to another within a state. India is one entity as far as its citizens are concerned hence aims to promote a feeling of unity and  oneness. Freedom of movement has two connotations i.e.Internal (right to move inside the country) and external (right to move out of the country and right to come back to the country). However, only the first aspect is protected by Article 19.

  Reasonable restrictions can be imposed as mentioned in 19(5):-

  i) Interests of the general public.

ii) Interests of any scheduled tribe.

  Restrictions can be imposed only by or under the authority of law.

• Restrictions cannot be imposed by the executive action without legal authority.
• Restrictions must be reasonable. Restrictions must be related to the purpose specifically mentioned in these clauses.
• Restrictions can be imposed only by or under the authority of law. Restrictions cannot be imposed by the executive action without legal authority.
• Restrictions must be related to the purpose specifically mentioned in these clauses.

   Restrictions on the movements of persons afflicted with by AIDS have been held by Bombay High Court to be valid in the case of  Lucy R. D' Souza v.  State of Goa 13 .  

Restrictions to protect the interests of scheduled tribes have been stipulated for the aboriginal tribes with their distinct culture, language and customs. 14 It was held in Dhan Bahadur Ghori v. State of Assam 15 that unrestricted entry of outsiders' in areas inhabited by the tribal folks might jeopardize their very nexistence and interests.

  e) Freedom of Residence

  Every citizen has the right to reside and settle in any part of the country except Jammu and Kashmir. This right has two dimensions: (a) temporarily settling at any place (b) permanently settling at a place i.e. to set up a home or domicile. Reasonable restrictions can be imposed on two grounds as mentioned in 19(5):

i) Interests of the general public.

ii) Interests of any scheduled tribes.

  The rights of outsiders to reside and settle in tribal areas are restricted to protect the distinctive culture, language, customs and manners of scheduled tribes and to safeguard their traditional vocation and properties against exploitation. In many parts of the country, tribals have been given the right to protect their properties.

  In Ibrahim Wazir v. State of Bombay 16 , the appellant was an Indian citizen who came to India without a permit and was arrested and deported to Pakistan by the Government under the Influx from Pakistan (Control) Act, 1949. Court held that the order of removal was invalid as coming of a citizen to his home country without a permit was not an offence which would justify his expulsion from the country.

In State of Madhya Pradesh v. Bharat Singh 17 , Section 3 (1) (b) of the M.P. Public Security Act, 1959 empowered the State Government to issue an order requiring a person to reside or remain in such a place as may be specified in the order to ask him to leave the place to go to another place selected by the authorities in the interests of security of the State or public order.

g) Freedom of profession

  sub-clause(g) of Article 19 (1) confers a right to all persons to do any particular type of business of their choice but this does not confer the right to do anything consider illegal in eyes of law or to hold a particular job or to occupy a articular post of the

choice of any particular person. 18 Further Art 19(1) (g) does not mean that conditions be created by the state or any statutory body to make any trade lucrative or to procure customers to the business/businessman. 19 Moreover, a citizen whose occupation of a place is unlawful cannot claim fundamental right to carry on business in such place since the fundamental rights cannot be availed in the justification of an unlawful act or in preventing a statutory authority from lawfully discharging its statutory functions. 20

All citizens can practise any profession or carry on any occupation, trade or business. However reasonable restriction can be imposed on grounds of interest of the general public as prescribed under article 19(6). Further, the State has the right to rescribe professional or technical qualifications to practise any profession or to carry out any trade. It can also carry on a trade or business as a monopoly.

  In Luxmi Khandsari v. State of Uttar Pradesh 21 , a notification was issued under Sugar Cane control Order to stop crushers from producing khandsari so that the production of white sugar could be increased. It was ordered so to make the sugar available o consumers at a reasonable price and was held to be imposing estriction in the interest of the public on the right of persons using rushers and therefore valid.

  In the liquor trading case of Nashirwar v. State of Madhya Pradesh 22 , the Supreme court interpreted that there was no inherent right to carry on trade in liquor because it was clearly in against of interest of the general public.

  CONCLUSION

The power of words can never be underestimated since words and language are the only things that separates man from beast. It is the importance of words which helped in the exchange of ideas which led to the development of civilization. The importance was identified by the framers of the constitution hence duly protected by the Constitution. Moreover, they are justiciable. One can move to the court in case of infringement of one’s rights. 

  First amendment to Article 19 was made in the year 1951 by the Nehru government when it introduced clauses against “abuse of freedom of speech and expression”. The clauses 2, 3 and 4 of Article 19 were amended in 1963 to enable the states to make laws

as well as impose restrictions on the exercise of the rights to preserve the sovereignty and integrity of India. 

There have been cases of violation of Article 19. Recently, there have been instances of individuals being arrested under section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act  for posting ‘objectionable comments and caricatures’ of political figures on social media. This has led to a furore among the citizens of the country who have claimed that Section 66A curbs freedom of speech and expression and violates Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.  

Another form of violation of Article 19 that’s rampant in India is the hate speeches that we often get to hear from the political leaders.  These hate speeches come with the malicious intention of “outraging the religious feelings” and hence they incite communal violence and endanger public tranquillity, which is against the principle of Article 19.

  John Stuart Mill argued that without human freedom there can be no progress in  science, law or politics, which according to him required free discussion of opinion. Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1859 became a classic defence of the right to freedom of expression in which he recognised freedom of thought, taste and union as three basic liberties. To sum up, I would like to quote John Milton –

Can a person waive any of the Fundamental Rights?  

 “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties”. – John Milton.

1 A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, AIR 1950 SC 27

2 Lovell v. City of Griffin, (1937) 303 US 444.

3 Hans Muller of Nurenburg v. Supdt., Presidency Jail, Calcutta, AIR 1955 SC 367.

4 (2018) 1 SCC 791

5 1950 SCR 594

6 1950 SCR 605

7 1986 AIR 872

10 Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1153 of 2017

11 1961 SCR (3) 423

12 AIR 1976 SC 1179

13 AIR 1990 Bom 355

14 Retrieved from <https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/when-movement-is-not-free/cid/1451494> Last

visited on 26 May 2019 at 7:30 pm.

15 AIR 1953 Gau 61

16 AIR 1954 S.C. 299

17 AIR 1967 S.C. 1170

18 Fertilizer Corporation kamgar Union, Sindri v.UOI; AIR 1981 SC 344.

19 Chaitanya Prakesh v. Board of secondary Education rajasthan; 1960 Raj L.W. 209.

20 State of Gujarat v.Dharamdass; AIR 1982 SC 781

21 1981 SCR (3) 92

22 AIR 1975 SC 1368

Kerala Government deferred the 1 percent flood cess by GST Council

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Article 19 and Case Laws

• Absolute freedom (Articles105  & 194)

     2. Qualified  Freedom Article 19(2) and 499 of IPC)

USA & INDIA: -There are two differences between USA and Indian law regarding freedom of speech.

In USA, by first amendment, freedom of speech and press were expressly mentioned, while in Indian Constitution, it is implicit and developed by Court.

In the USA, there are no specific restrictions mentioned in the Constitution. Restrictions have been developed by Courts.

In India, eight (8) restrictions have been mentioned in Article 19(2).

Article 19- till Commencement of Indian Constitution – Four Amendments

• 1st,1951-Public order, Incitement to an offence, friendly relations with foreign states,& reasonable
• 16th1963 the sovereignty and integrity of India
• 44th omitted Article 19(1)(f)- Right to Property ,1978,wef 26-06-1979
• 97th,2011,wef 2012 to form the co- operative societies , added in Article 19(1)(C)

Important Case Laws and Supreme Court Rulings Related to Article 19-

( 1) brij bhushan and another vs state, doj,25-05-1950 –.

Pre -censorship on journal is unconstitutional (Name of journal – Organizer- News regarding Communal violence and Pakistan).

(2) ROMESH THAPPER VS STATE OF MADRAS, DOJ,25-05-1950, Justice Patanjali –

“Freedom of speech and of the Press lay at the foundation of all democratic organisations and without free political discussions no public education, so this is essential for the proper functioning of the process of popular Government , is possible.”

In this case Supreme Court said that public order is not the ground mentioned under Article 19(2) so on this basis restrictions can’t be imposed.

The Court said that circulation of ideas through journal or newspapers is a part of freedom of speech and expression.

The imposition of a ban on the entry and circulation of a journal within a state is an infringement of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. For example, ‘Cross Road’ journal which was printed and published in Bombay was subject to such restrictions.

Madras Government banned this journal in Madras by using the power given under Madras Maintenance of Public Order Act, 1949 on the ground of “Public Order.”

In both the above cases freedom of press was recognized as fundamental rights. Both the cases were decided on the same date.

To overcome on these Judgments  (Champacam Dorairajan  – related to reservation ) The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951 was passed on 18-06-1951 and By this Amendment, three new grounds namely- (Public Order, Incitement to an offence and friendly relation with foreign state and by 16th Amendment, 1963 sovereignty and integrity of nation was added) and reasonable (reasonable restrictions) were added .

(3)SAKAL PAPERS LTD.VS UNION OF INDIA, 1962 –

Fact –

The Newspaper (Price and Page) Act, 1956, & The Daily Newspaper (Price and Page) Order, 1960 sought to regulate number of pages according to the price charged and regulate the size and area of advertisement. Supreme Court held that this Order is invalid. S C said Article 19(1) (a) guarantees not only what a person circulates but also the volume of circulation.

Reason of Judgement –

The Court said that abridging of advertisement for an area would directly affect the income of Newspaper, the person bound to increase the price of a newspaper, also circulation of a newspaper would affect.

(4) BENNET COLEMAN AND CO. VS UNION OF INDIA, 1973 –

An order which was fixing maximum number of pages (10), challenged. Supreme Court said that its direct effect is on circulation and growth of newspapers through pages and it would cause financial loss. So, such

(5) HAMDARD DWAKHANA VS UNION OF INDIA,1960 –

Every advertisement is not part of speech for example effect of medicine is like a magic.

(6) BIJOE EMMANUEL VS STATE OF KERALA,1986 –

(National Anthem Case) – Freedom of speech includes right to silence.

(7) R. RAJAGOPAL VS. STATE OF TAMILNADU, ( Auto Shankar case),1994 –

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Government has no authority in law to impose a prior restraint upon publications of defamatory material against its official.

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Article 19 of the Indian Constitution: A Comprehensive Analysis

Introduction:

The Indian Constitution , the world’s lengthiest written constitution , is a testament to the country’s diverse culture and rich heritage. Among its many provisions, Article 19 stands out as a beacon of freedom, embodying the democratic ethos of the nation. This blog post aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of Article 19, its legal provisions, landmark cases, and more.

Legal Provisions under the Indian Constitution

Article 19 guarantees six fundamental freedoms to all Indian citizens. These include:

• Freedom of Speech and Expression: This allows citizens to express their views, opinions, and beliefs freely. However, it is subject to reasonable restrictions for the sake of public order, decency, morality, and the sovereignty and integrity of India.
• Freedom to Assemble Peaceably and Without Arms: This provision allows citizens to gather peacefully without weapons . This right, too, is subject to reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order and the sovereignty and integrity of India.
• Freedom to Form Associations or Unions: This right enables citizens to form associations or unions. It includes the right to form political parties, companies, partnerships, societies, clubs, etc.
• Freedom to Move Freely Throughout the Territory of India: This ensures the right of a citizen to move freely anywhere within the Indian territory.
• Freedom to Reside and Settle in Any Part of the Territory of India: This right allows a citizen to reside and settle in any part of the country.
• Freedom to Practice Any Profession, or to Carry on Any Occupation, Trade or Business: This right enables citizens to engage in any profession or occupation, trade, or business.

Understanding Article 19(1)(a): The Freedom of Speech and Expression in India

Freedom of Speech and Expression (Article 19(1)(a)): This freedom allows every citizen to express their thoughts and ideas through any communicable medium. It includes the right to voice one’s opinion, to publish their ideas in print or online, and to broadcast them on radio, television, or any digital platform. However, this freedom is not absolute and is subject to reasonable restrictions on grounds of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation , or incitement to an offence.

Article 19(1)(b): The Right to Assemble Peaceably and Without Arms

Freedom to Assemble Peaceably and Without Arms (Article 19(1)(b)): This right allows citizens to gather peacefully without weapons . It is the foundation of any democratic society, allowing for public meetings, processions, and demonstrations. However, this right does not protect violent gatherings or those that carry weapons. The state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of public order and the sovereignty and integrity of India.

Article 19(1)(c): The Freedom to Form Associations or Unions in India

Freedom to Form Associations or Unions (Article 19(1)(c)): This provision gives citizens the right to form associations, unions, or cooperative societies. It includes the right to form political parties, companies, partnerships, societies, clubs, etc. However, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of public order, morality, and the sovereignty and integrity of India.

Exploring Article 19(1)(d): The Freedom to Move Freely Throughout India

Freedom to Move Freely Throughout the Territory of India (Article 19(1)(d)): This right ensures that every citizen of India can move freely throughout the country. It means that there can be no restrictions on a person moving from one state to another or within any part of India. However, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on the freedom of movement to protect the interests of the general public or any Scheduled Tribe.

Article 19(1)(e): The Right to Reside and Settle in Any Part of India

Freedom to Reside and Settle in Any Part of the Territory of India (Article 19(1)(e)): This right allows a citizen to reside, settle, or rent property in any part of the country. However, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe.

Article 19(1)(g): The Freedom to Practice Any Profession in India

Freedom to Practice Any Profession, or to Carry on Any Occupation, Trade or Business (Article 19(1)(g)): This right enables citizens to engage in any profession or occupation, trade, or business. However, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of the general public. For instance, the state can prescribe professional or technical qualifications necessary for practicing any profession or occupation.

Each of these freedoms is subject to reasonable restrictions imposed by the state in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, or morality. These restrictions are meant to ensure that individual freedom does not infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others.

Landmark Cases of Article 19 of the Constitution of India:

• Romesh Thappar vs The State Of Madras (1950): This case was a landmark judgment in the interpretation of the freedom of speech and expression. The Supreme Court held that a law which authorizes an executive authority to impose restrictions on the freedom of speech goes against the constitutional right.
• Kameshwar Prasad vs State of Bihar (1962): This case challenged the constitutionality of a rule prohibiting government employees from participating in political activities. The Supreme Court held that such a rule was unconstitutional, thereby upholding the freedom to form associations.
• Menaka Gandhi vs Union of India (1978): This case expanded the scope of the right to live with human dignity, included within the ambit of the right to life under Article 21 , and held it to be within the right to privacy.

Right to Property: A Historical Perspective

Originally, the right to acquire, hold, and dispose of property was one of the fundamental rights enshrined in Article 19(1)(f) of the Indian Constitution. However, the 44th Amendment Act of 1978 removed this right from the list of fundamental rights and placed it under Article 300A as a constitutional right.

The shift from a fundamental right to a constitutional right means that the right to property is no longer enforceable through the Supreme Court under Article 32. It can only be enforced through a High Court under Article 226. This change was made to balance the individual’s right to property with the state’s need to acquire property for social welfare.

Article 19: As Amended

Here’s the entire Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, as amended:

Article 19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech, etc.

(1) All citizens shall have the right—

(a) to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;

(c) to form associations or unions or co-operative societies;

(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;

(e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and

(f) omitted

(g) to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

(2) Nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.

Impact and Interpretation

The interpretation of Article 19 has evolved through various landmark judgments. The courts have played a crucial role in defining the scope and limitations of these rights. The removal of the right to property from Article 19 reflects the dynamic nature of the Constitution and the need to adapt to changing social and economic realities.

The Future of Article 19

As we move forward, the interpretation and application of Article 19 will continue to evolve. The Indian judiciary, through its progressive judgments, has shown a commitment to expanding the scope of these fundamental freedoms while ensuring they are not misused. The future of Article 19 lies in this delicate balance between individual freedoms and societal interests.

Article 19: A Pillar of Democracy

In conclusion, Article 19 is a pillar of Indian democracy. It guarantees citizens the freedom to express their thoughts, assemble peacefully, form associations, move freely, and choose their profession. While the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, it remains protected as a constitutional right.

The essence of Article 19 lies in its ability to adapt to changing societal needs. From its inception to the various amendments and landmark judgments, Article 19 has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility. It continues to protect the rights of Indian citizens while allowing for reasonable restrictions to maintain public order and the unity and integrity of the nation.

As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, Article 19 will continue to play a crucial role in shaping India’s democratic ethos. It stands as a testament to the vision of the framers of the Indian Constitution and their unwavering commitment to securing the rights and freedoms of every Indian citizen.

Breach of Article 19: Rights and Remedies

A breach of the rights guaranteed under Article 19 of the Indian Constitution occurs when there is a violation or denial of these fundamental freedoms by the State or any of its instrumentalities. The remedies available for such a breach are as follows:

• Writ Petition : The Constitution of India provides for the enforcement of fundamental rights under Article 32 and Article 226. A person whose fundamental rights have been violated can move the Supreme Court or the High Court for the enforcement of these rights. The courts can issue various types of writs – Habeas Corpus , Mandamus, Prohibition, Quo Warranto , and Certiorari – depending on the nature of the violation.
• Public Interest Litigation ( PIL ): In case of a violation of the fundamental rights of a person or a group of people, any public-spirited individual or a non-governmental organization can file a Public Interest Litigation on behalf of the aggrieved party.
• Compensation: The Supreme Court of India has held in various judgments that compensation can be awarded to a person if there is a violation of his/her fundamental rights.
• Civil Suit: In addition to the above, a person can also file a civil suit in a competent court seeking damages for the violation of their fundamental rights.
• Human Rights Commissions: The National Human Rights Commission or the State Human Rights Commission can also be approached for redressal of grievances related to the violation of fundamental rights.

It’s important to note that the rights under Article 19 are available only against state action and not against private individuals. However, the State is obligated to protect these rights even from private parties. If the State fails to do so, it can be held accountable.

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution is more than a legal provision; it’s a symbol of the democratic values that India cherishes. From guaranteeing freedom of speech to the historical shift of the right to property, Article 19 continues to be a vital part of the Indian legal landscape.

The understanding and appreciation of Article 19 require a nuanced examination of its provisions, amendments, and the landmark judgments that have shaped its interpretation. As India continues to grow and evolve, Article 19 will undoubtedly remain at the forefront of legal and societal discourse, reflecting the nation’s commitment to upholding the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Article 19 of the Indian Constitution is a testament to the democratic principles that the country upholds. It is a beacon of freedom and a safeguard against the infringement of fundamental rights. However, these rights are not absolute and are subject to reasonable restrictions to maintain public order and the unity and integrity of the nation.

In the ever-evolving socio-political landscape of India, Article 19 continues to be a subject of intense debate and interpretation. It remains a vital part of the Constitution, ensuring that the spirit of democracy continues to thrive in the world’s largest democracy.

FAQs on Article 19 of the Indian Constitution: Understanding Your Fundamental Rights and Remedies

• What does the Freedom of Speech and Expression under Article 19(1)(a) entail? The Freedom of Speech and Expression allows every citizen to express their thoughts and ideas through any communicable medium. It includes the right to voice one’s opinion, publish ideas in print or online, and broadcast them on radio, television, or any digital platform.
• Are there any restrictions on the Freedom of Speech and Expression? Yes, this freedom is not absolute and is subject to reasonable restrictions on grounds of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation, or incitement to an offence.
• What is the Freedom to Assemble Peaceably and Without Arms under Article 19(1)(b)? This right allows citizens to gather peacefully without weapons. It is the foundation of any democratic society, allowing for public meetings, processions, and demonstrations.
• Can the state impose restrictions on the Freedom to Assemble Peaceably and Without Arms? Yes, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of public order and the sovereignty and integrity of India.
• What does the Freedom to Form Associations or Unions under Article 19(1)(c) mean? This provision gives citizens the right to form associations, unions, or cooperative societies. It includes the right to form political parties, companies, partnerships, societies, clubs, etc.
• Are there any restrictions on the Freedom to Form Associations or Unions? Yes, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of public order, morality, and the sovereignty and integrity of India.
• What is the Freedom to Move Freely Throughout the Territory of India under Article 19(1)(d)? This right ensures that every citizen of India can move freely throughout the country. It means that there can be no restrictions on a person moving from one state to another or within any part of India.
• Can the state impose restrictions on the Freedom to Move Freely Throughout the Territory of India? Yes, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on the freedom of movement to protect the interests of the general public or any Scheduled Tribe.
• What does the Freedom to Reside and Settle in Any Part of the Territory of India under Article 19(1)(e) entail? This right allows a citizen to reside, settle, or rent property in any part of the country.
• Are there any restrictions on the Freedom to Reside and Settle in Any Part of the Territory of India? Yes, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe.
• What is the Freedom to Practice Any Profession, or to Carry on Any Occupation, Trade or Business under Article 19(1)(g)? This right enables citizens to engage in any profession or occupation, trade, or business.
• Can the state impose restrictions on the Freedom to Practice Any Profession, or to Carry on Any Occupation, Trade or Business? Yes, the state can impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interest of the general public. For instance, the state can prescribe professional or technical qualifications necessary for practicing any profession or occupation.
• What is the significance of Article 19 in the Indian Constitution? Article 19 is significant as it guarantees six fundamental freedoms that are essential for the personal liberty of citizens. These freedoms form the foundation of a democratic society where citizens can express their thoughts, assemble peacefully, and engage in any profession or business.
• Are the rights under Article 19 absolute? No, the rights under Article 19 are not absolute. The State can impose reasonable restrictions on these rights in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, or morality.
• What is the difference between a fundamental right and a constitutional right? Fundamental rights are the rights guaranteed under Part III of the Indian Constitution, and they are enforceable by the courts. On the other hand, constitutional rights are the rights which are not included under Part III of the Constitution, and they are not enforceable by the courts. The right to property, which was once a fundamental right under Article 19, is now a constitutional right under Article 300A.
• What happens if my rights under Article 19 are violated? If your rights under Article 19 are violated, you can approach the Supreme Court or the High Court for the enforcement of these rights. You can also file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) or seek redressal from the National Human Rights Commission or the State Human Rights Commission.
• Can the rights under Article 19 be suspended? Yes, the rights under Article 19 can be suspended during a state of emergency as per Article 359 of the Indian Constitution. However, the right to file a writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended even during an emergency .
• What is the role of the judiciary in protecting the rights under Article 19? The judiciary plays a crucial role in protecting the rights under Article 19. It interprets the provisions of Article 19 and ensures that the State does not impose unreasonable restrictions on these rights. The judiciary also provides remedies for the violation of these rights through various types of writs.
• What is the impact of the 44th Amendment on the rights under Article 19? The 44th Amendment Act of 1978 removed the right to acquire, hold, and dispose of property from the list of fundamental rights under Article 19. This right is now a constitutional right under Article 300A.

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Home / clat ug / Landmark Judgements on Article 19: Part I

Landmark judgements on article 19: part i, introduction.

Article 19 outlines the fundamental rights of Indian citizens related to freedom of speech and expression, peaceful assembly, forming associations or unions, free movement within the country, and the right to practice any profession, occupation, trade, or business.

However, these rights are subject to reasonable restrictions imposed by the State in the interest of sovereignty, integrity, security, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, morality, contempt of court, defamation, incitement to an offence, or for protecting the interests of any Scheduled Tribe.

The development of Article 19 by the Indian judiciary has been characterized by a wide interpretation of freedom of speech and expression, while also recognizing reasonable restrictions in the interest of national security and public order.

The judiciary has upheld the right to assemble and form associations peacefully, intervening to protect citizens’ rights during protests while curbing violence. Additionally, the right to practice any profession or occupation has been recognized, but subject to reasonable regulations.

Courts have actively protected fundamental rights, ensuring a balance between individual freedoms and societal interests, and have played a crucial role in shaping the understanding and application of these rights in a diverse and democratic society.

Landmark Judgements on Article 19

• In the landmark case of Romesh Thappar v. The State Of Madras(1950) , “Freedom of speech and the press lay at the foundation of all democratic organisations, for without free political discussion no public education, so necessary for the proper functioning of the processes of popular government, is possible,” the Supreme Court stated in its ruling. In this instance, the court determined that the freedom of circulation is equally crucial to the freedom of publication.
• Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986) held that he right to speak includes the right to be silent or to utter no words. The Supreme Court maintained the right to silence of three children who were expelled from school for refusing to sing the National Anthem. The Supreme Court ruled that if someone has legitimate conscientious objections based on their religious beliefs, they cannot be forced to sing the National Anthem. As a result, the right to talk and to express oneself encompasses the right to remain silent and to do nothing.
• In the State of U.P. v. Raj Narain (1975) case, the Supreme Court noted that the right to know is derived from the idea of freedom of speech. The Court further ruled that the citizens of this nation have a right to know about every public act and everything that their public functionaries conduct in a public fashion.Every citizen must have a right to know what their government is doing; this is a fundamental tenet of a democracy. Transparency and accountability in governance can only flourish when the general public is informed of the actions of the government. As a result, the ability to gather and share information is a crucial fundamental right.

Additionally, Article 19(1)(g) does not protect dangerous, antisocial, or criminal activities, and individuals cannot claim a right to carry on business with the government. Furthermore, the right to trade does not encompass protection from competition, meaning that the loss of income due to competition in trade does not violate the right to trade under Article 19(1)(g).

• In the landmark judgment of Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India on January 25, 1978, the Supreme Court delivered a significant interpretation of Article 21, emphasizing the broad scope of “personal liberty” and the welfare state concept in the Preamble. The Court ruled that the freedom to go abroad is protected under Article 21, and administrative orders, like those under the Passport Act, cannot be challenged for being unfair, unreasonable, or unjust.However, the Court held that authorities must provide valid reasons for actions like impounding passports to avoid arbitrariness. This judgment also overruled the earlier case of A.K. Gopalan and established the “golden triangle” or “trinity” principle, emphasizing the interrelationship of Articles 14, 19, and 21, which should be read together to achieve the principles of natural justice.

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution stands as a cornerstone of democratic values, ensuring vital freedoms for citizens. These fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, expression, peaceful assembly, and the right to practice any profession, form the bedrock of individual liberties in the country.

While these rights are not absolute and can be curtailed by reasonable restrictions to maintain public order, national security, and the interests of the state, landmark judgments by the Indian judiciary have been instrumental in upholding and defining the contours of these rights.

Through dynamic interpretations and a commitment to protecting fundamental rights, the judiciary has ensured that these liberties are not arbitrarily infringed upon and have evolved to address the ever-changing needs of society. This evolution has enabled citizens to engage in public discourse, freely express their opinions, associate with like-minded individuals, and pursue their chosen occupations, thereby fostering a robust democratic culture that respects the rights and dignity of every citizen.

Also Read: [ Landmark Judgements on Article 14 ]

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Important Judgments on Article 19: A Conceptual Analysis

This article, 'important judgments on article 19: a conceptual analysis,' intends to highlight how the indian courts have always thrived towards expanding the horizons of article 19 through the liberal interpretation of the same..

This Article, 'Important Judgments on Article 19: A Conceptual Analysis,' intends to highlight how the Indian Courts have always thrived towards expanding the horizons of Article 19 through the liberal interpretation of the same.The Freedom of Expression enables one to express one’s own voice and those of others, but the freedom of the press must be subject to restrictions that apply to the freedom of speech and expression. The Indian Constitution is the world's most detailed...

This Article, ' Important Judgments on Article 19: A Conceptual Analysis,'  intends to highlight how the Indian Courts have always thrived towards expanding the horizons of Article 19 through the liberal interpretation of the same.

The Freedom of Expression enables one to express one’s own voice and those of others, but the freedom of the press must be subject to restrictions that apply to the freedom of speech and expression. 

The Indian Constitution is the world's most detailed written constitution. The Indian Constitution was written in a way that allows for future amendments to benefit the country's citizens. We know that the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution are distinct from the Legal Rights protected by other laws. Article 19 declares the freedom of speech and expression to be a fundamental right, although this freedom is not unrestricted and is subject to the limitations listed in Article 19(2).

The Freedom of Expression enables one to express one’s own voice and those of others, but the freedom of the press must be subject to restrictions that apply to the freedom of speech and expression. You are not allowed to say anything that may hurt national interests, stir up religious conflict, or highlight religious differences. The restrictions listed include those against defamation, judicial disobedience, decency or morality, state security, cordial ties between India and other nations, incitement to commit crimes, public order, and preservation of India's sovereignty and integrity.

The Indian Courts have always thrived towards expanding the horizons of Article 19 through the liberal interpretation of the same.

Some of the landmark judgements relating to Article 19 are as follows:

1. state of uttar pradesh v. raj narain, (1975) 3 s.c.r. 333, (right to know and to obtain information).

An Indian citizen named Raj Narain filed an election lawsuit with the Allahabad High Court, alleging that a political party had misappropriated public funds to help the incumbent prime minister of India win re-election. He demanded the State Government of Uttar Pradesh produce a book called the Blue Book, which covered security precautions for the Prime Minister's protection when travelling, in order to prove these accusations. In response, a representative of Uttar Pradesh's Home Security was given the go-ahead to assert a non-disclosure privilege in accordance with Section 123 of the Evidence Act. No one is allowed to provide evidence obtained from unpublished official records relating to any matter of state without the officer at the head of the Department concerned who shall give or withhold such permission as he thinks fit.”

The Supreme Court of India affirmed the High Court's order to release a government document. Raj Narain requested the Uttar Pradesh state government to release the "Blue Book," a document that detailed security precautions for the travels of the Indian prime minister. Because it was a secret official record and went against the public interest, government officials refused to turn out the document. The Court reasoned that the document was not an unpublished official record since the government official failed to file an affidavit to claim it. The Court also held that it has the power to decide whether a document is in the public interest.

2. Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms, 2002 (3) SCR 294, (Right to Know the Antecedents of the Candidates at Election)

The Association for Democratic Reforms petitioned the High Court of Delhi to compel the implementation of a number of recommendations addressing how to improve the fairness, transparency, and equity of the electoral process in India. The Law Commission made these recommendations in response to a request from the Government of India, and they stated that the Election Commission should require all candidates to disclose personal background information, including criminal history, educational background, personal financial information, and other information necessary for evaluating a candidate's capacity and capability, to the public.

The High Court of Delhi ruled that it is not in the interest of democracy to keep voters in the dark about a candidate's background, and directed the Election Commission to gather this information for their benefit. The Union of India appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of India, claiming that the Election Commission and the High Court lacked the necessary authority to make the judgement and that voters had no access to such information. The Supreme Court of India upheld the High Court order mandating that the Election Commission is required to gather and make available background information on candidates for public office, including details on their assets, criminal histories, and educational backgrounds. The Supreme Court also ruled that the right to know about public officials is derived from the constitutional right to freedom of expression.

3. LIC v. Prof. Manubhai D. Shah, 1992 (3) S.C.R. 595 or 1993 AIR 171, (Right to Reply)

The Supreme Court of India, in this case, held that the right to respond to objections to one’s position was an integral part of freedom of expression. Both of the case's appeals make reference to distinct occasions in which a state-controlled organisation declined to print or broadcast content that opposed the administration. The Court argued that government-controlled media outlets have a stronger responsibility to acknowledge a person's right to self-defence, and if a State restricts content, it must justify its actions with legal justification.

The Supreme Court ruled that exercising one's right to free expression encompasses the freedom to speak and defend one's opinions. By recognising this right, it increased the burden on publications made with public funds. Therefore, both cases' claims of discretion were denied. The State is required to provide legal justifications for rejecting content. The principle of freedom to express one's opinion regarding an event is violated for reasons such as the content only presenting one side of the argument. Such justifications were therefore deemed to be false.

4. Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala, AIR 1987 SC 748, (Right to Silence)

In this case, the expulsion of schoolchildren for refusing to sing the national anthem violated their right to freedom of expression, as per the Supreme Court of India. Due to their refusal to sing the Indian national song since it went against their Jehovah's Witness faith, three schoolchildren were expelled. Their representative claimed that the deportation violated their fundamental rights to freedom of religion and expression under Articles 19 and 25, respectively, of the Indian Constitution. According to the Court, a limitation on the right to free speech must be supported by a statute. However, the State and individuals were not required by law to sing the national song, and the State of Kerala’s Department of Education lacked the statutory force to require schoolchildren to participate.

In addition, the Court determined that the applicable regulatory measures put in place by the Kerala State Department of Education regarding required participation in singing the national anthem in schools amounted to little more than "departmental instructions" and lacked the legal standing required by Article 19 of the Constitution to impose restrictions on the right to freedom of expression.

5. Bennett Coleman and Co. v. Union of India, AIR 1973 SC 106, (Freedom of Press)

The petitioners (Bennett Coleman and Co.) challenged the restrictions imposed on the import policy of the newsprint under Import Control Order 1955 and under the Newsprint Order 1962. The Supreme Court held that the petitioner’s case was maintainable and stated that even though the petitioner was a company, it cannot be taken as a bar to not award relief for violating the rights of shareholders and staff. The Court also said that, as claimed by the respondents, Article 358 cannot be applied to laws passed before the proclamation of emergency; hence, the newsprint policy can be challenged in the court. The Court noted that freedom of the press is an essential element of Article 19(1)(a), and the absence of an express mention of such freedoms as a special category was irrelevant.

6. Union of India v. Naveen Jindal, AIR 2004 SC 1559, (Right to host National Flag)

Naveen Jindal, the petitioner, was the Joint managing director of a factory whose office space had hoisted the Indian flag. Government representatives refused to let him do it, citing the Indian Flag Code. Mr Jindal submitted a petition to the High Court, claiming that the Flag Code of India was merely a series of executive directives from the Government of India and not actual law because no law could ban Indian citizens from hosting the National flag.

The Supreme Court of India upheld a judgment affirming that the Indian Constitution, and in particular the fundamental right to freedom of expression, protected the right to fly the national flag. A manufacturing director named Naveen Jindal filed a case after learning that the Flag Code of India prohibited him from flying the national flag. The Court reasoned that a person's freedom to fly the flag can be viewed as an expression of their loyalty to and pride in their country. The Court did point out that some logical statutory limitations may apply to this privilege.

7. Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India, SCR 1960 (2) 671

In this case, it was held that “commercial advertisements” were not covered within the concept of freedom of speech and expression. The case involved the promotion of goods and narcotics that were illegal. The Petitioners' product was advertised to the general public along with claims that it had self-medicating properties. The petitioners in the case claimed that it was impossible for them to advertise their product since so many people objected to their commercials.

In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that offensive advertising is not covered by Article 19(1)(a). It stated that an advertisement, which is a business transaction, is simply the dissemination of information about the product and that it is advantageous for the public if the information is made available to them through the methods of advertisement.

8. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, AIR 1978 SC 597, (Right to Travel Abroad)

The petitioner in this case, Maneka Gandhi, was aggrieved by legislation that restricted her movement abroad. As per the Passport Act, of 1967, she was made to surrender her passport without any precise reason due to which she was not able to travel abroad. She had approached the Supreme Court claiming that this was a violation of her fundamental rights.

While this case mainly involved the question of the right to travel abroad included within Article 21, it also stirred a debate on the mutual exclusivity of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution .

The Supreme Court then gave its judgement via which the golden triangle, Articles 14, 19 and 21 were claimed to be ‘inseparable’ and it was stated that they must be interpreted in consonance with each other. It was also stated in this case by the apex court that it might be true that there are certain rights which might not be expressly provided for elsewhere in the constitution, but if they are crucial for the freedom that a citizen must be provided under the constitution, then those rights are considered to be included within the ambit of Article 19 (1).

9. Vishakha v. State of Rajasthan, 1997 6 SCC 24, (Right to Practice any Profession)

This landmark case related to sexual harassment of women in the workplace interpreted Article 19 (1) (g). The petitioner was Vishakha in this case and the respondent was the State of Rajasthan. The issues involved in this case centred around the need to emphasize the equal protection of the rights of women in the workplace.

This could be inferred from the right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, as it was the freedom of women to work as per their choice being curtailed in this case.

The Supreme Court thus ruled that any sort of sexual harassment that takes place at the workplace, violates Article 19(1) (g) of women. Subsequently, POSH guidelines were then brought into the picture post this case.

10. Excel Wear v. Union of India, 1979 AIR 25, (Right to Close Business)

This case is also related to Article 19(1)(g) but highlights an entirely different side of the said fundamental right, which further proves the dynamic nature of this right.

In this case, the petitioners being the business owners contended that their right to close business is inherent within the right to practice any profession and business under Article 19(1) (g). The issue in this case thus was to decipher whether the ‘right to close businesses’ comes within the fundamental right’s purview.

The Supreme Court in this case held Section 25-O of the Industrial Disputes Act to be void because it demanded the business owner first take permission from the government before closing their business. This as per the apex court defeated the freedom provided to every person with regard to his or her business or profession as per Article 19(1) (g).

11. U.P. Avas Evam Vikas Parishad v. Friends Co-op. Housing Society Ltd.,1996 AIR 114, (Right to Shelter)

This case highlights the importance of Article 19(1) (e) which related to the right to settle in any part of the territory of India. The petitioners, in this case, were UP Avas Evam Vikas Parishad who pleaded for the consideration of their ‘right to shelter’ as a fundamental right. The issue was to adjudicate whether the said right could be brought within the ambit of the fundamental rights.

The Supreme Court had thus held in this case that the ‘right to shelter’ is inherent and impliedly a part of the right to residence as provided under Article 19(1) (e). The right to construct houses would then also become a part of the said right. Thus any infringement of the right to shelter of any person would be a direct infringement of his fundamental rights, this was thus decided by the Supreme Court in this case.

12. Chambara Soy v. Union of India, AIR 2008 Ori 148, (Right to Move Freely)

The petitioner, in this case, Chambara Soy, was a petitioner in the village who was thus aggrieved by the blockage on the road created by some people. The blockage was on National Highway No. 200 at Kalinga Nagar.

The issue, in this case, was to decide whether such blockages created by some unscrupulous elements of society qualifies to be an infringement of the fundamental rights of the aggrieved and affected people who cannot use the said road. The aggrieved petitioner was fighting this case as his son had died due to the delay in taking him to the hospital caused because of the road blockage.

The court, in this case, stated that this comes within the purview of Article 19 (1) (d) which guarantees all the citizens the right to move freely throughout the territory of India and anybody violating this by restricting movement is causing a direct infringement of the right to freedom as per Article 19 which is a fundamental right and is thus non-negotiable.

Therefore, it is a well-established fact that the citizen of India is entitled to a number of fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution. According to Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution , one such right is the freedom of speech and expression and the Indian Courts have time and again reaffirmed the fact that being a fundamental right, it shall be protected for every Indian citizen in lieu of our Indian Constitution.

[1] Aastik Dhingra, My Freedom of Speech, Available Here

[2] Prachi Darji, Freedom of Speech and Expression in India, Available Here

[3]   Article 19 of Indian Constitution, Available Here

[4]  Article 19 of Indian Constitution, Available Here

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Snehil Sharma is an advocate with an LL.M specializing in Business Law. He is a legal research aficionado and is actively indulged in legal content creation. His forte is researching on contemporary legal issues.

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International Justice Clinic

“provided by law” applying article 19’s legality requirement to facebook’s content moderation standards*.

* Primary research and drafting by: Amanda Miller, J.D. Candidate (Class of 2022), UC Irvine School of Law

I.         Introduction

In rendering decisions on content moderation actions, the Facebook Oversight Board must scrutinize whether restrictions on speech pass muster under international human rights law. This analysis involves an assessment of Facebook’s written, publicly available policies governing content moderation on the company’s platforms (its “Community Standards”). [1] Indeed, any Board decision affirming the removal of content or an account suspension must necessarily include a finding that the relevant Community Standards comport with inter alia the right to freedom of expression as set forth by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the “ICCPR”). Yet, as this paper explains, the substance and presentation of these Standards raise important questions about their adherence to the legality requirement under Article 19.

In 2020, the Leibniz Institute for Media Research conducted a study on the development process for the Standards. [2] The study found that Facebook employs a defined, multi-step process in drafting and continuously modifying its Standards. [3] Although the company makes unilateral decisions regarding the Standards, it does consult with stakeholder groups based on “a non-systematic but representativity-oriented selection process.” [4] The study was inconclusive as to the extent to which economic interests directly influence the Standards, noting that “[o]f course, it may be argued that all decisions are influenced by the long-term goal of ensuring the continued attractiveness of Facebook as a social space.” [5] The overarching conclusion of the study was that “Facebook has been constructing a prima facie autonomous and private normative order for public communication that seeks to reconcile interests within that order and is conceived largely without reference to state law or international human rights standards.” [6] In essence, as one Facebook representative explained, “We are making rules up.” [7]

The Leibniz study demonstrates the complexity and even awkwardness of applying international human rights law – which was originally intended to apply only to State actors — to private companies. Social media platforms create policies that impact users’ freedom of expression and may negatively impact the human rights of billions of users (as well as non-users [8] ). Despite Facebook’s arguably State-like functions, “its legal status as a private service provider affords it the freedom to design, conduct, and govern this public sphere on the basis of commercial priorities rather than public interest.” [9]

So how can ICCPR Article 19’s legality requirement be applied to a company’s autonomous set of rules? As scholar Michael Lwin has pointed out, “Unlike countries, social media companies cannot pass laws because they are not states imbued with a legislative function.” [10] Also, once applied, how do Facebook’s Standards measure up to the criteria for legality under Article 19? This paper explores these novel questions raised by the Board’s human rights review of Facebook’s content restrictions.

II.        Applicable Human Rights Standards

Although States are indeed the primary subjects of international human rights law, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the “UNGPs”) establish that companies also have human rights responsibilities and provide a legal framework applicable to all types of business enterprises, including social media companies. [11] The UNGPs make clear that companies should respect the full range of human rights, including those recognized by ICCPR. [12] Facebook has expressly agreed to adhere to the UNGPs, even though they are not binding law. [13] As the UN Special Rapporteur for the right to freedom of opinion and expression (“Special Rapporteur”) has observed, the application of the UNGPs to social media companies is particularly compelling given that they “have become central platforms for discussion and debate, information access, commerce and human development.” [14]

Article 19 of the ICCPR sets forth the right to freedom of expression. This right provides the right to seek and receive information of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, and through any media. [15] However, this right permits restrictions on speech if the restriction is “provided by law,” in pursuit of a legitimate aim, as well as “necessary” and “proportionate” for achieving that aim. [16] If a restriction does not satisfy each of these requirements, then the restriction is unlawful under Article 19.

The “provided by law” prong, referred to as the legality requirement, seeks to ensure that restrictions on expression are established by laws passed by a governmental legislature or contempt of court rules. [17] This requirement affirms democratic values and “allows minority groups to express their disagreement, propose different initiatives, participate in the shaping of the political will, or influence public opinion.” [18] Arguably, State law-making processes may be analogized to the policy development processes within social media companies.

To satisfy the legality requirement, a restriction must meet several criteria. First, the restriction must not confer excessive discretion on those enforcing the restriction; rather, it should “provide sufficient guidance to those charged with [its] execution to enable them to ascertain what sorts of expressions are properly restricted and what sorts are not.” [19] Thus, it cannot be overly broad. Second, the restriction must provide adequate notice to those whose speech is being restricted. Accordingly, the law must be clear, precise and publicly accessible in order to provide individuals with adequate guidance. [20] Third, the restriction must be compatible with human rights standards; for example, it cannot be discriminatory or arbitrary. [21] Fourth, the restriction should be subject to procedural safeguards and independent review, especially those guaranteed by courts or tribunals. [22]

III.      The Legality of Facebook’s Community Standards

Social media companies do not make “laws,” per se, and, do not create and modify their content moderation policies pursuant to democratic processes, as the legality requirement envisions. However, these policies may be assessed pursuant to the contours of the legality requirement in order to align the companies with their human rights responsibilities under the UNGPs. [23] Indeed, the Special Rapporteur has asserted that “[ c ]ompanies should incorporate directly into their terms of service and ‘community standards’ relevant principles of human rights law that ensure content-related actions will be guided by the same standards of legality . . . that bind State regulation of expression.” [24] And Board member Evelyn Aswad has posited (in her independent scholarship) that “the legality . . . prong[] of ICCPR Article 19(3)’s tripartite test can be adapted to the corporate context.” [25] Yet Facebook’s Community Standards may not satisfy the criteria of the legality requirement, once applied. [26]

First, the Standards may confer excessive discretion on Facebook and its content moderators. As the Leibniz study found, Facebook enjoys autonomy in drafting and modifying its Standards, although it does consult with selected stakeholders. [27] Further, the non-governmental organization ARTICLE 19 has found that the Standards “remain very broad in scope, leaving significant discretion to Facebook in their implementation.” [28] Restrictions that are overly broad confer excessive discretion on content moderators and thus do not satisfy the first legality criterion. As Lwin has observed, “Facebook currently has ‘unbounded discretion’ in coming up with and implementing the Community Standards.” [29]

Second, Facebook’s Standards may not provide its users with adequate notice of restrictions on their expression. As scholar Evelyn Douek has observed, users are often in the dark about what they might be doing wrong “[w]hether because Facebook’s policies are not clear or lack detail or are scattered around different websites, or because users are not given an adequate explanation for which rule has been applied in their specific case.” [30] Indeed, several of the Board’s case decisions have found the Standards to be unclear, vague and even difficult to locate. For example, in its January 2021 decision regarding COVID-19 misinformation in France, the Board found that the relevant policies were scattered across Facebook’s website and contained vague ambiguities, thereby failing to provide adequate notice. [31] In February 2021, Facebook responded to the Board’s findings by stating it had already taken action by consolidating its policies into a Help Center blog post. [32] However, according to at least one commentator, this step “does not solve the underlying issue of consolidating and clarifying existing rules in one place: Facebook’s policies on health misinformation stretch across blog posts, different sections within the Community Standards, and now in its Help Center.” [33] Their lack of clarity is exacerbated by the fact that they change on a continuous basis.

Third, Facebook’s policies may not be fully compatible with human rights standards. The Leibniz study found that the Standards were not consistent with any legal system and “conceived largely without reference to state law or international human rights standards.” [34] This finding aligns with human rights analyses of the Standards conducted by ARTICLE 19 and other organizations. [35] Notably, in the aforementioned case, the Board recommended that Facebook “conduct a human rights impact assessment with relevant stakeholders as a part of its rule modification process.” [36]

Fourth, Facebook’s Standards are subject to some procedural safeguards to protect rights — the Oversight Board partially fulfills this role. Notwithstanding that the Board has criticized the Standards in many of its case decisions, it has yet to directly confront the issue of how they can be brought into full compliance with the legality requirement. [37]

As a general matter, Facebook’s Standards may not satisfy the legality requirement. Lwin concluded as much in 2020, [38] and, more recently, the Board has highlighted this issue across its decisions. Faiza Patel and Laura Hecht-Felella have summarized the Board’s decisions as saying, in effect: “Facebook’s content-moderation rules and its enforcement of them are a mess and the company needs to clean up its act.” [39]

IV.       Conclusion

Whether or not Facebook’s Community Standards satisfy the criteria of the legality requirement is fundamental to the Board’s decision-making: If not, then Facebook may not restrict content, pursuant to human rights standards. The Leibniz study reveals the company’s autonomous development process for its content moderation policies — which underpins the deficiencies of the Standards, identified above. It may be that unless and until this underlying process is made publicly accountable (and, thus, more democratic) with reference to human rights law, Facebook will not be able to bring its Standards into compliance with Article 19.

[1] See Facebook, Community Standards (modified regularly). References to “Facebook” include the company’s Facebook and Instagram platforms. References to “Community Standards” apply to the content moderation policies of both platforms.

[2] Matthias C. Kettemann & Wolfgang Schulz, Leibniz Institute for Media Research, Setting Rules for 2.7 Billion: A (First) Look into Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study , at 15, 28 (2020) [hereinafter “Leibniz Study”].

[3] Id. , at 21.

[4] Id. , at 28.

[5] Id. , at 31.

[6] Id., at 30.

[7] Id., at 28.

[8] For a discussion of the impact of Facebook’s content moderation on non-users, please see Alice Doyle, Out of “Site,” Out of Mind: The Facebook Oversight Board’s Exclusion of Non-User Rightsholders, UCI International Justice Clinic (Mar. 5, 2021).

[9] R.F. Jørgensen & L. Zuleta, Private Governance of Freedom of Expression on Social Media Platforms: EU content regulation through the lens of human rights standards , 41:1 Nordicom Review 51, 62 (2020).

[10] Michael Lwin, Applying International Human Rights Law for Use by Facebook , 4 Yale Journal on Regulation Online Bulletin 53, 68 (2020).

[11] United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,  A/HRC/17/31 (Mar. 21, 2011).

[12] Id. , Principles 11 and 12.

[13] Facebook, Corporate Human Rights Policy (2021) (“We are committed to respecting human rights as set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).”).

[14] See Report of the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression,   A/HRC/38/35 (Apr. 6, 2018) ¶ 9 [hereinafter “UNSR 2018 Report”]. “While the Guiding Principles are non-binding, the companies’ overwhelming role in public life globally argues strongly for their adoption and implementation.” Id. ¶ 10.

[15] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 19(2).

[16] Id., art. 19(3); UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 34 (Sept. 12, 2011) ¶ 22 [hereinafter “GC 34”].

[17] Id. ¶ 24 (citing Gauthier v. Canada and Dissanayake v. Sri Lanka).

[18] Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-6/87 (May 9, 1986) ¶ 22.

[19] GC 34 ¶ 25.

[20] Id. ; see also Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, A/HRC/14/23 (Apr. 20, 2010) ¶ 79(d) (“Laws imposing restrictions or limitations must be accessible, concrete, clear and unambiguous, such that they can be understood by everyone and applied to everyone.”); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Inter-American Legal Framework regarding the Right to Freedom of Expression , OEA/Ser.L/V/II CIDH/RELE/INF. 2/09 (Dec. 30, 2009) ¶ 71 (“vague, broad or open-ended laws, by their mere existence, discourage the dissemination of information and opinions out of fear of punishment”).

[21] See GC 34 ¶ 26; A/HRC/14/23, supra note 20 ¶ 79(f).

[22] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression , A/74/486 (Oct. 9, 2019) ¶ 6(a).

[23] Communication to Facebook, Inc. from the Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression , OL OTH 24/2019 (May 1, 2019), at 3.

[24] UNSR 2018 Report ¶ 45.

[25] Evelyn Mary Aswad, The Future of Freedom of Expression Online , 17 Duke Law & Technology Review 26, 56 (2018).

[26] Although this paper is focused on Facebook’s Community Standards, the legality requirement is also applicable to the algorithms Facebook uses to determine the virality of content.

[27] Leibniz Study, at 28, 30.

[28] ARTICLE 19, Facebook Community Standards: Analysis Against International Standards on Freedom of Expression (Jul. 30, 2018).

[29] Lwin, supra note 10, at 69.

[30] Evelyn Douek , The Facebook Oversight Board’s First Decisions: Ambitious, and Perhaps Impractical, Lawfare (Jan. 28, 2021). “Company rules routinely lack the clarity and specificity that would enable users to predict with reasonable certainty what content places them on the wrong side of the line.” UNSR 2018 Report ¶ 46.

[31] Oversight Board, Case Decision 2020-006-FB-FBR (Jan. 28, 2021) (“Given this patchwork of rules and policies that appear on different parts of Facebook’s website, the lack of definition of key terms such as ‘misinformation,’ and the differing standards relating to whether the post ‘could contribute’ or actually contributes to imminent harm, it is difficult for users to understand what content is prohibited. The Board finds the rule applied in this case was inappropriately vague. The legality test is therefore not met.”).

[32] Facebook’s Detailed Response to Oversight Board (Feb. 2021).

[33] Carly Miller, Facebook, It’s Time to Put the Rules in One Place , Lawfare (Mar. 5, 2021).

[34] Leibniz Study, at 32.

[35] See, e.g., ARTICLE 19, supra note 28.

[36] Oversight Board, supra note 31.

[37] This issue could be the subject of a Request for Policy Guidance, under Article 2 of the Board’s Bylaws.

[38] Lwin, supra note 10, at 69.

[39] Faiza Patel & Laura Hecht-Felella , Oversight Board’s First Rulings Show Facebook’s Rules Are a Mess , Just Security (Feb. 19, 2021).

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Right to Freedom (Articles 19 - 22)

The Right to Freedom is one of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. It is very important to understand what this right entails and includes. This topic is a basic topic in the polity and constitution segments of the UPSC Syllabus for the civil services exam.

Right to Freedom (Article 19 – 22) – Indian Polity Download PDF Here

In this article, you can read all about the Right to Freedom and the related constitutional provisions from the UPSC CSE point of view. The right to freedom is given under Article 19, Article 20, Article 21A and Article 22 of the Indian Constitution.

The six fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution are considered essential for the functioning of Indian democracy. The right to freedom gives citizens basic freedom with respect to speech and expression, form associations, freedom of personal liberty, freedom to live a life of dignity, etc. It is important to understand the scope of these provisions and any exceptions thereof.

Right to Freedom

The right to freedom guarantees freedom for citizens to live a life of dignity among other things. These are given in Articles 19, 20, 21A and 22 of the Indian Constitution. We shall take up the articles one by one in this section.

Below, we provide the associated articles of the Constitution under the right to freedom, important from the UPSC exam perspective.

Article 19 of Indian Constitution

Article 19 of Indian Constitution guarantees six freedoms. They are:

• Freedom of speech and expression: The State guarantees freedom of speech and expression to every person of India. However, the State can impose restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression in the interests of the integrity, security and sovereignty of the country, friendly relations with foreign nations, for public order, with respect to defamation, incitement to offence or contempt of court. Read more about the Freedom of Speech and Expression here .
• Freedom to assemble: The State guarantees every person the freedom to assemble peacefully without arms. However, as above, reasonable restrictions can be imposed in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of the country and public order.
• The Police Forces (Restriction of Rights) Act, 1966 prohibits police personnel from forming trade unions.
• The Constitution also allows the Parliament to pass a law restricting the right to form political associations to members of the armed forces, intelligence bureaus, persons employed with telecommunication system.
• Freedom to move freely: A citizen of India can move freely throughout the territory of India. But this right can also be restricted on the grounds of security, public order or for protecting the interests of the Scheduled Tribes .
• Freedom of residence: Citizens of India have the right to reside in any part of the country. Although restrictions can be imposed on the grounds of security, public order or for protecting the interests of the Scheduled Tribes.
• Freedom of profession: All citizens have the right to carry on any trade or profession/occupation, provided the trade or occupation is not illegal or immoral. Also, the law does not prevent the State from making laws related to technical or professional qualifications required for practising the occupation or trade.

Article 20 deals with the protection of citizens in respect of conviction for offences. This provides for three types of protection of the individual against the State.

• This means that criminal legislation cannot be given a retrospective effect.
• This immunity cannot be used against the provision of preventive detention, and also does not cover the trial.
• The law also provides that a person cannot be subject to a punishment greater than what is prescribed by law for the offence committed.
• Double jeopardy: This indicates that a person cannot be convicted for the same offence more than once.
• Prohibition against self-incrimination: This implies that no person accused of an offence shall be compelled by the State to bear witness against himself.

Article 21 states that no person shall be deprived of his life and personal liberty by the State except as per the procedure established by law. This article has a wide scope and its interpretation has undergone many changes over the decades.

• The Supreme Court has interpreted the right to life as the right to a dignified life.
• This is the most important right in one sense, because, without this right to life, all other fundamental rights would be meaningless.
• It is this article that differentiates between a police state and a constitutional state.

You can read more on Article 21 and the right to life and personal liberty here .

Article 21(A)

This article was introduced by the 86th Constitutional Amendment in 2002. It provides that the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14.

Article 22 deals with the protection against arrest and detention in certain cases. 

• This article is applicable to both citizens and non-citizens.
• This provision extends certain procedural safeguards for individuals in case of an arrest.
• It comes into the picture after a person has been arrested. It is not a fundamental right against detention and arrest.
• The idea behind this right is to prevent arbitrary arrests and detention.
• Article 22(1) – Any person who is in custody has to be informed as to why he has been arrested. Further, he cannot be denied the right to consult an advocate.
• Article 22(2) – The arrested individual should be produced before a judicial magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest.
• Article 22(3) – No individual who has been arrested can be kept in custody for more than the period determined by the judicial magistrate.
• Enemy aliens
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What is Preventive Detention?

There are two types of detention: 

Punitive detention is detention after a trial. Preventive detention is detention without trial. The idea behind this is to prevent an individual from committing a crime. This means that persons can be detained on grounds of suspicion. The rights of people arrested in this manner are governed by preventive detention laws.

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Case Study: A Patient with Asthma, Covid-19 Pneumonia and Cytokine Release Syndrome Treated with Corticosteroids and Tocilizumab

Gunter k schleicher.

1 Department of Critical Care and Pulmonology, Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa

Warren Lowman

2 Pathcare/Vermaak Laboratories, Department of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Guy A Richards

3 Department of Internal Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

INTRODUCTION

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the novel coronavirus first detected in Wuhan, China, that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and pneumonia. Covid-19 pneumonia is defined by a positive result for SARS-CoV-2 on a reverse-transcriptase–polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) assay of a specimen collected from the upper or lower respiratory tract together with radiological features of pneumonia and clinical features of hypoxaemia and dyspnoea. Although more than 80% of patients with Covid-19 infection have mild disease and make a full recovery, a significant proportion of patients progress to pneumonia, and about half of these cases will develop severe acute respiratory syndrome (ARDS). Initial reports from China suggested that age >65 years and medical comorbidities are risk factors for poor outcomes.( 1 ) The need for ICU admission and mechanical ventilation once ARDS develops is associated with a high mortality, ranging from 39% to 72%.( 2 , 3 ) Current guidelines recommend that corticosteroids or immunosuppressive therapy should not be used in patients with Covid-19 pneumonia unless there are other indications, such as shock, asthma or exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.( 4 ) However, the role of systemic corticosteroids is currently being re-evaluated in mechanically ventilated adults with ARDS, with some guidelines now suggesting their use.( 5 )

We describe a case of a patient with Covid-19 infection, progressive pneumonia, development of a hyperinflammatory state and cytokine release syndrome (CRS) who was successfully treated with steroids and tocilizumab.

CASE REPORT

In January 2020, a 53-year-old gentleman with a background of asthma on long-term low dose inhaled corticosteroid inhaler had an acute exacerbation of his asthma in February 2020 triggered by a viral upper respiratory tract infection and acute sinusitis and was managed with bronchodilator nebulization and a 7-day course of oral prednisone 30 mg daily. He made an uneventful recovery and proceeded to travel to Austria on 29 February 2020. During his stay in Austria, he had contact with a Covid-19 positive individual and started developing upper respiratory symptoms on 7 March. On his return to South Africa on 8 March he had a fever, sore throat, dry cough, severe wheezing and worsening dyspnoea. At that stage a commercial test for Covid-19 PCR was not yet available to the private pathology laboratories and blood tests showed a normal full blood count and a C-reactive protein (CRP) of 16 mg/L. He was advised to self-isolate at home and was managed telephonically with bronchodilator nebulization, oral prednisone 30 mg daily for 5 days and paracetamol. By 11 March he was not feeling any better and had ongoing fever and cough. The Covid-19 PCR test had become available at that stage and his initial test with a private pathology laboratory was negative.

Over the next 3 days his symptoms worsened, and on 16 March he was admitted to hospital to an isolation ward where blood tests showed a lymphopaenia and a rising CRP ( Table 1 ). A high-resolution CT scan of his chest showed bilateral asymmetrical peripheral ground glass infiltrates in a subsegmental distribution, particularly in the lower zones. A repeat Covid-19 PCR swab on this occasion was positive and he was diagnosed with Covid-19 pneumonia. His oxygen saturation was 86% on room air. He was haemodynamically stable and was kept in strict isolation, and treatment was commenced with supplemental oxygen via a nasal cannula, paracetamol, chloroquine, azithromycin and lopinavir/ritonavir. In keeping with national and international guidelines recommending against the use of systemic corticosteroids, prednisone was discontinued.

Laboratory and pathology results during hospital admission and post discharge

Arrows indicate treatment with tocilizumab 400 mg IV.

Over the next 5 days his clinical condition worsened despite antiviral therapy. His biomarkers, including lymphopaenia, CRP, pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (Pro-BNP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), D-dimers and ferritin all increased significantly ( Table 1 ). His hypoxaemia worsened and he had increased bilateral chest infiltrates on follow-up radiology ( Figure 1 ). His PaO2:FiO2 ratio decreased to 250. He was diagnosed as having Covid-19 hyperinflammatory syndrome, CRS and ARDS. After a discussion with the team he was treated with tocilizumab 800 mg IV, given as two doses of 400 mg 24 h apart on 23 and 24 March, as well as methylprednisolone 40 mg IV daily for 5 days. Chloroquine dose was reduced, and azithromycin and lopinavir/ritonavir were discontinued in view of QT prolongation (QTc > 500 ms).

Portable chest radiographs on 17 and 20 March 2020 showing progressive bilateral pulmonary infiltrates

Within 24 h following the tocilizumab infusion, there was an improvement in his fever, biomarkers ( Table 1 ) and hypoxaemia. Mechanical ventilation was avoided and he was monitored for another 6 day in the isolation unit. His saturations on room air improved to 90%. He was discharged home on 27 March, where he continued to make an uneventful recovery. Follow-up blood tests as an outpatient showed normalization of his lymphocyte count and CRP ( Table 1 ). His saturations on room air improved to 92%. A repeat nasopharyngeal and throat swab test for Covid-19 on 31 March was negative.

It has been postulated that there are three distinct but overlapping phases and pathological subsets of Covid-19 infection and subsequent Covid-19 disease in humans, the first two triggered by the virus itself and the third, by the host response.( 6 ) Treatment recommendations differ depending on the stage of the Covid-19 disease: the viral response phase (about 1–6 days after start of symptoms), the pneumonic phase (about days 6–10) which may progress to acute lung injury and ARDS, and the hyperinflammatory phase which typically occurs after day 8 in a minority of patients. This last phase is associated with worsening ARDS, multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), coagulation abnormalities, myocarditis and death. Patients progressing to this last severe phase of Covid-19 have clinical and laboratory evidence of an exaggerated inflammatory response, similar to the CRS, with persistent fever, worsening ARDS, elevated inflammatory markers and proinflammatory cytokines and MODS.

The Covid-19 virus binds to alveolar epithelial cells, activating the innate and adaptive immune systems resulting in the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This can lead to the CRS which is characterised by a hyperinflammatory state with raised inflammatory cytokines and biomarkers such as interleukin (IL)-2, IL-6, IL-7, granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, macrophage inflammatory protein 1-α, tumour necrosis factor-α, CRP, ferritin, Pro-BNP and D-dimer.( 7 ) The clinical picture is one of progressive ARDS and fulminant MODS.

Although corticosteroids are not routinely recommended for the treatment of Covid-19-associated lung injury, CRS immunosuppression with corticosteroids and other therapies is likely to be beneficial. Although there are currently no controlled clinical trials on the use of corticosteroids in Covid-19 patients, several published reports of corticosteroid therapy in severe Covid-19 have shown a shorter duration of supplemental oxygen use, improved radiographic findings and lower mortality in patients with ARDS.( 8 , 9 )

Tocilizumab, an IL-6 receptor blocker registered for CRS treatment, is being investigated for the treatment of patients with severe Covid-19, CRS and elevated IL-6 levels. IL-6 plays an important role in CRS and tocilizumab binds specifically to both soluble and membrane-bound IL-6 receptors (sIL-6R and mIL-6R), inhibiting sIL-6R and mIL-6R-mediated signalling. Small observational studies support the concept that tocilizumab may be an effective drug for patients with severe Covid-19 and respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation.( 10 , 11 ) In a study of 21 patients with Covid-19-related ARDS who received tocilizumab, the ICU mortality was less than 5%, all surviving patients became apyrexial within 72 h, pulmonary infiltrates on follow-up CT scan improved in 90%, hypoxaemia resolved in the majority and 90.5% of patients were discharged from the ICU after a median of 13.5 days.( 12 ) A large randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of tocilizumab plus standard of care in hospitalised adult patients with severe Covid-19 pneumonia and ARDS has been being initiated.( 13 )

Currently, tocilizumab is available in South Africa for patients with severe Covid-19 and ARDS under the Monitored Emergency use of Unregistered and Investigational Interventions framework.( 14 ) This requires the treating physician to consult with an expert panel prior to enrolment, detailed patient data collection and ensuring that the patient meets the strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Other immune modulating agents under investigation include siltuximab (IL-6 inhibitor), bevacizumab (vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitor), convalescent plasma from patients who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection and intravenous immune globulin (Polygam).( 15 , 16 )

This case study also highlights some of the many controversies and complications in managing patients with severe Covid-19:

• • The use of inhaled or oral corticosteroids as a risk factor for severe Covid-19 is not certain. Individuals taking long-term corticosteroids for chronic conditions such as asthma, allergies and arthritis may be unable to mount an appropriate immune response and are generally considered high risk for severe disease if infected with Covid-19.( 17 ) Corticosteroids can also result in increased viral replication and prolonged viral shedding. Even a short course of oral corticosteroids in the preceding month for an asthma exacerbation, such as in this case study, is a risk factor for ARDS and mechanical ventilation.( 18 ) Conversely, in vitro studies with ciclesonide showed antiviral activity against Covid-19, and there have been reports of clinical effectiveness of inhaled ciclesonide in the treatment of Covid-19.( 19 ) Studies are currently underway to investigate whether inhaled ciclesonide alone, or in combination with hydroxychloroquine, could eradicate SARS-CoV-2 from respiratory tract earlier in patients with mild Covid-19.( 20 )
• • Diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia is not always straightforward. Currently, the gold standard in clinical practice is the detection of Covid-19 RNA by RT-PCR in respiratory tract specimens. Nasopharyngeal and throat swabs are recommended over expectorated or induced sputum. Lower respiratory tract specimens, such as tracheal aspirates or bronchoalveolar lavage in intubated patients may have higher viral loads and be more likely to yield positive tests (up to 95% sensitive) but come with a higher risk of transmission of infection to health-care workers.( 21 ) False-negative tests from upper respiratory specimens have been documented, as with this case study. If initial testing is negative in a patient with risk factors for infection and clinical or radiological features are highly suggestive of Covid-19 or determining the presence of infection is important for further management and infection control, repeat testing is recommended.
• • Chloroquine, azithromycin and lopinavir/ritonavir can all cause QT prolongation and ventricular arrhythmia, in particular drug-induced torsades de pointes and sudden cardiac death.( 22 ) Patients treated with any combination of these drugs should have 12–24 hourly ECG with QTc monitoring. If QTc >500 ms (as in the case study), or QTc increases >60 ms from baseline after initiating drug therapy, discontinue azithromycin and lopinavir/ritonavir, and consider reducing dose of chloroquine. Frequent monitoring of QTc is mandatory and chloroquine should also be discontinued if QTc remains >500 ms. The risk of serious ventricular arrhythmia may be reduced by performing a screening ECG prior to initiation of therapy, inquiring about a personal or family history of QT interval prolongation or sudden unexplained cardiac death, avoiding exposure to other medications known to affect QT interval, and aggressively treating hypocalcaemia, hypokalaemia and hypomagnesaemia. Hypokalaemia is especially common in patients with Covid-19 and is associated with a poorer prognosis.( 23 ) The correction of hypokalaemia can be challenging due to continuous renal loss of potassium resulting from the degradation of angiotensin converting enzyme 2 by binding of SAR-CoV-2.

This case study of severe Covid-19 pneumonia and CRS illustrates some of the diagnostic and therapeutic challenges and controversies regarding the management of this novel and complex infection. Meticulous monitoring for and early treatment of the hyperinflammatory phase of the disease may be crucial in preventing progression to severe ARDS, MODS and death.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Dr L. Brannigan for his assistance with the management of this patient, and Dr E. Boschoff for the radiographs.

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FTC Releases Report on Grocery Supply Chain Disruptions

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The Federal Trade Commission today issued a report on the causes behind grocery supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report revealed that large market participants accelerated and distorted the negative effects associated with supply chain disruptions.

The FTC’s report also examined how supply chain disruptions affected competition among retailers, wholesalers, and producers, as well as the impacts on consumers and businesses. The report found that consumers felt the negative effects of supply chain disruptions in the form of sky rocketing prices for groceries and product shortages for essentials, like toilet paper. 

Notably, consumers are still facing the negative impact of the pandemic’s price hikes, as the Commission’s report finds that some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.

“As the pandemic illustrated, a major shock to the supply chain can have cascading effects on consumers, including the prices they pay for groceries,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s report examining U.S. grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.”

As the report explains, supply chain disruptions did not equally impact every retailer, wholesaler, or producer. Instead, smaller firms, especially smaller grocery retailers, disproportionately faced difficulties obtaining products compared to larger firms. Some larger firms were better able to protect their product supply compared to smaller competitors.

The pandemic also prompted some larger firms to consider buying manufacturing suppliers, which potentially threatens to make certain supply chains even more concentrated in the future. Taken together, the report’s findings reveal how supply chain bottlenecks can leave markets exposed to major supply chain shocks—and that those shocks, in turn, can allow major firms to entrench their dominance.

The report’s findings stem from orders the  FTC issued in 2021 under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act to Walmart Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Kroger Co., C&S Wholesale Grocers, Inc., Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc., McLane Co, Inc. Procter & Gamble Co., Tyson Foods, Inc., and Kraft Heinz Co. The findings also draw from publicly available data on industry costs and revenues.

Competitive Impacts of Supply Chain Disruptions

The report highlights several key insights regarding market structure and business conduct among grocery retailers, wholesalers, and producers, as well as their effects on consumers. These insights include:

• Grocery retailer profits rose & remain elevated : Food and beverage retailer revenues increased to more than 6% over total costs in 2021, higher than their most recent peak in 2015 of 5.6%. In the first three-quarters of 2023, retailer profits rose even more, with revenue reaching 7% over total costs, casting doubt on the assertions of some companies that rising prices at the grocery store are the result of retailers’ own rising costs.
• Large purchasers sought favorable supplier allocations : Some companies, most often larger ones, re-imposed strict delivery requirements on their upstream suppliers during the height of the pandemic and threatened fines for noncompliance, pressuring suppliers to favor them over rivals. In some cases, suppliers preferentially allocated product to the purchasers threatening to fine, giving larger companies a competitive advantage over smaller retailers at a time when having products in-stock was a critical advantage for attracting customers.
• Excessive consolidation recognized as a liability : During the pandemic, some retailers sought to diversify their supplier base, particularly of private label goods, as firms recognized the risks associated with having few suppliers available. Some firms buying goods in markets with few suppliers even began exploring whether to build or acquire manufacturing capacity to reduce their exposure to concentrated markets. The report warns, however, that moves by larger customers to buy one of the few remaining market participants rather than building that capability from scratch could leave the remaining buyers, notably smaller competing firms, even worse off.
• Decrease in promotional spending : During the pandemic, manufacturer promotional spending on items in short supply declined. Companies employing the more traditional grocery retailing model that relies on manufacturer promotional spending to lower prices for products sometimes faced higher prices compared to other companies. Companies that used an “Every Day Low Price” (EDLP) strategy, in which producers consistently provide low wholesale prices rather than short-term promotional price reductions, were less affected when manufacturer promotional spending was curtailed.

The Commission voted 3-0 to issue the staff report.

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Chronic wasting disease: Death of 2 hunters in US raises concerns of 'zombie deer'

The 2022 report of two hunters who developed neurological diseases after eating potentially infected deer meat has raised concerns 'zombie deer disease' could pass to humans as mad cow disease did..

Two hunters who ate meat from a population of deer known to have chronic wasting disease − or "zombie deer disease" − developed similar neurological conditions and died, raising concerns that it can pass from animals to humans.

Found in deer in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming in the 1990s, chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been recorded in free-ranging deer, elk and moose in at least 32 states across all parts of the continental U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Deer infected with CWD may be called "zombie deer" because the disease leads to weight loss, lack of coordination, stumbling, listlessness, weight loss, drooling, and lack of fear of people.

The 2022 case did prove that CWD could infect humans. But scientists and health officials have been concerned that CWD could jump to humans as mad cow disease did in the United Kingdom in the 1990s . In 2022, scientists in Canada published a study, based on mice research, suggesting a risk of CWD transmission to humans .

Here's what you need to know about chronic wasting disease and whether you need to worry about it.

Researchers identify troubling case involving 2 deaths

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio have reported how two hunters who ate venison from a deer population known to have CWD died in 2022 after developing sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is a neurological disease like CWD.

The second man to die, who was 77, suffered "rapid-onset confusion and aggression," the researchers said, and died within a month despite treatment.

"The patient’s history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests a possible novel animal-to-human transmission of CWD," they wrote in the case report , which was presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology and published in the peer-reviewed journal Neurology.

The researchers did not say where the men lived or hunted. But the highest concentration of CWD-infected deer can be found in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to CDC and US. Geological Survey reports.

Because of the difficulty in distinguishing between the diseases, the researchers said the case does not represent a proven case of transmission. However, "this cluster emphasizes the need for further investigation into the potential risks of consuming CWD-infected deer and its implications for public health," they wrote.

'Zombie deer disease': What to know about chronic wasting disease and its spread in the US.

What is 'zombie deer disease'? What are prion diseases?

Also known as chronic wasting disease, "zombie deer disease" is a prion disease, a rare, progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that affects deer, elk, moose and other animals, the CDC says.

In prion diseases, the abnormal folding of certain "prion proteins" leads to brain damage and other symptoms, according to the CDC. Prion diseases , which usually progress rapidly and are always fatal, can affect humans and animals. 

Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD), which is a form of mad cow disease, are prion diseases found in people.

Mad cow disease  is an example of a prion disease that can spread from cattle to humans, and some researchers have likened "zombie deer disease" to it.

For instance, with mad cow disease, it usually took four to six years from infection for cattle to show symptoms, according to the Food and Drug Administration . Deer may have an incubation period of up to two years before the onset of symptoms. So, the animals could have the disease but look normal until the onset of symptoms, such as weight loss, notes the U.S. Geological Survey .

The development of vCJD in humans in the wake of mad cow disease – its official name is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE – through eating meat from contaminated cattle has concerned scientists about the possible transmission of chronic wasting disease (CWD) to humans.

Can 'zombie deer disease' be transmitted to humans?

Even though there has been no known confirmed case of deer-to-human transmission of "zombie deer disease,' concerns have risen since officials found CWD in a dead deer in Yellowstone National Park in November.

"As of yet, there has been no transmission from deer or elk to humans," Jennifer Mullinax, associate professor of wildlife ecology and management at the University of Maryland, told BBC . "However, given the nature of prions, CDC and other agencies have supported all efforts to keep any prion disease out of the food chain."

Should CWD transmit to humans, it could create a "potential crisis" similar to what mad cow disease caused, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told BBC .

"However, it’s important to note that BSE and CWD prions differ structurally, and we do not yet know whether the pathology and clinical presentation would be comparable if CWD transmission to humans were to occur," he said.

Meanwhile, chronic wasting disease continues to spread to more states; the most recent is Indiana. The disease was detected this month in a male white-tailed deer in the northeastern part of the state, which borders part of Michigan, where CWD had been detected earlier, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy .

The U.S. Geological Survey updated its tracking of chronic wasting disease on Friday to include 33 states (adding Indiana), as well as four Canadian provinces and four other countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden and South Korea).

Contributing: Sara Chernikoff and Julia Gomez

Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads:  @mikesnider  & mikegsnider .

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• Published: 17 April 2024

The economic commitment of climate change

• Maximilian Kotz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2564-5043 1 , 2 ,
• Anders Levermann   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4432-4704 1 , 2 &
• Leonie Wenz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8500-1568 1 , 3  

Nature volume  628 ,  pages 551–557 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 . Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes 7 , 8 . Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income.

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Climate economics support for the UN climate targets

Projections of the macroeconomic damage caused by future climate change are crucial to informing public and policy debates about adaptation, mitigation and climate justice. On the one hand, adaptation against climate impacts must be justified and planned on the basis of an understanding of their future magnitude and spatial distribution 9 . This is also of importance in the context of climate justice 10 , as well as to key societal actors, including governments, central banks and private businesses, which increasingly require the inclusion of climate risks in their macroeconomic forecasts to aid adaptive decision-making 11 , 12 . On the other hand, climate mitigation policy such as the Paris Climate Agreement is often evaluated by balancing the costs of its implementation against the benefits of avoiding projected physical damages. This evaluation occurs both formally through cost–benefit analyses 1 , 4 , 5 , 6 , as well as informally through public perception of mitigation and damage costs 13 .

Projections of future damages meet challenges when informing these debates, in particular the human biases relating to uncertainty and remoteness that are raised by long-term perspectives 14 . Here we aim to overcome such challenges by assessing the extent of economic damages from climate change to which the world is already committed by historical emissions and socio-economic inertia (the range of future emission scenarios that are considered socio-economically plausible 15 ). Such a focus on the near term limits the large uncertainties about diverging future emission trajectories, the resulting long-term climate response and the validity of applying historically observed climate–economic relations over long timescales during which socio-technical conditions may change considerably. As such, this focus aims to simplify the communication and maximize the credibility of projected economic damages from future climate change.

In projecting the future economic damages from climate change, we make use of recent advances in climate econometrics that provide evidence for impacts on sub-national economic growth from numerous components of the distribution of daily temperature and precipitation 3 , 7 , 8 . Using fixed-effects panel regression models to control for potential confounders, these studies exploit within-region variation in local temperature and precipitation in a panel of more than 1,600 regions worldwide, comprising climate and income data over the past 40 years, to identify the plausibly causal effects of changes in several climate variables on economic productivity 16 , 17 . Specifically, macroeconomic impacts have been identified from changing daily temperature variability, total annual precipitation, the annual number of wet days and extreme daily rainfall that occur in addition to those already identified from changing average temperature 2 , 3 , 18 . Moreover, regional heterogeneity in these effects based on the prevailing local climatic conditions has been found using interactions terms. The selection of these climate variables follows micro-level evidence for mechanisms related to the impacts of average temperatures on labour and agricultural productivity 2 , of temperature variability on agricultural productivity and health 7 , as well as of precipitation on agricultural productivity, labour outcomes and flood damages 8 (see Extended Data Table 1 for an overview, including more detailed references). References  7 , 8 contain a more detailed motivation for the use of these particular climate variables and provide extensive empirical tests about the robustness and nature of their effects on economic output, which are summarized in Methods . By accounting for these extra climatic variables at the sub-national level, we aim for a more comprehensive description of climate impacts with greater detail across both time and space.

Constraining the persistence of impacts

A key determinant and source of discrepancy in estimates of the magnitude of future climate damages is the extent to which the impact of a climate variable on economic growth rates persists. The two extreme cases in which these impacts persist indefinitely or only instantaneously are commonly referred to as growth or level effects 19 , 20 (see Methods section ‘Empirical model specification: fixed-effects distributed lag models’ for mathematical definitions). Recent work shows that future damages from climate change depend strongly on whether growth or level effects are assumed 20 . Following refs.  2 , 18 , we provide constraints on this persistence by using distributed lag models to test the significance of delayed effects separately for each climate variable. Notably, and in contrast to refs.  2 , 18 , we use climate variables in their first-differenced form following ref.  3 , implying a dependence of the growth rate on a change in climate variables. This choice means that a baseline specification without any lags constitutes a model prior of purely level effects, in which a permanent change in the climate has only an instantaneous effect on the growth rate 3 , 19 , 21 . By including lags, one can then test whether any effects may persist further. This is in contrast to the specification used by refs.  2 , 18 , in which climate variables are used without taking the first difference, implying a dependence of the growth rate on the level of climate variables. In this alternative case, the baseline specification without any lags constitutes a model prior of pure growth effects, in which a change in climate has an infinitely persistent effect on the growth rate. Consequently, including further lags in this alternative case tests whether the initial growth impact is recovered 18 , 19 , 21 . Both of these specifications suffer from the limiting possibility that, if too few lags are included, one might falsely accept the model prior. The limitations of including a very large number of lags, including loss of data and increasing statistical uncertainty with an increasing number of parameters, mean that such a possibility is likely. By choosing a specification in which the model prior is one of level effects, our approach is therefore conservative by design, avoiding assumptions of infinite persistence of climate impacts on growth and instead providing a lower bound on this persistence based on what is observable empirically (see Methods section ‘Empirical model specification: fixed-effects distributed lag models’ for further exposition of this framework). The conservative nature of such a choice is probably the reason that ref.  19 finds much greater consistency between the impacts projected by models that use the first difference of climate variables, as opposed to their levels.

We begin our empirical analysis of the persistence of climate impacts on growth using ten lags of the first-differenced climate variables in fixed-effects distributed lag models. We detect substantial effects on economic growth at time lags of up to approximately 8–10 years for the temperature terms and up to approximately 4 years for the precipitation terms (Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 2 ). Furthermore, evaluation by means of information criteria indicates that the inclusion of all five climate variables and the use of these numbers of lags provide a preferable trade-off between best-fitting the data and including further terms that could cause overfitting, in comparison with model specifications excluding climate variables or including more or fewer lags (Extended Data Fig. 3 , Supplementary Methods Section  1 and Supplementary Table 1 ). We therefore remove statistically insignificant terms at later lags (Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 and Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ). Further tests using Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the empirical models are robust to autocorrelation in the lagged climate variables (Supplementary Methods Section  2 and Supplementary Figs. 4 and 5 ), that information criteria provide an effective indicator for lag selection (Supplementary Methods Section  2 and Supplementary Fig. 6 ), that the results are robust to concerns of imperfect multicollinearity between climate variables and that including several climate variables is actually necessary to isolate their separate effects (Supplementary Methods Section  3 and Supplementary Fig. 7 ). We provide a further robustness check using a restricted distributed lag model to limit oscillations in the lagged parameter estimates that may result from autocorrelation, finding that it provides similar estimates of cumulative marginal effects to the unrestricted model (Supplementary Methods Section 4 and Supplementary Figs. 8 and 9 ). Finally, to explicitly account for any outstanding uncertainty arising from the precise choice of the number of lags, we include empirical models with marginally different numbers of lags in the error-sampling procedure of our projection of future damages. On the basis of the lag-selection procedure (the significance of lagged terms in Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 2 , as well as information criteria in Extended Data Fig. 3 ), we sample from models with eight to ten lags for temperature and four for precipitation (models shown in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 and Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ). In summary, this empirical approach to constrain the persistence of climate impacts on economic growth rates is conservative by design in avoiding assumptions of infinite persistence, but nevertheless provides a lower bound on the extent of impact persistence that is robust to the numerous tests outlined above.

Committed damages until mid-century

We combine these empirical economic response functions (Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 and Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ) with an ensemble of 21 climate models (see Supplementary Table 5 ) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP-6) 22 to project the macroeconomic damages from these components of physical climate change (see Methods for further details). Bias-adjusted climate models that provide a highly accurate reproduction of observed climatological patterns with limited uncertainty (Supplementary Table 6 ) are used to avoid introducing biases in the projections. Following a well-developed literature 2 , 3 , 19 , these projections do not aim to provide a prediction of future economic growth. Instead, they are a projection of the exogenous impact of future climate conditions on the economy relative to the baselines specified by socio-economic projections, based on the plausibly causal relationships inferred by the empirical models and assuming ceteris paribus. Other exogenous factors relevant for the prediction of economic output are purposefully assumed constant.

A Monte Carlo procedure that samples from climate model projections, empirical models with different numbers of lags and model parameter estimates (obtained by 1,000 block-bootstrap resamples of each of the regressions in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 and Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ) is used to estimate the combined uncertainty from these sources. Given these uncertainty distributions, we find that projected global damages are statistically indistinguishable across the two most extreme emission scenarios until 2049 (at the 5% significance level; Fig. 1 ). As such, the climate damages occurring before this time constitute those to which the world is already committed owing to the combination of past emissions and the range of future emission scenarios that are considered socio-economically plausible 15 . These committed damages comprise a permanent income reduction of 19% on average globally (population-weighted average) in comparison with a baseline without climate-change impacts (with a likely range of 11–29%, following the likelihood classification adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); see caption of Fig. 1 ). Even though levels of income per capita generally still increase relative to those of today, this constitutes a permanent income reduction for most regions, including North America and Europe (each with median income reductions of approximately 11%) and with South Asia and Africa being the most strongly affected (each with median income reductions of approximately 22%; Fig. 1 ). Under a middle-of-the road scenario of future income development (SSP2, in which SSP stands for Shared Socio-economic Pathway), this corresponds to global annual damages in 2049 of 38 trillion in 2005 international dollars (likely range of 19–59 trillion 2005 international dollars). Compared with empirical specifications that assume pure growth or pure level effects, our preferred specification that provides a robust lower bound on the extent of climate impact persistence produces damages between these two extreme assumptions (Extended Data Fig. 3 ).

Estimates of the projected reduction in income per capita from changes in all climate variables based on empirical models of climate impacts on economic output with a robust lower bound on their persistence (Extended Data Fig. 1 ) under a low-emission scenario compatible with the 2 °C warming target and a high-emission scenario (SSP2-RCP2.6 and SSP5-RCP8.5, respectively) are shown in purple and orange, respectively. Shading represents the 34% and 10% confidence intervals reflecting the likely and very likely ranges, respectively (following the likelihood classification adopted by the IPCC), having estimated uncertainty from a Monte Carlo procedure, which samples the uncertainty from the choice of physical climate models, empirical models with different numbers of lags and bootstrapped estimates of the regression parameters shown in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 . Vertical dashed lines show the time at which the climate damages of the two emission scenarios diverge at the 5% and 1% significance levels based on the distribution of differences between emission scenarios arising from the uncertainty sampling discussed above. Note that uncertainty in the difference of the two scenarios is smaller than the combined uncertainty of the two respective scenarios because samples of the uncertainty (climate model and empirical model choice, as well as model parameter bootstrap) are consistent across the two emission scenarios, hence the divergence of damages occurs while the uncertainty bounds of the two separate damage scenarios still overlap. Estimates of global mitigation costs from the three IAMs that provide results for the SSP2 baseline and SSP2-RCP2.6 scenario are shown in light green in the top panel, with the median of these estimates shown in bold.

Damages already outweigh mitigation costs

We compare the damages to which the world is committed over the next 25 years to estimates of the mitigation costs required to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement. Taking estimates of mitigation costs from the three integrated assessment models (IAMs) in the IPCC AR6 database 23 that provide results under comparable scenarios (SSP2 baseline and SSP2-RCP2.6, in which RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathway), we find that the median committed climate damages are larger than the median mitigation costs in 2050 (six trillion in 2005 international dollars) by a factor of approximately six (note that estimates of mitigation costs are only provided every 10 years by the IAMs and so a comparison in 2049 is not possible). This comparison simply aims to compare the magnitude of future damages against mitigation costs, rather than to conduct a formal cost–benefit analysis of transitioning from one emission path to another. Formal cost–benefit analyses typically find that the net benefits of mitigation only emerge after 2050 (ref.  5 ), which may lead some to conclude that physical damages from climate change are simply not large enough to outweigh mitigation costs until the second half of the century. Our simple comparison of their magnitudes makes clear that damages are actually already considerably larger than mitigation costs and the delayed emergence of net mitigation benefits results primarily from the fact that damages across different emission paths are indistinguishable until mid-century (Fig. 1 ).

Although these near-term damages constitute those to which the world is already committed, we note that damage estimates diverge strongly across emission scenarios after 2049, conveying the clear benefits of mitigation from a purely economic point of view that have been emphasized in previous studies 4 , 24 . As well as the uncertainties assessed in Fig. 1 , these conclusions are robust to structural choices, such as the timescale with which changes in the moderating variables of the empirical models are estimated (Supplementary Figs. 10 and 11 ), as well as the order in which one accounts for the intertemporal and international components of currency comparison (Supplementary Fig. 12 ; see Methods for further details).

Damages from variability and extremes

Committed damages primarily arise through changes in average temperature (Fig. 2 ). This reflects the fact that projected changes in average temperature are larger than those in other climate variables when expressed as a function of their historical interannual variability (Extended Data Fig. 4 ). Because the historical variability is that on which the empirical models are estimated, larger projected changes in comparison with this variability probably lead to larger future impacts in a purely statistical sense. From a mechanistic perspective, one may plausibly interpret this result as implying that future changes in average temperature are the most unprecedented from the perspective of the historical fluctuations to which the economy is accustomed and therefore will cause the most damage. This insight may prove useful in terms of guiding adaptation measures to the sources of greatest damage.

Estimates of the median projected reduction in sub-national income per capita across emission scenarios (SSP2-RCP2.6 and SSP2-RCP8.5) as well as climate model, empirical model and model parameter uncertainty in the year in which climate damages diverge at the 5% level (2049, as identified in Fig. 1 ). a , Impacts arising from all climate variables. b – f , Impacts arising separately from changes in annual mean temperature ( b ), daily temperature variability ( c ), total annual precipitation ( d ), the annual number of wet days (>1 mm) ( e ) and extreme daily rainfall ( f ) (see Methods for further definitions). Data on national administrative boundaries are obtained from the GADM database version 3.6 and are freely available for academic use ( https://gadm.org/ ).

Nevertheless, future damages based on empirical models that consider changes in annual average temperature only and exclude the other climate variables constitute income reductions of only 13% in 2049 (Extended Data Fig. 5a , likely range 5–21%). This suggests that accounting for the other components of the distribution of temperature and precipitation raises net damages by nearly 50%. This increase arises through the further damages that these climatic components cause, but also because their inclusion reveals a stronger negative economic response to average temperatures (Extended Data Fig. 5b ). The latter finding is consistent with our Monte Carlo simulations, which suggest that the magnitude of the effect of average temperature on economic growth is underestimated unless accounting for the impacts of other correlated climate variables (Supplementary Fig. 7 ).

In terms of the relative contributions of the different climatic components to overall damages, we find that accounting for daily temperature variability causes the largest increase in overall damages relative to empirical frameworks that only consider changes in annual average temperature (4.9 percentage points, likely range 2.4–8.7 percentage points, equivalent to approximately 10 trillion international dollars). Accounting for precipitation causes smaller increases in overall damages, which are—nevertheless—equivalent to approximately 1.2 trillion international dollars: 0.01 percentage points (−0.37–0.33 percentage points), 0.34 percentage points (0.07–0.90 percentage points) and 0.36 percentage points (0.13–0.65 percentage points) from total annual precipitation, the number of wet days and extreme daily precipitation, respectively. Moreover, climate models seem to underestimate future changes in temperature variability 25 and extreme precipitation 26 , 27 in response to anthropogenic forcing as compared with that observed historically, suggesting that the true impacts from these variables may be larger.

The distribution of committed damages

The spatial distribution of committed damages (Fig. 2a ) reflects a complex interplay between the patterns of future change in several climatic components and those of historical economic vulnerability to changes in those variables. Damages resulting from increasing annual mean temperature (Fig. 2b ) are negative almost everywhere globally, and larger at lower latitudes in regions in which temperatures are already higher and economic vulnerability to temperature increases is greatest (see the response heterogeneity to mean temperature embodied in Extended Data Fig. 1a ). This occurs despite the amplified warming projected at higher latitudes 28 , suggesting that regional heterogeneity in economic vulnerability to temperature changes outweighs heterogeneity in the magnitude of future warming (Supplementary Fig. 13a ). Economic damages owing to daily temperature variability (Fig. 2c ) exhibit a strong latitudinal polarisation, primarily reflecting the physical response of daily variability to greenhouse forcing in which increases in variability across lower latitudes (and Europe) contrast decreases at high latitudes 25 (Supplementary Fig. 13b ). These two temperature terms are the dominant determinants of the pattern of overall damages (Fig. 2a ), which exhibits a strong polarity with damages across most of the globe except at the highest northern latitudes. Future changes in total annual precipitation mainly bring economic benefits except in regions of drying, such as the Mediterranean and central South America (Fig. 2d and Supplementary Fig. 13c ), but these benefits are opposed by changes in the number of wet days, which produce damages with a similar pattern of opposite sign (Fig. 2e and Supplementary Fig. 13d ). By contrast, changes in extreme daily rainfall produce damages in all regions, reflecting the intensification of daily rainfall extremes over global land areas 29 , 30 (Fig. 2f and Supplementary Fig. 13e ).

The spatial distribution of committed damages implies considerable injustice along two dimensions: culpability for the historical emissions that have caused climate change and pre-existing levels of socio-economic welfare. Spearman’s rank correlations indicate that committed damages are significantly larger in countries with smaller historical cumulative emissions, as well as in regions with lower current income per capita (Fig. 3 ). This implies that those countries that will suffer the most from the damages already committed are those that are least responsible for climate change and which also have the least resources to adapt to it.

Estimates of the median projected change in national income per capita across emission scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) as well as climate model, empirical model and model parameter uncertainty in the year in which climate damages diverge at the 5% level (2049, as identified in Fig. 1 ) are plotted against cumulative national emissions per capita in 2020 (from the Global Carbon Project) and coloured by national income per capita in 2020 (from the World Bank) in a and vice versa in b . In each panel, the size of each scatter point is weighted by the national population in 2020 (from the World Bank). Inset numbers indicate the Spearman’s rank correlation ρ and P -values for a hypothesis test whose null hypothesis is of no correlation, as well as the Spearman’s rank correlation weighted by national population.

To further quantify this heterogeneity, we assess the difference in committed damages between the upper and lower quartiles of regions when ranked by present income levels and historical cumulative emissions (using a population weighting to both define the quartiles and estimate the group averages). On average, the quartile of countries with lower income are committed to an income loss that is 8.9 percentage points (or 61%) greater than the upper quartile (Extended Data Fig. 6 ), with a likely range of 3.8–14.7 percentage points across the uncertainty sampling of our damage projections (following the likelihood classification adopted by the IPCC). Similarly, the quartile of countries with lower historical cumulative emissions are committed to an income loss that is 6.9 percentage points (or 40%) greater than the upper quartile, with a likely range of 0.27–12 percentage points. These patterns reemphasize the prevalence of injustice in climate impacts 31 , 32 , 33 in the context of the damages to which the world is already committed by historical emissions and socio-economic inertia.

Contextualizing the magnitude of damages

The magnitude of projected economic damages exceeds previous literature estimates 2 , 3 , arising from several developments made on previous approaches. Our estimates are larger than those of ref.  2 (see first row of Extended Data Table 3 ), primarily because of the facts that sub-national estimates typically show a steeper temperature response (see also refs.  3 , 34 ) and that accounting for other climatic components raises damage estimates (Extended Data Fig. 5 ). However, we note that our empirical approach using first-differenced climate variables is conservative compared with that of ref.  2 in regard to the persistence of climate impacts on growth (see introduction and Methods section ‘Empirical model specification: fixed-effects distributed lag models’), an important determinant of the magnitude of long-term damages 19 , 21 . Using a similar empirical specification to ref.  2 , which assumes infinite persistence while maintaining the rest of our approach (sub-national data and further climate variables), produces considerably larger damages (purple curve of Extended Data Fig. 3 ). Compared with studies that do take the first difference of climate variables 3 , 35 , our estimates are also larger (see second and third rows of Extended Data Table 3 ). The inclusion of further climate variables (Extended Data Fig. 5 ) and a sufficient number of lags to more adequately capture the extent of impact persistence (Extended Data Figs. 1 and 2 ) are the main sources of this difference, as is the use of specifications that capture nonlinearities in the temperature response when compared with ref.  35 . In summary, our estimates develop on previous studies by incorporating the latest data and empirical insights 7 , 8 , as well as in providing a robust empirical lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, which constitutes a middle ground between the extremes of the growth-versus-levels debate 19 , 21 (Extended Data Fig. 3 ).

Compared with the fraction of variance explained by the empirical models historically (<5%), the projection of reductions in income of 19% may seem large. This arises owing to the fact that projected changes in climatic conditions are much larger than those that were experienced historically, particularly for changes in average temperature (Extended Data Fig. 4 ). As such, any assessment of future climate-change impacts necessarily requires an extrapolation outside the range of the historical data on which the empirical impact models were evaluated. Nevertheless, these models constitute the most state-of-the-art methods for inference of plausibly causal climate impacts based on observed data. Moreover, we take explicit steps to limit out-of-sample extrapolation by capping the moderating variables of the interaction terms at the 95th percentile of the historical distribution (see Methods ). This avoids extrapolating the marginal effects outside what was observed historically. Given the nonlinear response of economic output to annual mean temperature (Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 2 ), this is a conservative choice that limits the magnitude of damages that we project. Furthermore, back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the projected damages are consistent with the magnitude and patterns of historical economic development (see Supplementary Discussion Section  5 ).

Missing impacts and spatial spillovers

Despite assessing several climatic components from which economic impacts have recently been identified 3 , 7 , 8 , this assessment of aggregate climate damages should not be considered comprehensive. Important channels such as impacts from heatwaves 31 , sea-level rise 36 , tropical cyclones 37 and tipping points 38 , 39 , as well as non-market damages such as those to ecosystems 40 and human health 41 , are not considered in these estimates. Sea-level rise is unlikely to be feasibly incorporated into empirical assessments such as this because historical sea-level variability is mostly small. Non-market damages are inherently intractable within our estimates of impacts on aggregate monetary output and estimates of these impacts could arguably be considered as extra to those identified here. Recent empirical work suggests that accounting for these channels would probably raise estimates of these committed damages, with larger damages continuing to arise in the global south 31 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 .

Moreover, our main empirical analysis does not explicitly evaluate the potential for impacts in local regions to produce effects that ‘spill over’ into other regions. Such effects may further mitigate or amplify the impacts we estimate, for example, if companies relocate production from one affected region to another or if impacts propagate along supply chains. The current literature indicates that trade plays a substantial role in propagating spillover effects 43 , 44 , making their assessment at the sub-national level challenging without available data on sub-national trade dependencies. Studies accounting for only spatially adjacent neighbours indicate that negative impacts in one region induce further negative impacts in neighbouring regions 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , suggesting that our projected damages are probably conservative by excluding these effects. In Supplementary Fig. 14 , we assess spillovers from neighbouring regions using a spatial-lag model. For simplicity, this analysis excludes temporal lags, focusing only on contemporaneous effects. The results show that accounting for spatial spillovers can amplify the overall magnitude, and also the heterogeneity, of impacts. Consistent with previous literature, this indicates that the overall magnitude (Fig. 1 ) and heterogeneity (Fig. 3 ) of damages that we project in our main specification may be conservative without explicitly accounting for spillovers. We note that further analysis that addresses both spatially and trade-connected spillovers, while also accounting for delayed impacts using temporal lags, would be necessary to adequately address this question fully. These approaches offer fruitful avenues for further research but are beyond the scope of this manuscript, which primarily aims to explore the impacts of different climate conditions and their persistence.

Policy implications

We find that the economic damages resulting from climate change until 2049 are those to which the world economy is already committed and that these greatly outweigh the costs required to mitigate emissions in line with the 2 °C target of the Paris Climate Agreement (Fig. 1 ). This assessment is complementary to formal analyses of the net costs and benefits associated with moving from one emission path to another, which typically find that net benefits of mitigation only emerge in the second half of the century 5 . Our simple comparison of the magnitude of damages and mitigation costs makes clear that this is primarily because damages are indistinguishable across emissions scenarios—that is, committed—until mid-century (Fig. 1 ) and that they are actually already much larger than mitigation costs. For simplicity, and owing to the availability of data, we compare damages to mitigation costs at the global level. Regional estimates of mitigation costs may shed further light on the national incentives for mitigation to which our results already hint, of relevance for international climate policy. Although these damages are committed from a mitigation perspective, adaptation may provide an opportunity to reduce them. Moreover, the strong divergence of damages after mid-century reemphasizes the clear benefits of mitigation from a purely economic perspective, as highlighted in previous studies 1 , 4 , 6 , 24 .

Historical climate data

Historical daily 2-m temperature and precipitation totals (in mm) are obtained for the period 1979–2019 from the W5E5 database. The W5E5 dataset comes from ERA-5, a state-of-the-art reanalysis of historical observations, but has been bias-adjusted by applying version 2.0 of the WATCH Forcing Data to ERA-5 reanalysis data and precipitation data from version 2.3 of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project to better reflect ground-based measurements 49 , 50 , 51 . We obtain these data on a 0.5° × 0.5° grid from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) database. Notably, these historical data have been used to bias-adjust future climate projections from CMIP-6 (see the following section), ensuring consistency between the distribution of historical daily weather on which our empirical models were estimated and the climate projections used to estimate future damages. These data are publicly available from the ISIMIP database. See refs.  7 , 8 for robustness tests of the empirical models to the choice of climate data reanalysis products.

Future climate data

Daily 2-m temperature and precipitation totals (in mm) are taken from 21 climate models participating in CMIP-6 under a high (RCP8.5) and a low (RCP2.6) greenhouse gas emission scenario from 2015 to 2100. The data have been bias-adjusted and statistically downscaled to a common half-degree grid to reflect the historical distribution of daily temperature and precipitation of the W5E5 dataset using the trend-preserving method developed by the ISIMIP 50 , 52 . As such, the climate model data reproduce observed climatological patterns exceptionally well (Supplementary Table 5 ). Gridded data are publicly available from the ISIMIP database.

Historical economic data

Historical economic data come from the DOSE database of sub-national economic output 53 . We use a recent revision to the DOSE dataset that provides data across 83 countries, 1,660 sub-national regions with varying temporal coverage from 1960 to 2019. Sub-national units constitute the first administrative division below national, for example, states for the USA and provinces for China. Data come from measures of gross regional product per capita (GRPpc) or income per capita in local currencies, reflecting the values reported in national statistical agencies, yearbooks and, in some cases, academic literature. We follow previous literature 3 , 7 , 8 , 54 and assess real sub-national output per capita by first converting values from local currencies to US dollars to account for diverging national inflationary tendencies and then account for US inflation using a US deflator. Alternatively, one might first account for national inflation and then convert between currencies. Supplementary Fig. 12 demonstrates that our conclusions are consistent when accounting for price changes in the reversed order, although the magnitude of estimated damages varies. See the documentation of the DOSE dataset for further discussion of these choices. Conversions between currencies are conducted using exchange rates from the FRED database of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 55 and the national deflators from the World Bank 56 .

Future socio-economic data

Baseline gridded gross domestic product (GDP) and population data for the period 2015–2100 are taken from the middle-of-the-road scenario SSP2 (ref.  15 ). Population data have been downscaled to a half-degree grid by the ISIMIP following the methodologies of refs.  57 , 58 , which we then aggregate to the sub-national level of our economic data using the spatial aggregation procedure described below. Because current methodologies for downscaling the GDP of the SSPs use downscaled population to do so, per-capita estimates of GDP with a realistic distribution at the sub-national level are not readily available for the SSPs. We therefore use national-level GDP per capita (GDPpc) projections for all sub-national regions of a given country, assuming homogeneity within countries in terms of baseline GDPpc. Here we use projections that have been updated to account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trajectory of future income, while remaining consistent with the long-term development of the SSPs 59 . The choice of baseline SSP alters the magnitude of projected climate damages in monetary terms, but when assessed in terms of percentage change from the baseline, the choice of socio-economic scenario is inconsequential. Gridded SSP population data and national-level GDPpc data are publicly available from the ISIMIP database. Sub-national estimates as used in this study are available in the code and data replication files.

Climate variables

Following recent literature 3 , 7 , 8 , we calculate an array of climate variables for which substantial impacts on macroeconomic output have been identified empirically, supported by further evidence at the micro level for plausible underlying mechanisms. See refs.  7 , 8 for an extensive motivation for the use of these particular climate variables and for detailed empirical tests on the nature and robustness of their effects on economic output. To summarize, these studies have found evidence for independent impacts on economic growth rates from annual average temperature, daily temperature variability, total annual precipitation, the annual number of wet days and extreme daily rainfall. Assessments of daily temperature variability were motivated by evidence of impacts on agricultural output and human health, as well as macroeconomic literature on the impacts of volatility on growth when manifest in different dimensions, such as government spending, exchange rates and even output itself 7 . Assessments of precipitation impacts were motivated by evidence of impacts on agricultural productivity, metropolitan labour outcomes and conflict, as well as damages caused by flash flooding 8 . See Extended Data Table 1 for detailed references to empirical studies of these physical mechanisms. Marked impacts of daily temperature variability, total annual precipitation, the number of wet days and extreme daily rainfall on macroeconomic output were identified robustly across different climate datasets, spatial aggregation schemes, specifications of regional time trends and error-clustering approaches. They were also found to be robust to the consideration of temperature extremes 7 , 8 . Furthermore, these climate variables were identified as having independent effects on economic output 7 , 8 , which we further explain here using Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate the robustness of the results to concerns of imperfect multicollinearity between climate variables (Supplementary Methods Section  2 ), as well as by using information criteria (Supplementary Table 1 ) to demonstrate that including several lagged climate variables provides a preferable trade-off between optimally describing the data and limiting the possibility of overfitting.

We calculate these variables from the distribution of daily, d , temperature, T x , d , and precipitation, P x , d , at the grid-cell, x , level for both the historical and future climate data. As well as annual mean temperature, \({\bar{T}}_{x,y}\) , and annual total precipitation, P x , y , we calculate annual, y , measures of daily temperature variability, \({\widetilde{T}}_{x,y}\) :

the number of wet days, Pwd x , y :

and extreme daily rainfall:

in which T x , d , m , y is the grid-cell-specific daily temperature in month m and year y , \({\bar{T}}_{x,m,{y}}\) is the year and grid-cell-specific monthly, m , mean temperature, D m and D y the number of days in a given month m or year y , respectively, H the Heaviside step function, 1 mm the threshold used to define wet days and P 99.9 x is the 99.9th percentile of historical (1979–2019) daily precipitation at the grid-cell level. Units of the climate measures are degrees Celsius for annual mean temperature and daily temperature variability, millimetres for total annual precipitation and extreme daily precipitation, and simply the number of days for the annual number of wet days.

We also calculated weighted standard deviations of monthly rainfall totals as also used in ref.  8 but do not include them in our projections as we find that, when accounting for delayed effects, their effect becomes statistically indistinct and is better captured by changes in total annual rainfall.

Spatial aggregation

We aggregate grid-cell-level historical and future climate measures, as well as grid-cell-level future GDPpc and population, to the level of the first administrative unit below national level of the GADM database, using an area-weighting algorithm that estimates the portion of each grid cell falling within an administrative boundary. We use this as our baseline specification following previous findings that the effect of area or population weighting at the sub-national level is negligible 7 , 8 .

Empirical model specification: fixed-effects distributed lag models

Following a wide range of climate econometric literature 16 , 60 , we use panel regression models with a selection of fixed effects and time trends to isolate plausibly exogenous variation with which to maximize confidence in a causal interpretation of the effects of climate on economic growth rates. The use of region fixed effects, μ r , accounts for unobserved time-invariant differences between regions, such as prevailing climatic norms and growth rates owing to historical and geopolitical factors. The use of yearly fixed effects, η y , accounts for regionally invariant annual shocks to the global climate or economy such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation or global recessions. In our baseline specification, we also include region-specific linear time trends, k r y , to exclude the possibility of spurious correlations resulting from common slow-moving trends in climate and growth.

The persistence of climate impacts on economic growth rates is a key determinant of the long-term magnitude of damages. Methods for inferring the extent of persistence in impacts on growth rates have typically used lagged climate variables to evaluate the presence of delayed effects or catch-up dynamics 2 , 18 . For example, consider starting from a model in which a climate condition, C r , y , (for example, annual mean temperature) affects the growth rate, Δlgrp r , y (the first difference of the logarithm of gross regional product) of region r in year y :

which we refer to as a ‘pure growth effects’ model in the main text. Typically, further lags are included,

and the cumulative effect of all lagged terms is evaluated to assess the extent to which climate impacts on growth rates persist. Following ref.  18 , in the case that,

the implication is that impacts on the growth rate persist up to NL years after the initial shock (possibly to a weaker or a stronger extent), whereas if

then the initial impact on the growth rate is recovered after NL years and the effect is only one on the level of output. However, we note that such approaches are limited by the fact that, when including an insufficient number of lags to detect a recovery of the growth rates, one may find equation ( 6 ) to be satisfied and incorrectly assume that a change in climatic conditions affects the growth rate indefinitely. In practice, given a limited record of historical data, including too few lags to confidently conclude in an infinitely persistent impact on the growth rate is likely, particularly over the long timescales over which future climate damages are often projected 2 , 24 . To avoid this issue, we instead begin our analysis with a model for which the level of output, lgrp r , y , depends on the level of a climate variable, C r , y :

Given the non-stationarity of the level of output, we follow the literature 19 and estimate such an equation in first-differenced form as,

which we refer to as a model of ‘pure level effects’ in the main text. This model constitutes a baseline specification in which a permanent change in the climate variable produces an instantaneous impact on the growth rate and a permanent effect only on the level of output. By including lagged variables in this specification,

we are able to test whether the impacts on the growth rate persist any further than instantaneously by evaluating whether α L  > 0 are statistically significantly different from zero. Even though this framework is also limited by the possibility of including too few lags, the choice of a baseline model specification in which impacts on the growth rate do not persist means that, in the case of including too few lags, the framework reverts to the baseline specification of level effects. As such, this framework is conservative with respect to the persistence of impacts and the magnitude of future damages. It naturally avoids assumptions of infinite persistence and we are able to interpret any persistence that we identify with equation ( 9 ) as a lower bound on the extent of climate impact persistence on growth rates. See the main text for further discussion of this specification choice, in particular about its conservative nature compared with previous literature estimates, such as refs.  2 , 18 .

We allow the response to climatic changes to vary across regions, using interactions of the climate variables with historical average (1979–2019) climatic conditions reflecting heterogenous effects identified in previous work 7 , 8 . Following this previous work, the moderating variables of these interaction terms constitute the historical average of either the variable itself or of the seasonal temperature difference, \({\hat{T}}_{r}\) , or annual mean temperature, \({\bar{T}}_{r}\) , in the case of daily temperature variability 7 and extreme daily rainfall, respectively 8 .

The resulting regression equation with N and M lagged variables, respectively, reads:

in which Δlgrp r , y is the annual, regional GRPpc growth rate, measured as the first difference of the logarithm of real GRPpc, following previous work 2 , 3 , 7 , 8 , 18 , 19 . Fixed-effects regressions were run using the fixest package in R (ref.  61 ).

Estimates of the coefficients of interest α i , L are shown in Extended Data Fig. 1 for N  =  M  = 10 lags and for our preferred choice of the number of lags in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 . In Extended Data Fig. 1 , errors are shown clustered at the regional level, but for the construction of damage projections, we block-bootstrap the regressions by region 1,000 times to provide a range of parameter estimates with which to sample the projection uncertainty (following refs.  2 , 31 ).

Spatial-lag model

In Supplementary Fig. 14 , we present the results from a spatial-lag model that explores the potential for climate impacts to ‘spill over’ into spatially neighbouring regions. We measure the distance between centroids of each pair of sub-national regions and construct spatial lags that take the average of the first-differenced climate variables and their interaction terms over neighbouring regions that are at distances of 0–500, 500–1,000, 1,000–1,500 and 1,500–2000 km (spatial lags, ‘SL’, 1 to 4). For simplicity, we then assess a spatial-lag model without temporal lags to assess spatial spillovers of contemporaneous climate impacts. This model takes the form:

in which SL indicates the spatial lag of each climate variable and interaction term. In Supplementary Fig. 14 , we plot the cumulative marginal effect of each climate variable at different baseline climate conditions by summing the coefficients for each climate variable and interaction term, for example, for average temperature impacts as:

These cumulative marginal effects can be regarded as the overall spatially dependent impact to an individual region given a one-unit shock to a climate variable in that region and all neighbouring regions at a given value of the moderating variable of the interaction term.

Constructing projections of economic damage from future climate change

We construct projections of future climate damages by applying the coefficients estimated in equation ( 10 ) and shown in Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 (when including only lags with statistically significant effects in specifications that limit overfitting; see Supplementary Methods Section  1 ) to projections of future climate change from the CMIP-6 models. Year-on-year changes in each primary climate variable of interest are calculated to reflect the year-to-year variations used in the empirical models. 30-year moving averages of the moderating variables of the interaction terms are calculated to reflect the long-term average of climatic conditions that were used for the moderating variables in the empirical models. By using moving averages in the projections, we account for the changing vulnerability to climate shocks based on the evolving long-term conditions (Supplementary Figs. 10 and 11 show that the results are robust to the precise choice of the window of this moving average). Although these climate variables are not differenced, the fact that the bias-adjusted climate models reproduce observed climatological patterns across regions for these moderating variables very accurately (Supplementary Table 6 ) with limited spread across models (<3%) precludes the possibility that any considerable bias or uncertainty is introduced by this methodological choice. However, we impose caps on these moderating variables at the 95th percentile at which they were observed in the historical data to prevent extrapolation of the marginal effects outside the range in which the regressions were estimated. This is a conservative choice that limits the magnitude of our damage projections.

Time series of primary climate variables and moderating climate variables are then combined with estimates of the empirical model parameters to evaluate the regression coefficients in equation ( 10 ), producing a time series of annual GRPpc growth-rate reductions for a given emission scenario, climate model and set of empirical model parameters. The resulting time series of growth-rate impacts reflects those occurring owing to future climate change. By contrast, a future scenario with no climate change would be one in which climate variables do not change (other than with random year-to-year fluctuations) and hence the time-averaged evaluation of equation ( 10 ) would be zero. Our approach therefore implicitly compares the future climate-change scenario to this no-climate-change baseline scenario.

The time series of growth-rate impacts owing to future climate change in region r and year y , δ r , y , are then added to the future baseline growth rates, π r , y (in log-diff form), obtained from the SSP2 scenario to yield trajectories of damaged GRPpc growth rates, ρ r , y . These trajectories are aggregated over time to estimate the future trajectory of GRPpc with future climate impacts:

in which GRPpc r , y =2020 is the initial log level of GRPpc. We begin damage estimates in 2020 to reflect the damages occurring since the end of the period for which we estimate the empirical models (1979–2019) and to match the timing of mitigation-cost estimates from most IAMs (see below).

For each emission scenario, this procedure is repeated 1,000 times while randomly sampling from the selection of climate models, the selection of empirical models with different numbers of lags (shown in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 and Supplementary Tables 2 – 4 ) and bootstrapped estimates of the regression parameters. The result is an ensemble of future GRPpc trajectories that reflect uncertainty from both physical climate change and the structural and sampling uncertainty of the empirical models.

Estimates of mitigation costs

We obtain IPCC estimates of the aggregate costs of emission mitigation from the AR6 Scenario Explorer and Database hosted by IIASA 23 . Specifically, we search the AR6 Scenarios Database World v1.1 for IAMs that provided estimates of global GDP and population under both a SSP2 baseline and a SSP2-RCP2.6 scenario to maintain consistency with the socio-economic and emission scenarios of the climate damage projections. We find five IAMs that provide data for these scenarios, namely, MESSAGE-GLOBIOM 1.0, REMIND-MAgPIE 1.5, AIM/GCE 2.0, GCAM 4.2 and WITCH-GLOBIOM 3.1. Of these five IAMs, we use the results only from the first three that passed the IPCC vetting procedure for reproducing historical emission and climate trajectories. We then estimate global mitigation costs as the percentage difference in global per capita GDP between the SSP2 baseline and the SSP2-RCP2.6 emission scenario. In the case of one of these IAMs, estimates of mitigation costs begin in 2020, whereas in the case of two others, mitigation costs begin in 2010. The mitigation cost estimates before 2020 in these two IAMs are mostly negligible, and our choice to begin comparison with damage estimates in 2020 is conservative with respect to the relative weight of climate damages compared with mitigation costs for these two IAMs.

Data availability

Data on economic production and ERA-5 climate data are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4681306 (ref. 62 ) and https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5 , respectively. Data on mitigation costs are publicly available at https://data.ene.iiasa.ac.at/ar6/#/downloads . Processed climate and economic data, as well as all other necessary data for reproduction of the results, are available at the public repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10562951  (ref. 63 ).

Code availability

All code necessary for reproduction of the results is available at the public repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10562951  (ref. 63 ).

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financing from the Volkswagen Foundation and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Open access funding provided by Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK) e.V.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended data fig. 1 constraining the persistence of historical climate impacts on economic growth rates..

The results of a panel-based fixed-effects distributed lag model for the effects of annual mean temperature ( a ), daily temperature variability ( b ), total annual precipitation ( c ), the number of wet days ( d ) and extreme daily precipitation ( e ) on sub-national economic growth rates. Point estimates show the effects of a 1 °C or one standard deviation increase (for temperature and precipitation variables, respectively) at the lower quartile, median and upper quartile of the relevant moderating variable (green, orange and purple, respectively) at different lagged periods after the initial shock (note that these are not cumulative effects). Climate variables are used in their first-differenced form (see main text for discussion) and the moderating climate variables are the annual mean temperature, seasonal temperature difference, total annual precipitation, number of wet days and annual mean temperature, respectively, in panels a – e (see Methods for further discussion). Error bars show the 95% confidence intervals having clustered standard errors by region. The within-region R 2 , Bayesian and Akaike information criteria for the model are shown at the top of the figure. This figure shows results with ten lags for each variable to demonstrate the observed levels of persistence, but our preferred specifications remove later lags based on the statistical significance of terms shown above and the information criteria shown in Extended Data Fig. 2 . The resulting models without later lags are shown in Supplementary Figs. 1 – 3 .

Extended Data Fig. 2 Incremental lag-selection procedure using information criteria and within-region R 2 .

Starting from a panel-based fixed-effects distributed lag model estimating the effects of climate on economic growth using the real historical data (as in equation ( 4 )) with ten lags for all climate variables (as shown in Extended Data Fig. 1 ), lags are incrementally removed for one climate variable at a time. The resulting Bayesian and Akaike information criteria are shown in a – e and f – j , respectively, and the within-region R 2 and number of observations in k – o and p – t , respectively. Different rows show the results when removing lags from different climate variables, ordered from top to bottom as annual mean temperature, daily temperature variability, total annual precipitation, the number of wet days and extreme annual precipitation. Information criteria show minima at approximately four lags for precipitation variables and ten to eight for temperature variables, indicating that including these numbers of lags does not lead to overfitting. See Supplementary Table 1 for an assessment using information criteria to determine whether including further climate variables causes overfitting.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Damages in our preferred specification that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of climate impacts on economic growth versus damages in specifications of pure growth or pure level effects.

Estimates of future damages as shown in Fig. 1 but under the emission scenario RCP8.5 for three separate empirical specifications: in orange our preferred specification, which provides an empirical lower bound on the persistence of climate impacts on economic growth rates while avoiding assumptions of infinite persistence (see main text for further discussion); in purple a specification of ‘pure growth effects’ in which the first difference of climate variables is not taken and no lagged climate variables are included (the baseline specification of ref.  2 ); and in pink a specification of ‘pure level effects’ in which the first difference of climate variables is taken but no lagged terms are included.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Climate changes in different variables as a function of historical interannual variability.

Changes in each climate variable of interest from 1979–2019 to 2035–2065 under the high-emission scenario SSP5-RCP8.5, expressed as a percentage of the historical variability of each measure. Historical variability is estimated as the standard deviation of each detrended climate variable over the period 1979–2019 during which the empirical models were identified (detrending is appropriate because of the inclusion of region-specific linear time trends in the empirical models). See Supplementary Fig. 13 for changes expressed in standard units. Data on national administrative boundaries are obtained from the GADM database version 3.6 and are freely available for academic use ( https://gadm.org/ ).

Extended Data Fig. 5 Contribution of different climate variables to overall committed damages.

a , Climate damages in 2049 when using empirical models that account for all climate variables, changes in annual mean temperature only or changes in both annual mean temperature and one other climate variable (daily temperature variability, total annual precipitation, the number of wet days and extreme daily precipitation, respectively). b , The cumulative marginal effects of an increase in annual mean temperature of 1 °C, at different baseline temperatures, estimated from empirical models including all climate variables or annual mean temperature only. Estimates and uncertainty bars represent the median and 95% confidence intervals obtained from 1,000 block-bootstrap resamples from each of three different empirical models using eight, nine or ten lags of temperature terms.

Extended Data Fig. 6 The difference in committed damages between the upper and lower quartiles of countries when ranked by GDP and cumulative historical emissions.

Quartiles are defined using a population weighting, as are the average committed damages across each quartile group. The violin plots indicate the distribution of differences between quartiles across the two extreme emission scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) and the uncertainty sampling procedure outlined in Methods , which accounts for uncertainty arising from the choice of lags in the empirical models, uncertainty in the empirical model parameter estimates, as well as the climate model projections. Bars indicate the median, as well as the 10th and 90th percentiles and upper and lower sixths of the distribution reflecting the very likely and likely ranges following the likelihood classification adopted by the IPCC.

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David Brooks

The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

Hilary Cass is the kind of hero the world needs today. She has entered one of the most toxic debates in our culture: how the medical community should respond to the growing numbers of young people who seek gender transition through medical treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies. This month, after more than three years of research, Cass, a pediatrician, produced a report , commissioned by the National Health Service in England, that is remarkable for its empathy for people on all sides of this issue, for its humility in the face of complex social trends we don’t understand and for its intellectual integrity as we try to figure out which treatments actually work to serve those patients who are in distress. With incredible courage, she shows that careful scholarship can cut through debates that have been marked by vituperation and intimidation and possibly reset them on more rational grounds.

Cass, a past president of Britain’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, is clear about the mission of her report: “This review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves or rolling back on people’s rights to health care. It is about what the health care approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the N.H.S. in relation to their gender identity.”

This issue begins with a mystery. For reasons that are not clear, the number of adolescents who have sought to medically change their sex has been skyrocketing in recent years, though the overall number remains very small. For reasons that are also not clear, adolescents who were assigned female at birth are driving this trend, whereas before the late 2000s, it was mostly adolescents who were assigned male at birth who sought these treatments.

Doctors and researchers have proposed various theories to try to explain these trends. One is that greater social acceptance of trans people has enabled people to seek these therapies. Another is that teenagers are being influenced by the popularity of searching and experimenting around identity. A third is that the rise of teen mental health issues may be contributing to gender dysphoria. In her report, Cass is skeptical of broad generalizations in the absence of clear evidence; these are individual children and adolescents who take their own routes to who they are.

Some activists and medical practitioners on the left have come to see the surge in requests for medical transitioning as a piece of the new civil rights issue of our time — offering recognition to people of all gender identities. Transition through medical interventions was embraced by providers in the United States and Europe after a pair of small Dutch studies showed that such treatment improved patients’ well-being. But a 2022 Reuters investigation found that some American clinics were quite aggressive with treatment: None of the 18 U.S. clinics that Reuters looked at performed long assessments on their patients, and some prescribed puberty blockers on the first visit.

Unfortunately, some researchers who questioned the Dutch approach were viciously attacked. This year, Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College London, published a review of studies looking at the impact of puberty blockers on brain development and concluded that “critical questions” about the therapy remain unanswered. She was immediately attacked. She recently told The Guardian, “I’ve been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away.”

As Cass writes in her report, “The toxicity of the debate is exceptional.” She continues, “There are few other areas of health care where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behavior.”

Cass focused on Britain, but her description of the intellectual and political climate is just as applicable to the U.S., where brutality on the left has been matched by brutality on the right, with crude legislation that doesn’t acknowledge the well-being of the young people in question. In 24 states Republicans have passed laws banning these therapies, sometimes threatening doctors with prison time if they prescribe the treatment they think is best for their patients.

The battle lines on this issue are an extreme case, but they are not unfamiliar. On issue after issue, zealous minorities bully and intimidate the reasonable majority. Often, those who see nuance decide it’s best to just keep their heads down. The rage-filled minority rules.

Cass showed enormous courage in walking into this maelstrom. She did it in the face of practitioners who refused to cooperate and thus denied her information that could have helped inform her report. As an editorial in The BMJ puts it, “Despite encouragement from N.H.S. England,” the “necessary cooperation” was not forthcoming. “Professionals withholding data from a national inquiry seems hard to imagine, but it is what happened.”

Cass’s report does not contain even a hint of rancor, just a generous open-mindedness and empathy for all involved. Time and again in her report, she returns to the young people and the parents directly involved, on all sides of the issue. She clearly spent a lot of time meeting with them. She writes, “One of the great pleasures of the review has been getting to meet and talk to so many interesting people.”

The report’s greatest strength is its epistemic humility. Cass is continually asking, “What do we really know?” She is carefully examining the various studies — which are high quality, which are not. She is down in the academic weeds.

She notes that the quality of the research in this field is poor. The current treatments are “built on shaky foundations,” she writes in The BMJ. Practitioners have raced ahead with therapies when we don’t know what the effects will be. As Cass tells The BMJ, “I can’t think of another area of pediatric care where we give young people a potentially irreversible treatment and have no idea what happens to them in adulthood.”

She writes in her report, “The option to provide masculinizing/feminizing hormones from age 16 is available, but the review would recommend extreme caution.” She does not issue a blanket, one-size-fits-all recommendation, but her core conclusion is this: “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” She realizes that this conclusion will not please many of the young people she has come to know, but this is where the evidence has taken her.

You can agree or disagree with this or that part of the report, and maybe the evidence will look different in 10 years, but I ask you to examine the integrity with which Cass did her work in such a treacherous environment.

In 1877 a British philosopher and mathematician named William Kingdon Clifford published an essay called “ The Ethics of Belief .” In it he argued that if a shipowner ignored evidence that his craft had problems and sent the ship to sea having convinced himself it was safe, then of course we would blame him if the ship went down and all aboard were lost. To have a belief is to bear responsibility, and one thus has a moral responsibility to dig arduously into the evidence, avoid ideological thinking and take into account self-serving biases. “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” Clifford wrote. A belief, he continued, is a public possession. If too many people believe things without evidence, “the danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.”

Since the Trump years, this habit of not consulting the evidence has become the underlying crisis in so many realms. People segregate into intellectually cohesive teams, which are always dumber than intellectually diverse teams. Issues are settled by intimidation, not evidence. Our natural human tendency is to be too confident in our knowledge, too quick to ignore contrary evidence. But these days it has become acceptable to luxuriate in those epistemic shortcomings, not to struggle against them. See, for example, the modern Republican Party.

Recently it’s been encouraging to see cases in which the evidence has won out. Many universities have acknowledged that the SAT is a better predictor of college success than high school grades and have reinstated it. Some corporations have come to understand that while diversity, equity and inclusion are essential goals, the current programs often empirically fail to serve those goals and need to be reformed. I’m hoping that Hilary Cass is modeling a kind of behavior that will be replicated across academia, in the other professions and across the body politic more generally and thus save us from spiraling into an epistemological doom loop.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author, most recently,  of “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” @ nytdavidbrooks

Advancing the entrepreneurship ecosystem of India: A qualitative study with Chevening Fellows

• Published: 26 December 2023

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• Kamal Gulati 1 ,
• Amrik Sohal 2 ,
• Tharaka de Vass 2 &
• Nrupal Das 3  

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Using social cognitive theory as a guide, this research seeks to explain the perceptions of current and aspiring Indian entrepreneurs. A multiple case study approach using 19 interviews with intellectuals provided qualitative data to conduct a cross-case analysis of the two groups with the qualitative analysis software NVivo. Rare insights from current and aspiring opportunity-motivated entrepreneurial Chevening Fellowships from a predominantly necessity-motivated context offer valuable insights into entrepreneurship in India. The findings reveal what entrepreneurship means to established entrepreneurs, their motivation for embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, the skills they require to be successful, the challenges they face and their strategies to sustain are mostly different to what aspiring entrepreneurs believe how it would be. Compiled recommendations may help strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly in developing economy contexts, to help improve the 10% startup success rate.

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Acknowledgements

Authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Chevening fellows who consented to participate in this study, Chevening Secretariat, Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office, Prof. Richard Briant, University of Oxford, Prof. John Hoffmaire, Chairman, Oxford Pharmaceuticals, Ms. Sarah Fallon, Regional Director, Science and Innovation, British High Commission New Delhi, Ms. Supriya Chawla, Head Chevening Scholarships India for their support.

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Opinion What will the Cass Review of treatment for trans kids mean for America?

Regarding Paul Garcia-Ryan’s April 19 op-ed, “ Youth gender care is resting on shaky ground ”:

As a parent of a gender-expansive child, and someone who works with the families of such children regularly, I believe The Post should approach the Cass Review — a report on the gender identity services offered through England’s National Health Service and a set of recommendations about how the NHS should develop its standards of care going forward — with a more critical eye.

The op-ed, as well as the Associated Press article “ A major UK report says trans children are being let down by toxic debate and lack of evidence ,” did not address questions regarding which studies were included in the Cass Review’s survey of evidence, which were excluded and whether Dr. Hilary Cass and the researchers at the University of York who conducted a review of the scientific literature used the appropriate standards to determine whether research was sound. The report claims there is “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” But surely gender-expansive adults who had medical interventions when they were younger exist? Why are their voices not “high-quality” enough to serve as evidence?

The articles lean heavily on the Cass Review’s statements that there is “lack of evidence” and a “toxic political debate” around this topic. I actually agree: Trans kids are being let down by these things, but not in the same way the authors of these pieces do.

Where are the voices of children who have socially transitioned and are thriving? Teens who take hormones and are doing great in school and in life? Don’t try to tell me they don’t exist: There’s one in my kitchen right now! But the way the report covers this makes it seem as though they’re unicorns, some mythological beings only seen in left-wing literature. Their voices deserve a prominent place in The Post’s and the AP’s reporting.

Gender-expansive children exist. Younger generations are approaching gender differently. As such, we are probably going to see more gender exploration than we ever did. Does that mean all of these children are going to grow up to be gender-expansive adults? No. That is what “exploration” means. I think in the “old days” of the 2000s, primarily children with strong gender dysphoria came out. Treatment was probably more clear-cut. Today, it might be less so. More children might be “trying on” gender identities. Treatment should adapt. But this does not mean treatment should be banned, which is what many states and institutions are using the weight of the Cass Review to do.

Tina Neal , Bryn Mawr, Pa.

The writer is the founder of Tertium Quid, a nonprofit support organization.

I am in a support group for parents of trans-identified youths, and many of us have similar stories. Our once-happy kids spent more time online during school closures. After going down rabbit holes on Reddit, Tumblr and Discord, they discovered groups of people talking about gender. Their curiosity became an obsession, and they announced a “trans” identity soon after.

Many of us observed that our children’s obsession was accompanied by uncharacteristic displays of anger, self-harm, anxiety, depression and estrangement from the family. These personality changes and behaviors intensified after our children announced their new gender identities, even if we affirmed them.

Declaring themselves transgender has dramatically worsened our kids’ mental health. The professionals we’ve turned to for help have simply been unwilling to listen to any broader context we shared with them.

Until recently, we have not been able to speak about our pain, because the topic has been off-limits. With publication of the Cass Review, perhaps now we can speak more freely.

K.A. Lynne , Orlando

I am a physician with special interest in the evidence behind medical strategies to affirm a trans identity, and have followed the Cass study for at least two years. The detailed final review is a huge resource for medicine and the broader society as we try to sort out what actually helps gender-dysphoric kids. Unfortunately, opinions on gender identity have become aligned with political identity in the United States. With the Cass Review, Britain is taking the lead in getting politics out of gender care. Our country should follow Britain’s example.

The Post took early leadership in covering questioning voices back in 2021 when it published an op-ed by Erica Anderson and Laura Edwards-Leeper advocating gender exploratory treatment as a first step for gender-questioning kids. That was a good start, but with the release of the Cass Review, journalists now have an enormous opportunity to inject more and better science into the American debate.

Mark Buchanan , Avon, Conn.

A step backward for students’ rights

Regarding the April 20 front-page article “ Title IX widened for trans students ”:

As an attorney who defends students accused in Title IX proceedings. I was distressed to read about the new rules approved by the Biden administration that backslide on the rights to cross-examination guaranteed by the regulations promulgated by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during the Trump years.

It is difficult to imagine how one-sided and unfair these proceedings can be. The schools are under pressure from the Education Department to assure that they are doing everything possible to combat sexual misconduct, and are subject to financial penalties if they are deemed to have fallen short. Before the DeVos rules, the university hired a “neutral” investigator that heard from both parties and made a recommendation — informed by a mere preponderance of the evidence — to a rubber-stamp tribunal. In some schools, the investigator was also charged with acting as the prosecutor, judge and jury.

Under the rules now being discarded, each party had the right to cross-examine participants and witnesses at a live hearing to test the credibility of the testimony. Now, we will return to a system where the alleged victim’s story is not tested by serious questions. In every instance in our legal system, except in student disciplinary proceedings, a participant has a right to confront an adverse witness by cross-examination. In Maryland, you can confront your adversary in a zoning hearing, but not when your ability to graduate or to seek a further degree can be determined by a disgruntled former partner who now reviews the relationship in a different light. In every instance, a crime victim must get on the witness stand and be subjected to the testing of that testimony by cross-examination. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon, expressed dismay at the restriction of due process rights in Title IX proceedings. Is our current crop of college students so devoid of agency that they cannot be trusted to stand on their own two feet and tell their story and have that story tested for credibility and truthfulness?

As a liberal, I always believed that due process was for everyone, not just for the group allied with one’s political cause. It appears the Biden administration has forgotten that.

Ronald L. Schwartz , College Park, Md.

A cruel tradition

Regarding the April 21 front-page article “ A legendary cowboy’s last ride ”:

Here’s hoping that Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins will do a follow-up rodeo story, one from the animals’ point of view.

Rodeo is not a true “sport.” That term denotes willing, evenly matched participants. Rodeo doesn’t qualify. Rather, it’s mostly hype, a macho exercise in domination that has little to do with ranching. Real working cowboys never routinely rode bulls, wrestled steers, rode bareback or practiced calf roping as a timed event. Nor did they put flank straps on the animals or work them over in the holding chutes with “hotshots,” tail-twisting, kicks and slaps. Hundreds of animals are crippled and killed in rodeo arenas annually, all in the name of “entertainment.” It needs to end.

Consider what legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez wrote in a 1990 letter to me at Action for Animals: “Cruelty, whether directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. Racism, economic deprival, dogfighting and cockfighting, bullfighting and rodeos are cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves.” These are words to live by.

Britain outlawed rodeos back in 1934. Can the United States be this far behind?

Eric Mills , Oakland, Calif.

A hopeful dispatch

Regarding Anna Husarska’s April 20 op-ed “ Missiles rain down, tulips bloom, Ukraine soldiers on ”:

Ms. Husarska’s dispatch contains a powerful message. I had a company in Kharkiv, Ukraine, with an office off Freedom Square and a factory outside the city. I saw a country evolve from an economically destitute state following the Soviet breakup to a thriving, vibrant entity.

Kharkiv has a theater similar to Kennedy Center, a magnificent classical organ theater, shops and, most important, a highly educated, entrepreneurial and technically advanced population. The young people were so amazing — and they still are, having maintained their spirit and willingness to die for their independence. We must stay behind these people. They must know they can depend on us.

Howard Pedolsky , Rockville

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