‘Worthy of Respect in a Democratic Society’? Forstater and the Expression of Controversial Beliefs

Abstract

1. In one of history’s most notorious legal proceedings, the judge – an obscure Roman official in a backwater Imperial province – was moved to ask, ‘What is truth?’ One suspects a bureaucratic figure like Pontius Pilate never received an answer that would have satisfied him; however, the quest for truth – and humanity’s right and obligation to seek it – has occupied the species in subsequent centuries.