سید محمد حسینی - Ph.D. Student of Public Law, Allmeh Tabatabaei University, Faculty of Law & Political Science, Tehran, Iran.
محمد جلالی - Assistant Professor, Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran. Iran.

One of the factors that has led the contracting states of the European Convention on Human Rights to is reliance on the public interest. In the most articles of the Convention, the “public morality” is expressed as a form of public interest, which has been stated to restrict the fundamental rights of individuals. We will try to consider this concept critically. Neither in the Convention itself, nor in the procedures of the Strasbourg Court, or among the contracting states the significance of this study is recognized when we consider that there is no distinct and clear conception of the concept of “morality”, or “public morality”. This conceptual ambiguity has led to the contracting states to define this concept according to their own understanding- and one of the factor of restricting the fundamental rights of individuals. Meanwhile the “right to freedom of expression” is one of the rights with the most restrictions. Accordingly, in this article, We would like to take a critical look at the violation of the “right to freedom of expression” under the excuse of protecting “public morality”, and then We will discuss Dworkin's view of the primacy of “freedom of expression” over an expediency called “morals”, which is a factor in the violation of “freedom of expression”.

“the European Convention of Human Rights”, “Morals”, “Public Morality”, “Public Interest”, “Freedom of Expression”, “Ronald Myles Dworkin”