About The Workshop
Aristotle observed the necessity of dialogue for the very existence of society. Leonardo Polo went even further, stating that “without dialogue, the person is impossible.” Individuals, institutions, and societies flourish when they are granted a free space to reciprocally contribute their thoughts, feelings, expressions, intuitions, and creativity. Dialogue forms the bedrock of all our relationships and, therefore, underpins many realms of law that touch on communication.
This workshop welcomes unsolicited contributions that discuss the significance of the right to dialogue or explore how its promotion can reshape any branch of law, case law, or political matter.
- Some key ideas
The dialogical approach avoids treating the rights of speakers (e.g., freedom of expression, copyright, or advertising law) and the rights of listeners (e.g., access to public information or consumer protection) as isolated artifacts, like tiny pieces in a museum. Instead, we highlight the importance of recognizing the “elephant in the room”: the right to dialogue, which serves as the overarching framework that gives coherence and meaning to these fragmented rights.
It is evident that rights related to expression—such as free speech, copyright, or advertising—make little sense without corresponding rights and duties of reception. Nor can the right to access public information recognized in transparency laws exist without someone obliged to share information. People express themselves in the hope of being heard, write books expecting to be read, and pay for advertising to reach an audience, and, ultimately, they do that to trigger synchronous or asynchronous talks, short or long conversations.
Some scholars have proposed considering freedom of expression as a “two-way right,” to impart and to receive information and ideas. However, that view is still incomplete. True dialogue requires attending not only to the subjects of communication, but to every element involved in the dialogical process.
In broad terms, dialogue can be understood as a communication where the parties mutually share what they are, possess, understand, want, or feel, trying to understand each other and seeking the good of the other. In this sense, dialogue embraces all the elements of communication, namely: the subjects, the means, and their context, along with the message and how it is delivered (mode, channel, etc.), with certain actions of speaking, sharing, and listening the message, and with the purpose of those actions. Under this working definition, it is easy to assemble those rights of the speaker and the receiver (e.g., freedom of speech, of assembly, the right to access information, those rights related to the media), and those laws related to the media and the message, and provide them greater meaning within the whole.
We believe that understanding dialogue better and fostering an authentic human dialogue, will integrate and reorient various branches of communication-related law, such as those related to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, communication law, privacy and data protection, intellectual property, copyrights, AI Law, IT Law, and political debate. It will also help clarify and refine the legal limits of speech, such as libel, fighting words, or hate speech.
2. Registration of proposals
We welcome unsolicited proposals from all philosophical, legal, or political backgrounds to participate in this Special Workshop. To register, please follow these steps:
- Email the Convenor, Prof. Juan Carlos Riofrio (riofrioj@cua.edu), indicating the topic of your proposed presentation.
- Complete the IVR 2026 conference registration form at https://ivr2026istanbul.org/registration/.
- Send a follow-up email to the convenor with the title and abstract you submitted via the registration form.
3. Publication
Participants in this Special Workshop will also be invited to contribute to a collective publication following the event, should they wish to be part of this project.
Keywords
Right to Dialogue, Freedom of Expression, Intellectual Property, AI Law, IT Law, Freedom of Speech, Access to Public Information, Political Debate, Parliamentary Debate, Deliberative Democracy
