speech meaning in legal

Skip to main navigation

• Email Updates
• Federal Court Finder

What Does Free Speech Mean?

Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech. The following are examples of speech, both direct (words) and symbolic (actions), that the Court has decided are either entitled to First Amendment protections, or not.

The First Amendment states, in relevant part, that:

“Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech.”

Freedom of speech includes the right:

• Not to speak (specifically, the right not to salute the flag). West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette , 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
• Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war (“Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”). Tinker v. Des Moines , 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
• To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages. Cohen v. California , 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
• To contribute money (under certain circumstances) to political campaigns. Buckley v. Valeo , 424 U.S. 1 (1976).
• To advertise commercial products and professional services (with some restrictions). Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Consumer Council , 425 U.S. 748 (1976);  Bates v. State Bar of Arizona , 433 U.S. 350 (1977).
• To engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest). Texas v. Johnson , 491 U.S. 397 (1989);  United States v. Eichman , 496 U.S. 310 (1990).

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

• To incite imminent lawless action. Brandenburg v. Ohio , 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
• To make or distribute obscene materials. Roth v. United States , 354 U.S. 476 (1957).
• To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest. United States v. O’Brien , 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
• To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration.  Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier , 484 U.S. 260 (1988).
• Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event. Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser , 478 U.S. 675 (1986).
• Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event. Morse v. Frederick, __ U.S. __ (2007).

Disclaimer: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for use in educational activities only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on legislation. 

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

• Voter Guide
• Michigan Politics
• John Carlisle
• M.L. Elrick
• Observer & Eccentric

What free speech is, and isn't, protected under the First Amendment

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, and yet, what that means has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

According to the  Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts , the court "has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech," but here are some of the things the court has ruled on.

Michigan indoor dining ban extended to Feb. 1, but some sports allowed

Automakers assure Mayor Duggan: Auto show won't ditch Detroit for good

What the First Amendment protects:

• The right not to speak, such as saluting the flag.
• To wear black armbands to school to protest a war.
• Using offensive words and phrases to convey political messages.
• To contribute money, under certain circumstances, to political campaigns.
• To advertise commercial products and professional services.
• To burning the flag in protest.

What the First Amendment does not protect:

• The right to incite actions that would harm others.
• To make or distribute obscene materials.
• To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
• To print school newspaper articles over the administration's objections.
• To make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.
• To advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email protected].

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

freedom of speech

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Business LibreTexts - Freedom of Speech
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Freedom of Speech
• University of Washington Pressbooks - Media and Society: Critical Approaches - Censorship and Freedom of Speech
• Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University - Freedom of Speech
• Cornell Law Scholl - Legal Information Institute - Freedom of Speech: Historical Background

Recent News

freedom of speech , right, as stated in the 1st and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States , to express information, ideas, and opinions free of government restrictions based on content. A modern legal test of the legitimacy of proposed restrictions on freedom of speech was stated in the opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenk v. U.S. (1919): a restriction is legitimate only if the speech in question poses a “clear and present danger”—i.e., a risk or threat to safety or to other public interests that is serious and imminent . Many cases involving freedom of speech and of the press also have concerned defamation , obscenity , and prior restraint ( see Pentagon Papers ). See also censorship .

Choose Your Legal Category:

• Online Law Library
•   Bankruptcy Law
•   Business Law
•   Civil Law
•   Criminal Law
•   Employment Law
•   Family Law
•   Finance Law
•   Government Law
•   Immigration Law
•   Insurance Law
•   Intellectual Property Law
•   Personal Injury Law
•   Products & Services Law
•   Real Estate Law
•   Wills, Trusts & Estates Law
•   Attorney Referral Services
•   Top 10 Most Popular Articles
•   Legal Dictionary
• How It Works - Clients
• Legal Center
• About LegalMatch
• Consumer Satisfaction
• Editorial Policy
• Attorneys Market Your Law Practice Attorney Login Schedule a Demo Now Did LegalMatch Call You Recently? How It Works - Attorneys Attorney Resources Attorney Success Stories Attorney Success Story Videos Compare Legal Marketing Services Cases Heatmap View Cases
• Find a Lawyer
• Legal Topics
• Government Law

Free Speech and Press Laws

(This may not be the same place you live)

  What Is Freedom of Speech?

Freedom of speech in the United States is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . The First Amendment states the Congress cannot make laws that abridge the freedom of speech. A common misperception is that the First Amendment bans the right of everyone and anyone to limit the speech of others. This is not the case.

The First Amendment limits the ability of the U.S. federal government, as well as the governments of states, counties and municipalities, to censor speech. A person’s employer can still set standards for speech in the workplace, for example. Newspapers and other media outlets for the most part set their own standards for what they will and will not publish. There are even some limitations on the freedom of speech that governments can put in place.

Some of the significant limitations are as follows:

• Time, Place and Manner Restrictions: When it comes to public expression of opinion and large-scale demonstrations, governments can place reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner in which individuals and groups can gather to engage in their protected political speech. So-called “ time, place and manner ” restrictions are allowed, because they serve the public’s competing interests in keeping traffic flowing, preserving property, and protecting the environment, among others. So, while both individuals and groups have the right to public speech, they can be required to respect time, place and manner restrictions;
• True Threats : For legal purposes a true threat is a statement directed towards a specific person and meant to frighten or intimidate another person and make them believe that they will be seriously harmed by the speaker or by someone acting on behalf of the speaker. True threats are not protected by the First Amendment. A person who makes a true threat can be charged with a crime, prosecuted, convicted and punished. State laws that make cross-burning a crime have been justified as the act is form of true threat;
• Speech that violates intellectual property laws: The government has copyright and other laws that regulate the use by others of a person’s copyrighted intellectual product. This regulation is allowed under the First Amendment
• Statements regarding improper sexual conduct;
• Statements that associate someone with a vile disease, e.g. claiming that person has a sexually transmitted infection;
• Statements that accuse the person of illegal behavior;
• Statements that hurt someone’s livelihood.
• Statements that allege racial or religious bigotry.
• Over time, courts have defined the so-called “safe harbor” rule. It allows media outlets to broadcast indecent (but not obscene) material at night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., when children are not likely to be in the audience. The FCC has never published a list of specific words prohibited from the broadcasts during the time period from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. But, again, broadcast networks still censor some or all of Carlin’s seven dirty words;
• Child Pornography : Governments have laws in place that make it a crime to possess, produce and/or distribute child pornography.
• Adult Pornography: Theoretically, there can be limits on the possession, production and distribution of adult pornography as well. The USSCT has defined “obscenity” as a category of pornography that violates contemporary community standards and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. This definition would seem to allow government regulation of most adult pornography, material with explicit sexual content. There seems to be a thriving market in adult pornography which the government tolerates, but the law does control how and where pornographic material can be made available and that is not in the mainstream media;
• Fraud and Other Speech Incident to Criminal Conduct: A person can be subject to criminal prosecution by police authorities for crimes that involve making false representations about a range of things for criminal purposes, usually to part a person from their money or other thing of value. Another category of crime that might punish speech is identified as disturbing the peace ;
• Fighting words: So-called “fighting words” are words, or speech, aimed at inciting imminent, lawless action on the part of those who hear them. The use of fighting words can be prohibited and made illegal in criminal law.

All of the states in the U.S. have provisions in their state constitutions that are the same or comparable to the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. Some states offer greater protection of the freedom of speech, press, and assembly than the U.S. Constitution does.

What Is Freedom of the Press?

Why is free speech and press important, what rights to expression do i have, what is government censorship, should i consult with freedom of speech and the press lawyers.

The First Amendment also provides that the government cannot abridge the freedom of the press. As with freedom of speech, government at every level is prohibited from interfering with the media. It cannot force the media to publish any material and it cannot prohibit the media from publishing any material, unless, of course, it violates any of the limitations noted above.

As with freedom of speech, there are some limits on freedom of the press. For example, reporters sometimes rely on confidential sources to give them information about what is going on inside the government or a business. There are, however, laws that prohibit leaking certain kinds of information to the press. A reporter who publishes information that has been leaked in violation of the law can be forced to attend a hearing or investigation and required to identify their source.

In the past, reporters have spent time in jail rather than disclose their sources to law enforcement. This is an ongoing area of conflict between the government and the media.

One additional issue that arises in connection with freedom of the press is that of prior restraint. Prior restraint occurs when the government tries to prevent publication of information because it poses some kind of supposed threat to some legitimate, vital interest of the government. The Court held that in order to restrain a media report before it is published, the government must prove that the newspaper publication would cause “inevitable, direct, and immediate danger to the United States.” So, prior restraint of media publications by government is possible, but extremely rare in practice.

Some of the benefits of freedom of speech are as follows:

• Anyone in the U.S. can publicly disagree with authorities, even the President;
• Any person in the U.S. may engage in speech that is connected with their practice of a religion. Citizens and non-citizens alike can choose their own religion. Or, people can choose to criticize religions and religious practices without fear of persecution by the government or a religious authority that is aligned with the government as happened in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when, e.g. in 1415 the Council of Constance burned the Czech dissident, Jan Hus, at the stake for his heresy against the dogma of the Catholic Church. Or, in the 17th century, when the scientist Galileo Galilei was tried by the Inquisition and spent the later part of his life under house arrest because his scientific writings were considered heretical to religious dogma. That cannot happen to us today in the U.S.;
• The U.S. has a huge media industry that is able to report on government mistakes and malfeasance. In fact, organs of the media are constantly engaged in relentless criticism of public officials of all kinds, and the government can do nothing to penalize them in any way;
• The First Amendment allows people to gather, and en masse, to let their voices be heard on social and political matters, subject of course to time, place and manner restrictions.

Again, the First Amendment protects us from government interference or restraint of most of our speech. But the First Amendment does not prohibit private entities, such as private corporations, from limiting the speech of its employees. The First Amendment only applies to governments and agencies of government. Public schools are considered agencies of government but can engage in some limited forms of restraint of speech that are not allowed for other government agencies, for example, in school newspapers.

Government censorship is common in many other nations in the world. In these countries, the government controls what media outlets can communicate to the nation’s citizens. Journalists who publish information the government wants to keep secret can pay with their lives for publishing information against the wishes of their government.

This cannot happen in the U.S. Limitations on the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press are minimal compared to the control that some foreign governments exert over media outlets in their nations.

The Founding Fathers in the U.S. included the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution because they believed that freedom of speech and the press is the foundation of the government “of, by and for the people” that they sought to establish.

Few people will have First Amendment freedom of speech or of the press issues come up in their daily lives. Mostly, journalists or newspaper publishers are the ones who will occasionally encounter issues. Or, groups that wish to stage large demonstrations or protests may have issues with local law enforcement when they attempt to get a permit for their event. They may find they have to negotiate time, place and manner restrictions. A freedom of speech lawyer is equipped to handle these issues.

A person who has an issue with asserting their First Amendment rights should consult an experienced government lawyer who specializes in the First Amendment. They are the ones with in-depth knowledge of USSCT cases and their limitations on how our government can regulate our speech.

Save Time and Money - Speak With a Lawyer Right Away

• Buy one 30-minute consultation call or subscribe for unlimited calls
• Subscription includes access to unlimited consultation calls at a reduced price
• Receive quick expert feedback or review your DIY legal documents
• Have peace of mind without a long wait or industry standard retainer
• Get the right guidance - Schedule a call with a lawyer today!

Need a Government Lawyer in your Area?

• Connecticut
• Massachusetts
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• West Virginia

Susan Nerlinger

LegalMatch Legal Writer

Updating Author

Susan is a member of the State Bar of California. She received her J.D. degree in 1983 from the University of California, Hastings College of Law and practiced plaintiff’s personal injury law for 8 years in California. She also taught civil procedure in the Paralegal program at Santa Clara University. She then taught English as a foreign language for eight years in the Czech Republic. Most recently, she taught English as a second language for Montgomery County Public Schools in suburban Washington, D.C. Now she devotes her time to writing on legal and environmental topics. You can follow her on her LinkedIn page. Read More

Original Author

Jose Rivera, J.D.

Managing Editor

Related Articles

• American Flag Law Lawyers
• Anti-SLAPP Laws
• Blasphemy - Liability for Insulting God
• California Anti-SLAPP Lawyers
• Filming and Photographing the Police
• Internet Blogs and the Law

Discover the Trustworthy LegalMatch Advantage

• No fee to present your case
• Choose from lawyers in your area
• A 100% confidential service

How does LegalMatch work?

Law Library Disclaimer

16 people have successfully posted their cases

Freedom of Speech

Definition of freedom of speech, what is freedom of speech, freedom of speech amendment, freedom of speech quotes, freedom of speech examples in legal cases, gitlow v. new york (1925), brandenburg v. ohio (1969), related legal terms and issues.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Freedom of Speech

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 27, 2023 | Original: December 4, 2017

Freedom of speech—the right to express opinions without government restraint—is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this freedom. In a series of landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has helped to define what types of speech are—and aren’t—protected under U.S. law.

The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word “parrhesia” means “free speech,” or “to speak candidly.” The term first appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period, parrhesia became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens. Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.

First Amendment

In the United States, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech.

The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution . The Bill of Rights provides constitutional protection for certain individual liberties, including freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.

The First Amendment doesn’t specify what exactly is meant by freedom of speech. Defining what types of speech should and shouldn’t be protected by law has fallen largely to the courts.

In general, the First Amendment guarantees the right to express ideas and information. On a basic level, it means that people can express an opinion (even an unpopular or unsavory one) without fear of government censorship.

It protects all forms of communication, from speeches to art and other media.

Flag Burning

While freedom of speech pertains mostly to the spoken or written word, it also protects some forms of symbolic speech. Symbolic speech is an action that expresses an idea.

Flag burning is an example of symbolic speech that is protected under the First Amendment. Gregory Lee Johnson, a youth communist, burned a flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas to protest the Reagan administration.

The U.S. Supreme Court , in 1990, reversed a Texas court’s conviction that Johnson broke the law by desecrating the flag. Texas v. Johnson invalidated statutes in Texas and 47 other states prohibiting flag burning.

When Isn’t Speech Protected?

Not all speech is protected under the First Amendment.

Forms of speech that aren’t protected include:

• Obscene material such as child pornography
• Plagiarism of copyrighted material
• Defamation (libel and slander)
• True threats

Speech inciting illegal actions or soliciting others to commit crimes aren’t protected under the First Amendment, either.

The Supreme Court decided a series of cases in 1919 that helped to define the limitations of free speech. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, shortly after the United States entered into World War I . The law prohibited interference in military operations or recruitment.

Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck was arrested under the Espionage Act after he distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction by creating the “clear and present danger” standard, explaining when the government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, they viewed draft resistant as dangerous to national security.

American labor leader and Socialist Party activist Eugene Debs also was arrested under the Espionage Act after giving a speech in 1918 encouraging others not to join the military. Debs argued that he was exercising his right to free speech and that the Espionage Act of 1917 was unconstitutional. In Debs v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act.

Freedom of Expression

The Supreme Court has interpreted artistic freedom broadly as a form of free speech.

In most cases, freedom of expression may be restricted only if it will cause direct and imminent harm. Shouting “fire!” in a crowded theater and causing a stampede would be an example of direct and imminent harm.

In deciding cases involving artistic freedom of expression the Supreme Court leans on a principle called “content neutrality.” Content neutrality means the government can’t censor or restrict expression just because some segment of the population finds the content offensive.

Free Speech in Schools

In 1965, students at a public high school in Des Moines, Iowa , organized a silent protest against the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to protest the fighting. The students were suspended from school. The principal argued that the armbands were a distraction and could possibly lead to danger for the students.

The Supreme Court didn’t bite—they ruled in favor of the students’ right to wear the armbands as a form of free speech in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District . The case set the standard for free speech in schools. However, First Amendment rights typically don’t apply in private schools.

What does free speech mean?; United States Courts . Tinker v. Des Moines; United States Courts . Freedom of expression in the arts and entertainment; ACLU .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Explore the Constitution

• The Constitution
• Read the Full Text

Dive Deeper

Constitution 101 course.

• The Drafting Table
• Supreme Court Cases Library
• Founders' Library
• Constitutional Rights: Origins & Travels

Start your constitutional learning journey

• News & Debate Overview

Constitution Daily Blog

• America's Town Hall Programs
• Special Projects

Media Library

America’s Town Hall

Watch videos of recent programs.

• Education Overview

Constitution 101 Curriculum

• Classroom Resources by Topic
• Classroom Resources Library
• Live Online Events
• Professional Learning Opportunities
• Constitution Day Resources

Explore our new 15-unit high school curriculum.

• Explore the Museum
• Plan Your Visit
• Exhibits & Programs
• Field Trips & Group Visits
• Host Your Event
• Buy Tickets

New exhibit

The first amendment, a common interpretation: freedom of speech and the press.

December 1, 2016 | by Geoffrey R. Stone and Eugene Volokh

As part of the National Constitution Center’s   Interactive Constitution project , leading scholars across the legal and philosophical spectrum find common ground on the Constitution’s articles,   amendments,   and provisions. In this essay from September 2015, Geoffrey R. Stone from the University of Chicago Law School and Eugene Volokh from the UCLA School of Law say the legal protection today offered by the First Amendment is stronger than ever before in our history.

“Congress shall make no law . . .  abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” What does this mean today? Generally speaking, it means that the government may not jail, fine, or impose civil liability on people or organizations based on what they say or write, except in exceptional circumstances.

Although the First Amendment says “Congress,” the Supreme Court has held that speakers are protected against all government agencies and officials: federal, state, and local, and legislative, executive, or judicial. The First Amendment does not protect speakers, however, against private individuals or organizations, such as private employers, private colleges, or private landowners. The First Amendment restrains only the government.

The Supreme Court has interpreted “speech” and “press” broadly as covering not only talking, writing, and printing, but also broadcasting, using the Internet, and other forms of expression. The freedom of speech also applies to symbolic expression, such as displaying flags, burning flags, wearing armbands, burning crosses, and the like.

The Supreme Court has held that restrictions on speech because of its  content —that is, when the government targets the speaker’s message—generally violate the First Amendment. Laws that prohibit people from criticizing a war, opposing abortion, or advocating high taxes are examples of unconstitutional content-based restrictions. Such laws are thought to be especially problematic because they distort public debate and contradict a basic principle of self-governance: that the government cannot be trusted to decide what ideas or information “the people” should be allowed to hear.

There are generally three situations in which the government can constitutionally restrict speech under a less demanding standard.

1. In some circumstances, the Supreme Court has held that certain types of speech are of only “low” First Amendment value, such as:

a. Defamation: False statements that damage a person’s reputations can lead to civil liability (and even to criminal punishment), especially when the speaker deliberately lied or said things they knew were likely false.  New York Times v. Sullivan (1964).

b. True threats: Threats to commit a crime (for example, “I’ll kill you if you don’t give me your money”) can be punished.  Watts v. United States (1969).

c. “Fighting words”: Face-to-face personal insults that are likely to lead to an immediate fight are punishable.  Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire   (1942). But this does not include political statements that offend others and provoke them to violence.  For example, civil rights or anti-abortion protesters cannot be silenced merely because passersby respond violently to their speech.  Cox v. Louisiana   (1965).

d. Obscenity: Hard-core, highly sexually explicit pornography is not protected by the First Amendment.  Miller v. California   (1973). In practice, however, the government rarely prosecutes online distributors of such material.

e. Child pornography: Photographs or videos involving actual children engaging in sexual conduct are punishable, because allowing such materials would create an incentive to sexually abuse children in order to produce such material.  New York v. Ferber   (1982).

f. Commercial advertising: Speech advertising a product or service is constitutionally protected, but not as much as other speech. For instance, the government may ban misleading commercial advertising, but it generally can’t ban misleading political speech.  Virginia Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Council (1976).

Outside these narrow categories of “low” value speech, most other content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional. Even entertainment, vulgarity, “hate speech” (bigoted speech about particular races, religions, sexual orientations, and the like), blasphemy (speech that offends people’s religious sensibilities), and violent video games are protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has generally been very reluctant to expand the list of “low” value categories of speech.

2. The government can restrict speech under a less demanding standard when the speaker is in a special relationship to the government. For example, the speech of government employees and of students in public schools can be restricted, even based on content, when their speech is incompatible with their status as public officials or students. A teacher in a public school, for example, can be punished for encouraging students to experiment with illegal drugs, and a government employee who has access to classified information generally can be prohibited from disclosing that information. Pickering v. Board of Education   (1968).

3. The government can also restrict speech under a less demanding standard when it does so without regard to the content or message of the speech. Content-neutral restrictions, such as restrictions on noise, blocking traffic, and large signs (which can distract drivers and clutter the landscape), are generally constitutional as long as they are “reasonable.” Because such laws apply neutrally to all speakers without regard to their message, they are less threatening to the core First Amendment concern that government should not be permitted to favor some ideas over others.  Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC (1994). But not all content-neutral restrictions are viewed as reasonable; for example, a law prohibiting all demonstrations in public parks or all leafleting on public streets would violate the First Amendment.  Schneider v. State   (1939).

Courts have not always been this protective of free expression. In the nineteenth century, for example, courts allowed punishment of blasphemy, and during and shortly after World War I the Supreme Court held that speech tending to promote crime—such as speech condemning the military draft or praising anarchism—could be punished.  Schenck v. United States  (1919). Moreover, it was not until 1925 that the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment limited state and local governments, as well as the federal government.  Gitlow v. New York  (1925).

But starting in the 1920s, the Supreme Court began to read the First Amendment more broadly, and this trend accelerated in the 1960s. Today, the legal protection offered by the First Amendment is stronger than ever before in our history.

Geoffrey R. Stone is Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. Eugene Volokh is Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.

You can read more from each author on our Interactive Constitution project on this topic, as they offer viewpoints beyond this common interpretation:  Fixing Free Speech By Geoffrey R. Stone  |  Frontiers For Free Speech By Eugene Volokh

More from the National Constitution Center

Constitution 101

Explore our new 15-unit core curriculum with educational videos, primary texts, and more.

Search and browse videos, podcasts, and blog posts on constitutional topics.

Founders’ Library

Discover primary texts and historical documents that span American history and have shaped the American constitutional tradition.

Modal title

Modal body text goes here.

Share with Students

Skip to Main Content - Keyboard Accessible

Doctrine and practice of symbolic speech: overview.

• U.S. Constitution Annotated

First Amendment :

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Very little expression is “mere” speech. If it is oral, it may be noisy enough to be disturbing, 1 Footnote E.g. , Saia v. New York, 334 U.S. 558 (1948) ; Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77 (1949) . and, if it is written, it may be litter; 2 Footnote E.g. , Schneider v. Town of Irvington, 308 U.S. 147 (1939) . in either case, it may amount to conduct that is prohibitable in specific circumstances. 3 Footnote Cf. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) . Moving beyond these simple examples, one may see as well that conduct may have a communicative content, intended to express a point of view. Expressive conduct may consist in flying a particular flag as a symbol 4 Footnote Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359 (1931) . or in refusing to salute a flag as a symbol. 5 Footnote West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) . Sit-ins and stand-ins may effectively express a protest about certain things. 6 Footnote In Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966) , the Court held protected a peaceful, silent stand-in in a segregated public library. Speaking of speech and assembly, Justice Fortas said for the Court: “As this Court has repeatedly stated, these rights are not confined to verbal expression. They embrace appropriate types of action which certainly include the right in a peaceable and orderly manner to protest by silent and reproachful presence, in a place where the protestant has every right to be, the unconstitutional segregation of public facilities.” Id. at 141–42 . See also Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 185, 201 (1961) (Justice Harlan concurring). On a different footing is expressive conduct in a place where such conduct is prohibited for reasons other than suppressing speech. See Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984) (upholding Park Service restriction on overnight sleeping as applied to demonstrators wishing to call attention to the plight of the homeless).

Justice Jackson wrote: “There is no doubt that, in connection with the pledge, the flag salute is a form of utterance. Symbolism is a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas. The use of an emblem or flag to symbolize some system, idea, institution, or personality is a short cut from mind to mind.” 7 Footnote West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 632 (1943) . When conduct or action has a communicative content to it, governmental regulation or prohibition implicates the First Amendment , but this does not mean that such conduct or action is necessarily immune from governmental process. Thus, although the Court has had few opportunities to formulate First Amendment standards in this area, in upholding a congressional prohibition on draft-card burnings, it has stated the generally applicable rule. “[A] government regulation is sufficiently justified if it is within the constitutional power of Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedom is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that government interest.” 8 Footnote United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (1968) . The Court has suggested that this standard is virtually identical to that applied to time, place, or manner restrictions on expression. 9 Footnote Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 298 & n.8 (1984) .

Although almost unanimous in formulating and applying the test in O’Brien , the Court splintered when it had to deal with one of the more popular forms of “symbolic” conduct of the late 1960s and early 1970s—flag burning and other forms of flag desecration. No unifying theory capable of application to a wide range of possible flag abuse actions emerged from the early cases. Thus, in Street v. New York , 10 Footnote 394 U.S. 576 (1969) . the defendant had been convicted under a statute punishing desecration “by words or act” upon evidence that when he burned the flag he had uttered contemptuous words. The conviction was set aside because it might have been premised on his words alone or on his words and the act together, and no valid governmental interest supported penalizing verbal contempt for the flag. 11 Footnote 394 U.S. at 591–93 . Four dissenters concluded that the First Amendment did not preclude a flat proscription of flag burning or flag desecration for expressive purposes. Id. at 594 (Chief Justice Warren), 609 (Justice Black), 610 (Justice White), and 615 (Justice Fortas). In Radich v. New York, 401 U.S. 531 (1971) , aff’g , 26 N.Y.2d 114 , 257 N.E.2d 30 (1970) , an equally divided Court, Justice Douglas not participating, sustained a flag desecration conviction of one who displayed sculptures in a gallery, using the flag in apparently sexually bizarre ways to register a social protest. Defendant subsequently obtained his release on habeas corpus, United States ex rel. Radich v. Criminal Court , 459 F.2d 745 (2d Cir. 1972) , cert. denied , 409 U.S. 115 (1973) .

A few years later the Court reversed two other flag desecration convictions, one on due process/vagueness grounds, the other under the First Amendment . These cases were decided by the Court in a manner that indicated an effort to begin to resolve the standards of First Amendment protection of “symbolic conduct.” In Smith v. Goguen , 12 Footnote 415 U.S. 566 (1974) . a statute punishing anyone who “publicly . . . treats contemptuously the flag of the United States” was held unconstitutionally vague, and a conviction for wearing trousers with a small United States flag sewn to the seat was overturned. The language subjected the defendant to criminal liability under a standard “so indefinite that police, court, and jury were free to react to nothing more than their own preferences for treatment of the flag.” 13 Footnote 415 U.S. at 578 .

The First Amendment was the basis for reversal in Spence v. Washington , 14 Footnote 418 U.S. 405 (1974) . which set aside a conviction under a statute punishing the display of a United States flag to which something is attached or superimposed; Spence had hung his flag from his apartment window upside down with a peace symbol taped to the front and back. The act, the Court thought, was a form of communication, and because of the nature of the act, and the factual context and environment in which it was undertaken, the Court held it to be protected. The context included the fact that the flag was privately owned, that it was displayed on private property, and that there was no danger of breach of the peace. The nature of the act was that it was intended to express an idea and it did so without damaging the flag. The Court assumed that the state had a valid interest in preserving the flag as a national symbol, but left unclear whether that interest extended beyond protecting the physical integrity of the flag. 15 Footnote 418 U.S. at 408–11, 412–13 . Subsequently, the Court vacated, over the dissents of Chief Justice Burger and Justices White, Blackmun, and Rehnquist, two convictions for burning flags and sent them back for reconsideration in the light of Goguen and Spence . Sutherland v. Illinois , 418 U.S. 907 (1974) ; Farrell v. Iowa , 418 U.S. 907 (1974) . The Court, however, dismissed, “for want of a substantial federal question,” an appeal from a flag desecration conviction of one who, with no apparent intent to communicate but in the course of “horseplay,” blew his nose on a flag, simulated masturbation on it, and finally burned it. Van Slyke v. Texas , 418 U.S. 907 (1974) .

The underlying assumption that flag burning could be prohibited as a means of protecting the flag’s symbolic value was later rejected. Twice, in 1989 and again in 1990, the Court held that prosecutions for flag burning at a public demonstration violated the First Amendment . First, in Texas v. Johnson 16 Footnote 491 U.S. 397 (1989) . the Court rejected a state desecration statute designed to protect the flag’s symbolic value, and then in United States v. Eichman 17 Footnote 496 U.S. 310 (1990) . rejected a more limited federal statute purporting to protect only the flag’s physical integrity. Both cases were decided by 5-to-4 votes, with Justice Brennan writing the Court’s opinions. 18 Footnote In each case Justice Brennan’s opinion for the Court was joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and Kennedy, and in each case Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices White, Stevens, and O’Connor dissented. In Johnson the Chief Justice’s dissent was joined by Justices White and O’Connor, and Justice Stevens dissented separately. In Eichman Justice Stevens wrote the only dissenting opinion, to which the other dissenters subscribed. The Texas statute invalidated in Johnson defined the prohibited act of “desecration” as any physical mistreatment of the flag that the actor knew would seriously offend other persons. This emphasis on causing offense to others meant that the law was not “unrelated to the suppression of free expression” and that consequently the deferential standard of United States v. O’Brien was inapplicable. Applying strict scrutiny, the Court ruled that the state’s prosecution of someone who burned a flag at a political protest was not justified under the state’s asserted interest in preserving the flag as a symbol of nationhood and national unity. The Court’s opinion left little doubt that the existing federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 700 , and the flag desecration laws of 47 other states would suffer a similar fate in a similar case. Doubt remained, however, as to whether the Court would uphold a “content-neutral” statute protecting the physical integrity of the flag.

Immediately following Johnson , Congress enacted a new flag protection statute providing punishment for anyone who “knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles, burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag of the United States.” 19 Footnote The Flag Protection Act of 1989, Pub. L. No. 101-131 (1989). The law was designed to be content-neutral and to protect the “physical integrity” of the flag. 20 Footnote See H.R. Rep. No. 231 , 101st Cong., 1st Sess. 8 (1989) ( “The purpose of the bill is to protect the physical integrity of American flags in all circumstances, regardless of the motive or political message of any flag burner” ). Nonetheless, in overturning convictions of flag burners, the Court found that the law suffered from “the same fundamental flaw” as the Texas law in Johnson . The government’s underlying interest, characterized by the Court as resting upon “a perceived need to preserve the flag’s status as a symbol of our Nation and certain national ideals,” 21 Footnote United States v. Eichman , 496 U.S. at 316 . still related to the suppression of free expression. Support for this interpretation was found in the fact that most of the prohibited acts are usually associated with disrespectful treatment of the flag; this suggested to the Court “a focus on those acts likely to damage the flag’s symbolic value.” 22 Footnote 496 U.S. at 317 . As in Johnson , such a law could not withstand “most exacting scrutiny” analysis.

The Court’s ruling in Eichman rekindled congressional efforts, postponed with enactment of the Flag Protection Act, to amend the Constitution to authorize flag desecration legislation at the federal and state levels. In both the House and the Senate these measures failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote. 23 Footnote In the 101st Congress, the House defeated H.J. Res. 350 by vote of 254 in favor to 177 against ( 136 Cong. Rec. H4086 (daily ed. June 21, 1990) , and the Senate defeated S.J. Res. 332 by vote of 58 in favor to 42 against ( 136 Cong. Rec. S8737 (daily ed. June 26, 1990) . In every Congress since then (though the 111th in 2009), constitutional amendments to allow Congress or the states to prohibit flag desecration have been proposed. In each Congress from the 104th through the 109th (1995-2006), the House passed such a proposal, but the Senate either rejected it or did not vote on it.

Public Issue Picketing and Parading

The early cases held that picketing and parading were forms of expression entitled to some First Amendment protection. 24 Footnote Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496 (1939) ; Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569 (1941) ; Kunz v. New York, 340 U.S. 290 (1951) ; Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.S. 268 (1951) . Those early cases did not, however, explicate the difference in application of First Amendment principles that the difference between mere expression and speech-plus would entail. Many of these cases concerned disruptions or feared disruptions of the public peace occasioned by the expressive activity and the ramifications of this on otherwise protected activity. 25 Footnote Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940) ; Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942) ; Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949) ; Feiner v. New York, 340 U.S. 315 (1951) . A series of other cases concerned the permissible characteristics of permit systems in which parades and meetings were licensed, and expanded the procedural guarantees that must accompany a permissible licensing system. 26 Footnote See, e.g. , Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 394 U.S. 147 (1969) ; National Socialist Party v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977) ; Carroll v. President & Commr's of Princess Anne, 393 U.S. 175 (1968) . In one case, however, the Court applied the rules developed with regard to labor picketing to uphold an injunction against a group picketing a grocery store to compel the chain to adopt a quota-hiring system for black employees. The Supreme Court affirmed the state court's ruling that picketing to coerce the adoption of racially discriminatory hiring was contrary to state public policy. 27 Footnote Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U.S. 460 (1950) . This ruling, allowing content-based restriction, seems inconsistent with NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware , discussed under this topic, infra .

A series of civil rights picketing and parading cases led the Court to formulate standards much like those it has established in the labor field, but more protective of expressive activity. The process began with Edwards v. South Carolina , 28 Footnote 372 U.S. 229 (1963) . in which the Court reversed a breach of the peace conviction of several black protesters for their refusal to disperse as ordered by police. The statute was so vague, the Court concluded, that demonstrators could be convicted simply because their presence “disturbed” people. Describing the demonstration upon the grounds of the legislative building in South Carolina’s capital, Justice Stewart observed that “[t]he circumstances in this case reflect an exercise of these basic [ First Amendment ] constitutional rights in their most pristine and classic form.” 29 Footnote 372 U.S. at 235 . See also Fields v. South Carolina, 375 U.S. 44 (1963) ; Henry v. City of Rock Hill, 376 U.S. 776 (1964) . In subsequent cases, the Court observed: “We emphatically reject the notion urged by appellant that the First and Fourteenth Amendment s afford the same kind of freedom to those who would communicate ideas by conduct such as patrolling, marching, and picketing on streets and highways, as those amendments afford to those who communicate ideas by pure speech.” 30 Footnote Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 555 (1965) . “The conduct which is the subject to this statute—picketing and parading—is subject to regulation even though intertwined with expression and association. The examples are many of the application by this Court of the principle that certain forms of conduct mixed with speech may be regulated or prohibited.” 31 Footnote 379 U.S. at 563 .

The Court must determine, of course, whether the regulation is aimed primarily at conduct, as is the case with time, place, and manner regulations, or whether instead the aim is to regulate the content of speech. In a series of decisions, the Court refused to permit restrictions on parades and demonstrations, and reversed convictions imposed for breach of the peace and similar offenses, when, in the Court’s view, disturbance had resulted from opposition to the messages being uttered by demonstrators. 32 Footnote Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229 (1963) ; Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536 (1965) ; Gregory v. City of Chicago, 394 U.S. 111 (1969) ; Bachellar v. Maryland, 397 U.S. 564 (1970) . See also Collin v. Smith , 447 F. Supp. 676 (N.D. Ill.) , aff’d , 578 F.2d 1197 (7th Cir.) , stay denied , 436 U.S. 953 , cert. denied , 439 U.S. 916 (1978) . Subsequently, however, the Court upheld a ban on residential picketing in Frisby v. Shultz , 33 Footnote 487 U.S. 474 (1988) . finding that the city ordinance was narrowly tailored to serve the “significant” governmental interest in protecting residential privacy. As interpreted, the ordinance banned only picketing that targeted a single residence, and it is unclear whether the Court would uphold a broader restriction on residential picketing. 34 Footnote An earlier case involving residential picketing had been resolved on equal protection rather than First Amendment grounds, the ordinance at issue making an exception for labor picketing. Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455 (1980) .

In 1982, the Justices confronted a case, that, like Hughes v. Superior Court , 35 Footnote 339 U.S. 460 (1950) . involved a state court injunction on picketing, although this one also involved a damage award. NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. 36 Footnote 458 U.S. 886 (1982) . may join in terms of importance such cases as New York Times Co. v. Sullivan 37 Footnote 376 U.S. 254 (1964) . in requiring the states to observe enhanced constitutional standards before they may impose liability upon persons for engaging in expressive conduct that implicates the First Amendment . The case arose in the context of a protest against racial conditions by black citizens of Claiborne County, Mississippi. Listing demands that included desegregation of public facilities, hiring of black policemen, hiring of more black employees by local stores, and ending of verbal abuse by police, the local NAACP chapter unanimously voted to boycott the area’s white merchants. The boycott was carried out through speeches and nonviolent picketing and solicitation of others to cease doing business with the merchants. Individuals were designated to watch stores and identify black people patronizing the stores; their names were then announced at meetings and published. Persuasion of others included social pressures and threats of social ostracism. Acts of violence did occur from time to time, directed in the main at black people who did not observe the boycott.

The state Supreme Court imposed joint and several liability upon leaders and participants in the boycott, and upon the NAACP, for all of the merchants’ lost earnings during a seven-year period on the basis of the common law tort of malicious interference with the merchants’ business, holding that the existence of acts of physical force and violence and the use of force, violence, and threats to achieve the ends of the boycott deprived it of any First Amendment protection.

Reversing, the Court observed that the goals of the boycotters were legal and that most of their means were constitutionally protected; although violence was not protected, its existence alone did not deprive the other activities of First Amendment coverage. Thus, speeches and nonviolent picketing, both to inform the merchants of grievances and to encourage others to join the boycott, were protected activities, and association for those purposes was also protected. 38 Footnote NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 907–08 (1982) . That some members of the group might have engaged in violence or might have advocated violence did not result in loss of protection for association, absent a showing that those associating had joined with intent to further the unprotected activities. 39 Footnote 458 U.S. at 908 . Nor was protection to be denied because nonparticipants had been urged to join by speech, by picketing, by identification, by threats of social ostracism, and by other expressive acts: “[s]peech does not lose its protected character . . . simply because it may embarrass others or coerce them into action.” 40 Footnote 458 U.S. at 910 . The Court cited Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 537 (1945) , a labor picketing case, and Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U.S. 415, 419 (1971) , a public issues picketing case, which had also relied on the labor cases. Compare NLRB v. Retail Store Employees, 447 U.S. 607, 618–19 (1980) (Justice Stevens concurring) (labor picketing that coerces or “signals” others to engage in activity that violates valid labor policy, rather than attempting to engage reason, prohibitable). To the contention that liability could be imposed on “store watchers” and on a group known as “Black Hats” who also patrolled stores and identified black patronizers of the businesses, the Court did not advert to the “signal” theory. “There is nothing unlawful in standing outside a store and recording names. Similarly, there is nothing unlawful in wearing black hats, although such apparel may cause apprehension in others.” 458 U.S. at 925 . The boycott had a disruptive effect upon local economic conditions and resulted in loss of business for the merchants, but these consequences did not justify suppression of the boycott. Government may certainly regulate certain economic activities having an incidental effect upon speech ( e.g. , labor picketing or business conspiracies to restrain competition), 41 Footnote See, e.g. , FTC v. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Ass’n, 493 U.S. 411 (1990) (upholding application of per se antitrust liability to trial lawyers association’s boycott designed to force higher fees for representation of indigent defendants by court-appointed counsel). but that power of government does not extend to suppression of picketing and other boycott activities involving, as this case did, speech upon matters of public affairs with the intent of affecting governmental action and motivating private actions to achieve racial equality. 42 Footnote In evaluating the permissibility of government regulation in this context that has an incidental effect on expression, the Court applied the standards of United States v. O’Brien , which permits a regulation “if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restiction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.” 458 U.S. at 912, n.47 , quoting O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 376–77 (1968) (footnotes omitted).

The critical issue, however, had been the occurrence of violent acts and the lower court’s conclusion that they deprived otherwise protected conduct of protection. “The First Amendment does not protect violence . . . . No federal rule of law restricts a State from imposing tort liability for business losses that are caused by violence and by threats of violence. When such conduct occurs in the context of constitutionally protected activity, however, ‘precision of regulation’ is demanded . . . . Specifically, the presence of activity protected by the First Amendment imposes restraints on the grounds that may give rise to damages liability and on the persons who may be held accountable for those damages.” 43 Footnote 458 U.S. at 916–17 . In other words, the states may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, but they may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity. 44 Footnote 458 U.S. at 917–18 . Thus, the state courts had to compute, upon proof by the merchants, what damages had been the result of violence, and could not include losses suffered as a result of all the other activities comprising the boycott. And only those nonviolent persons who associated with others with an awareness of violence and an intent to further it could similarly be held liable. 45 Footnote 458 U.S. at 918–29 , relying on a series of labor cases and on the subversive activities association cases, e.g. , Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203 (1961) , and Noto v. United States, 367 U.S. 290 (1961) . Because most of the acts of violence had occurred early on, in 1966, there was no way constitutionally that much if any of the later losses of the merchants could be recovered in damages. 46 Footnote 458 U.S. at 920–26 . The Court distinguished Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U.S. 287 (1941) , in which an injunction had been sustained against both violent and nonviolent activity, not on the basis of special rules governing labor picketing, but because the violence had been “pervasive.” 458 U.S. at 923 . As to the field secretary of the local NAACP, the Court refused to permit imposition of damages based upon speeches that could be read as advocating violence, because any violent acts that occurred were some time after the speeches, and a “clear and present danger” analysis of the speeches would not find them punishable. 47 Footnote 458 U.S. at 926–29 . The field secretary’s “emotionally charged rhetoric . . . did not transcend the bounds of protected speech set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) .” The award against the NAACP fell with the denial of damages against its local head, and, in any event, the protected right of association required a rule that would immunize the NAACP without a finding that it “authorized—either actually or apparently—or ratified unlawful conduct.” 48 Footnote 458 U.S. at 931 . In ordinary business cases, the rule of liability of an entity for actions of its agents is broader. E.g. , American Soc’y of Mech. Eng’rs v. Hydrolevel Corp., 456 U.S. 556 (1982) . The different rule in cases of organizations formed to achieve political purposes rather than economic goals appears to require substantial changes in the law of agency with respect to such entities. Note, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 171, 174–76 (1982) .

Claiborne Hardware is, thus, a seminal decision in the Court’s effort to formulate standards governing state power to regulate or to restrict expressive conduct that comes close to or crosses over the line to encompass some violent activities; it requires great specificity and the drawing of fine discriminations by government so as to reach only that portion of the activity that does involve violence or the threat of violence, and forecloses the kind of “public policy” limit on demonstrations that was approved in Hughes v. Superior Court . 49 Footnote “Concerted action is a powerful weapon. History teaches that special dangers are associated with conspiratorial activity. And yet one of the foundations of our society is the right of individuals to combine with other persons in pursuit of a common goal by lawful means.”

More recently, disputes arising from anti-abortion protests outside abortion clinics have occasioned another look at principles distinguishing lawful public demonstrations from proscribable conduct. In Madsen v. Women’s Health Center , 50 Footnote 512 U.S. 753 (1994) . the Court refined principles governing issuance of “content-neutral” injunctions that restrict expressive activity. 51 Footnote The Court rejected the argument that the injunction was necessarily content-based or viewpoint-based because it applied only to anti-abortion protesters. “An injunction by its very nature applies only to a particular group (or individuals) . . . . It does so, however, because of the group’s past actions in the context of a specific dispute between real parties.” There had been no similarly disruptive demonstrations by pro-abortion factions at the abortion clinic. 512 U.S. at 762 . The appropriate test, the Court stated, is “whether the challenged provisions of the injunction burden no more speech than necessary to serve a significant governmental interest.” 52 Footnote 512 U.S. at 765 . Regular time, place, and manner analysis (requiring that regulation be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest) “is not sufficiently rigorous,” the Court explained, “because injunctions create greater risk of censorship and discriminatory application, and because of the established principle that an injunction should be no broader than necessary to achieve its desired goals.” 53 Footnote 512 U.S. at 765 . Applying its new test, the Court upheld an injunction prohibiting protesters from congregating, picketing, patrolling, demonstrating, or entering any portion of the public right-of-way within 36 feet of an abortion clinic. Similarly upheld were noise restrictions designed to ensure the health and well-being of clinic patients. Other aspects of the injunction, however, did not pass the test. Inclusion of private property within the 36-foot buffer was not adequately justified, nor was inclusion in the noise restriction of a ban on “images observable” by clinic patients. A ban on physically approaching any person within 300 feet of the clinic unless that person indicated a desire to communicate burdened more speech than necessary. Also, a ban on demonstrating within 300 feet of the residences of clinic staff was not sufficiently justified, the restriction covering a much larger zone than an earlier residential picketing ban that the Court had upheld. 54 Footnote Referring to Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474 (1988) .

In Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York , 55 Footnote 519 U.S. 357 (1997) . the Court applied Madsen to another injunction that placed restrictions on demonstrating outside an abortion clinic. The Court upheld the portion of the injunction that banned “demonstrating within fifteen feet from either side or edge of, or in front of, doorways or doorway entrances, parking lot entrances, driveways and driveway entrances of such facilities” what the Court called “fixed buffer zones.” 56 Footnote 519 U.S. at 366 n.3 . It struck down a prohibition against demonstrating “within fifteen feet of any person or vehicles seeking access to or leaving such facilities” what it called “floating buffer zones.” 57 Footnote 519 U.S. at 366 n.3 . The Court cited “public safety and order” 58 Footnote 519 U.S. at 376 . in upholding the fixed buffer zones, but it found that the floating buffer zones “burden more speech than is necessary to serve the relevant governmental interests” 59 Footnote 519 U.S. at 377 . because they make it “quite difficult for a protester who wishes to engage in peaceful expressive activity to know how to remain in compliance with the injunction.” 60 Footnote 519 U.S. at 378 . The Court also upheld a “provision, specifying that once sidewalk counselors who had entered the buffer zones were required to ‘cease and desist’ their counseling, they had to retreat 15 feet from the people they had been counseling and had to remain outside the boundaries of the buffer zones.” 61 Footnote 519 U.S. at 367 .

In Hill v. Colorado , 62 Footnote 530 U.S. 703 (2000) . the Court upheld a Colorado statute that made it unlawful, within 100 feet of the entrance to any health care facility, to “knowingly approach” within eight feet of another person, without that person’s consent, “for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person.” 63 Footnote 530 U.S. at 707 . This decision is notable because it upheld a statute, and not, as in Madsen and Schenck , merely an injunction directed to particular parties. The Court found the statute to be a content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation of speech that “reflects an acceptable balance between the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding speakers and the interests of unwilling listeners . . . .” 64 Footnote 530 U.S. at 714 . The restrictions were content-neutral because they regulated only the places where some speech may occur, and because they applied equally to all demonstrators, regardless of viewpoint. Although the restrictions did not apply to all speech, the “kind of cursory examination” that might be required to distinguish casual conversation from protest, education, or counseling is not “problematic.” 65 Footnote 530 U.S. at 722 . The law was narrowly tailored to achieve the state’s interests. The eight-foot restriction did not significantly impair the ability to convey messages by signs, and ordinarily allowed speakers to come within a normal conversational distance of their targets. Because the statute allowed the speaker to remain in one place, persons who wished to hand out leaflets could position themselves beside entrances near the path of oncoming pedestrians, and consequently were not deprived of the opportunity to get the attention of persons entering a clinic.

In McCullen v. Coakley , the Court retained a content-neutral analysis similar to that in Hill , but nonetheless struck down a statutory 35-foot buffer zone at entrances and driveways of abortion facilities. 66 Footnote 573 U.S. ___, No. 12-1168 , slip op. at 11–18 (2014) . The Court concluded that the buffer zone was not narrowly tailored to serve governmental interests in maintaining public safety and preserving access to reproductive healthcare facilities, the concerns claimed by Massachusetts to underlie the law. 67 Footnote Id. at 19–23 . The opinion cited several alternatives to the buffer zone that would not curtail the use of public sidewalks as traditional public fora for speech, nor significantly burden the ability of those wishing to provide “sidewalk counseling” to women approaching abortion clinics. Specifically, the Court held that, to preserve First Amendment rights, targeted measures, such as injunctions, enforcement of anti-harassment ordinances, and use of general crowd control authority, as needed, are preferable to broad, prophylactic measures. 68 Footnote Id. at 23–29 .

Different types of issues were presented by Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Group , 69 Footnote 515 U.S. 557 (1995) . in which the Court held that a state’s public accommodations law could not be applied to compel private organizers of a St. Patrick’s Day parade to accept in the parade a unit that would proclaim a message that the organizers did not wish to promote. Each participating unit affects the message conveyed by the parade organizers, the Court observed, and application of the public accommodations law to the content of the organizers’ message contravened the “fundamental rule . . . that a speaker has the autonomy to choose the content of his own message.” 70 Footnote 515 U.S. at 573 .

Leafleting, Handbilling, and the Like

In Lovell v. City of Griffin , 71 Footnote 303 U.S. 444 (1938) . the Court struck down a permit system applying to the distribution of circulars, handbills, or literature of any kind. The First Amendment , the Court said, “necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest.” 72 Footnote 303 U.S. at 452 . State courts, responding to what appeared to be a hint in Lovell that prevention of littering and other interests might be sufficient to sustain a flat ban on literature distribution, 73 Footnote 303 U.S. at 451 . upheld total prohibitions and were reversed. “Mere legislative preferences or beliefs respecting matters of public convenience may well support regulation directed at other personal activities, but be insufficient to justify such as diminishes the exercise of rights so vital to the maintenance of democratic institutions . . . . We are of the opinion that the purpose to keep the streets clean and of good appearance is insufficient to justify an ordinance which prohibits a person rightfully on a public street from handing literature to one willing to receive it. Any burden imposed upon the city authorities in cleaning and caring for the streets as an indirect consequence of such distribution results from the constitutional protection of the freedom of speech and press.” 74 Footnote Schneider v. Town of Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 161, 162 (1939) . The Court noted that the right to distribute leaflets was subject to certain obvious regulations, id. at 160 , and called for a balancing, with the weight inclined to the First Amendment rights. See also Jamison v. Texas, 318 U.S. 413 (1943) . In Talley v. California , 75 Footnote 362 U.S. 60 (1960) . the Court struck down an ordinance that banned all handbills that did not carry the name and address of the author, printer, and sponsor; conviction for violating the ordinance was set aside on behalf of one distributing leaflets urging boycotts against certain merchants because of their employment discrimination. The basis of the decision is not readily ascertainable. On the one hand, the Court celebrated anonymity. “Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all . . . . [I]dentification and fear of reprisal might deter perfectly peaceful discussions of public matters of importance.” 76 Footnote 362 U.S. at 64, 65 . On the other hand, responding to the city’s defense that the ordinance was aimed at providing a means to identify those responsible for fraud, false advertising, and the like, the Court noted that “the ordinance is in no manner so limited . . . .Therefore we do not pass on the validity of an ordinance limited to these or any other supposed evils.” 77 Footnote 362 U.S. at 64 . In Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241 (1967) , the Court directed a lower court to consider the constitutionality of a statute which made it a criminal offense to publish or distribute election literature without identification of the name and address of the printer and of the persons sponsoring the literature. The lower court voided the law, but changed circumstances on a new appeal caused the Court to dismiss. Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U.S. 103 (1969) .

Talley ’s anonymity rationale was strengthened in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n , 78 Footnote 514 U.S. 334 (1995) . invalidating Ohio’s prohibition on the distribution of anonymous campaign literature. There is a “respected tradition of anonymity in the advocacy of political causes,” the Court noted, and neither of the interests asserted by Ohio justified the limitation. The state’s interest in informing the electorate was “plainly insufficient,” and, although the more weighty interest in preventing fraud in the electoral process may be accomplished by a direct prohibition, it may not be accomplished indirectly by an indiscriminate ban on a whole category of speech. Ohio could not apply the prohibition, therefore, to punish anonymous distribution of pamphlets opposing a referendum on school taxes. 79 Footnote In Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 525 U.S. 182 (1999) , the Court struck down a Colorado statute requiring initiative-petition circulators to wear identification badges. It found that “the restraint on speech in this case is more severe than was the restraint in McIntyre ” because “[p]etition circulation is a less fleeting encounter, for the circulator must endeavor to persuade electors to sign the petition. . . . [T]he badge requirement compels personal name identification at the precise moment when the circulator’s interest in anonymity is greatest.” Id. at 199 . In Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc’y v. Village of Stratton, 536 U.S. 150, 166 (2002) , concern for the right to anonymity was one reason that the Court struck down an ordinance that made it a misdemeanor to engage in door-to-door advocacy without first registering with the mayor and receiving a permit.

The handbilling cases were distinguished in City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent , 80 Footnote 466 U.S. 789 (1984) . in which the Court held that a city may prohibit altogether the use of utility poles for posting of signs. Although a city’s concern over visual blight could be addressed by an anti-littering ordinance not restricting the expressive activity of distributing handbills, in the case of utility pole signs “it is the medium of expression itself” that creates the visual blight. Hence, the city’s prohibition, unlike a prohibition on distributing handbills, was narrowly tailored to curtail no more speech than necessary to accomplish the city’s legitimate purpose. 81 Footnote Justice Brennan argued in dissent that adequate alternative forms of communication were not readily available because handbilling or other person-to-person methods would be substantially more expensive, and that the regulation for the sake of aesthetics was not adequately justified. Ten years later, however, the Court unanimously invalidated a town’s broad ban on residential signs that permitted only residential identification signs, “for sale” signs, and signs warning of safety hazards. 82 Footnote City of Ladue v. Gilleo, 512 U.S. 43 (1994) . Prohibiting homeowners from displaying political, religious, or personal messages on their own property entirely foreclosed “a venerable means of communication that is unique and important,” and that is “an unusually cheap form of communication” without viable alternatives for many residents. 83 Footnote 512 U.S. at 54, 57 . The ban was thus reminiscent of total bans on leafleting, distribution of literature, and door-to-door solicitation that the Court had struck down in the 1930s and 1940s. The prohibition in Vincent was distinguished as not removing a “uniquely valuable or important mode of communication,” and as not impairing citizens’ ability to communicate. 84 Footnote 512 U.S. at 54 . The city’s legitimate interest in reducing visual clutter could be addressed by “more temperate” measures, the Court suggested. Id. at 58 .

“[P]etitioners’ ultimate objectives were unquestionably legitimate. The charge of illegality . . . derives from the means employed by the participants to achieve those goals. The use of speeches, marches, and threats of social ostracism cannot provide the basis for a damages award. But violent conduct is beyond the pale of constitutional protection.”

“The taint of violence colored the conduct of some of the petitioners. They, of course, may be held liable for the consequences of their violent deeds. The burden of demonstrating that it colored the entire collective effort, however, is not satisfied by evidence that violence occurred or even that violence contributed to the success of the boycott. [The burden can be met only] by findings that adequately disclose the evidentiary basis for concluding that specific parties agreed to use unlawful means, that carefully identify the impact of such unlawful conduct, and that recognizes the importance of avoiding the imposition of punishment for constitutionally protected activity. . . . A court must be wary of a claim that the true color of a forest is better revealed by reptiles hidden in the weeds than by the foliage of countless freestanding trees.” 458 U.S. at 933–34 .

The following state regulations pages link to this page.

• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

pure speech

Legal Definition of pure speech

Note: Pure speech is accorded the highest degree of protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Dictionary Entries Near pure speech

Cite this entry.

“Pure speech.” Merriam-Webster.com Legal Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/pure%20speech. Accessed 11 Aug. 2024.

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Plural and possessive names: a guide, commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, how to use accents and diacritical marks, popular in wordplay, 8 words for lesser-known musical instruments, it's a scorcher words for the summer heat, 7 shakespearean insults to make life more interesting, plant names that sound like insults, 10 words from taylor swift songs (merriam's version), games & quizzes.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Freedom of Speech

[ Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Jeffrey W. Howard replaces the former entry on this topic by the previous author. ]

Human beings have significant interests in communicating what they think to others, and in listening to what others have to say. These interests make it difficult to justify coercive restrictions on people’s communications, plausibly grounding a moral right to speak (and listen) to others that is properly protected by law. That there ought to be such legal protections for speech is uncontroversial among political and legal philosophers. But disagreement arises when we turn to the details. What are the interests or values that justify this presumption against restricting speech? And what, if anything, counts as an adequate justification for overcoming the presumption? This entry is chiefly concerned with exploring the philosophical literature on these questions.

The entry begins by distinguishing different ideas to which the term “freedom of speech” can refer. It then reviews the variety of concerns taken to justify freedom of speech. Next, the entry considers the proper limits of freedom of speech, cataloging different views on when and why restrictions on communication can be morally justified, and what considerations are relevant when evaluating restrictions. Finally, it considers the role of speech intermediaries in a philosophical analysis of freedom of speech, with special attention to internet platforms.

1. What is Freedom of Speech?

2.1 listener theories, 2.2 speaker theories, 2.3 democracy theories, 2.4 thinker theories, 2.5 toleration theories, 2.6 instrumental theories: political abuse and slippery slopes, 2.7 free speech skepticism, 3.1 absoluteness, coverage, and protection, 3.2 the limits of free speech: external constraints, 3.3 the limits of free speech: internal constraints, 3.4 proportionality: chilling effects and political abuse, 3.5 necessity: the counter-speech alternative, 4. the future of free speech theory: platform ethics, other internet resources, related entries.

In the philosophical literature, the terms “freedom of speech”, “free speech”, “freedom of expression”, and “freedom of communication” are mostly used equivalently. This entry will follow that convention, notwithstanding the fact that these formulations evoke subtly different phenomena. For example, it is widely understood that artistic expressions, such as dancing and painting, fall within the ambit of this freedom, even though they don’t straightforwardly seem to qualify as speech , which intuitively connotes some kind of linguistic utterance (see Tushnet, Chen, & Blocher 2017 for discussion). Still, they plainly qualify as communicative activity, conveying some kind of message, however vague or open to interpretation it may be.

Yet the extension of “free speech” is not fruitfully specified through conceptual analysis alone. The quest to distinguish speech from conduct, for the purpose of excluding the latter from protection, is notoriously thorny (Fish 1994: 106), despite some notable attempts (such as Greenawalt 1989: 58ff). As John Hart Ely writes concerning Vietnam War protesters who incinerated their draft cards, such activity is “100% action and 100% expression” (1975: 1495). It is only once we understand why we should care about free speech in the first place—the values it instantiates or serves—that we can evaluate whether a law banning the burning of draft cards (or whatever else) violates free speech. It is the task of a normative conception of free speech to offer an account of the values at stake, which in turn can illuminate the kinds of activities wherein those values are realized, and the kinds of restrictions that manifest hostility to those values. For example, if free speech is justified by the value of respecting citizens’ prerogative to hear many points of view and to make up their own minds, then banning the burning of draft cards to limit the views to which citizens will be exposed is manifestly incompatible with that purpose. If, in contrast, such activity is banned as part of a generally applied ordinance restricting fires in public, it would likely raise no free-speech concerns. (For a recent analysis of this issue, see Kramer 2021: 25ff).

Accordingly, the next section discusses different conceptions of free speech that arise in the philosophical literature, each oriented to some underlying moral or political value. Before turning to the discussion of those conceptions, some further preliminary distinctions will be useful.

First, we can distinguish between the morality of free speech and the law of free speech. In political philosophy, one standard approach is to theorize free speech as a requirement of morality, tracing the implications of such a theory for law and policy. Note that while this is the order of justification, it need not be the order of investigation; it is perfectly sensible to begin by studying an existing legal protection for speech (such as the First Amendment in the U.S.) and then asking what could justify such a protection (or something like it).

But of course morality and law can diverge. The most obvious way they can diverge is when the law is unjust. Existing legal protections for speech, embodied in the positive law of particular jurisdictions, may be misguided in various ways. In other words, a justified legal right to free speech, and the actual legal right to free speech in the positive law of a particular jurisdiction, can come apart. In some cases, positive legal rights might protect too little speech. For example, some jurisdictions’ speech laws make exceptions for blasphemy, such that criminalizing blasphemy does not breach the legal right to free speech within that legal system. But clearly one could argue that a justified legal right to free speech would not include any such exception. In other cases, positive legal rights might perhaps protect too much speech. Consider the fact that, as a matter of U.S. constitutional precedent, the First Amendment broadly protects speech that expresses or incites racial or religious hatred. Plainly we could agree that this is so as a matter of positive law while disagreeing about whether it ought to be so. (This is most straightforwardly true if we are legal positivists. These distinctions are muddied by moralistic theories of constitutional interpretation, which enjoin us to interpret positive legal rights in a constitutional text partly through the prism of our favorite normative political theory; see Dworkin 1996.)

Second, we can distinguish rights-based theories of free speech from non-rights-based theories. For many liberals, the legal right to free speech is justified by appealing to an underlying moral right to free speech, understood as a natural right held by all persons. (Some use the term human right equivalently—e.g., Alexander 2005—though the appropriate usage of that term is contested.) The operative notion of a moral right here is that of a claim-right (to invoke the influential analysis of Hohfeld 1917); it thereby correlates to moral duties held by others (paradigmatically, the state) to respect or protect the right. Such a right is natural in that it exerts normative force independently of whether anyone thinks it does, and regardless of whether it is codified into the law. A tyrannical state that imprisons dissidents acts unjustly, violating moral rights, even if there is no legal right to freedom of expression in its legal system.

For others, the underlying moral justification for free speech law need not come in the form of a natural moral right. For example, consequentialists might favor a legal right to free speech (on, e.g., welfare-maximizing grounds) without thinking that it tracks any underlying natural right. Or consider democratic theorists who have defended legal protections for free speech as central to democracy. Such theorists may think there is an underlying natural moral right to free speech, but they need not (especially if they hold an instrumental justification for democracy). Or consider deontologists who have argued that free speech functions as a kind of side-constraint on legitimate state action, requiring that the state always justify its decisions in a manner that respects citizens’ autonomy (Scanlon 1972). This theory does not cast free speech as a right, but rather as a principle that forbids the creation of laws that restrict speech on certain grounds. In the Hohfeldian analysis (Hohfeld 1917), such a principle may be understood as an immunity rather than a claim-right (Scanlon 2013: 402). Finally, some “minimalists” (to use a designation in Cohen 1993) favor legal protection for speech principally in response to government malice, corruption, and incompetence (see Schauer 1982; Epstein 1992; Leiter 2016). Such theorists need not recognize any fundamental moral right, either.

Third, among those who do ground free speech in a natural moral right, there is scope for disagreement about how tightly the law should mirror that right (as with any right; see Buchanan 2013). It is an open question what the precise legal codification of the moral right to free speech should involve. A justified legal right to freedom of speech may not mirror the precise contours of the natural moral right to freedom of speech. A raft of instrumental concerns enters the downstream analysis of what any justified legal right should look like; hence a defensible legal right to free speech may protect more speech (or indeed less speech) than the underlying moral right that justifies it. For example, even if the moral right to free speech does not protect so-called hate speech, such speech may still merit legal protection in the final analysis (say, because it would be too risky to entrust states with the power to limit those communications).

2. Justifying Free Speech

I will now examine several of the morally significant considerations taken to justify freedom of expression. Note that while many theorists have built whole conceptions of free speech out of a single interest or value alone, pluralism in this domain remains an option. It may well be that a plurality of interests serves to justify freedom of expression, properly understood (see, influentially, Emerson 1970 and Cohen 1993).

Suppose a state bans certain books on the grounds that it does not want us to hear the messages or arguments contained within them. Such censorship seems to involve some kind of insult or disrespect to citizens—treating us like children instead of adults who have a right to make up our own minds. This insight is fundamental in the free speech tradition. On this view, the state wrongs citizens by arrogating to itself the authority to decide what messages they ought to hear. That is so even if the state thinks that the speech will cause harm. As one author puts it,

the government may not suppress speech on the ground that the speech is likely to persuade people to do something that the government considers harmful. (Strauss 1991: 335)

Why are restrictions on persuasive speech objectionable? For some scholars, the relevant wrong here is a form of disrespect for citizens’ basic capacities (Dworkin 1996: 200; Nagel 2002: 44). For others, the wrong here inheres in a violation of the kind of relationship the state should have with its people: namely, that it should always act from a view of them as autonomous, and so entitled to make up their own minds (Scanlon 1972). It would simply be incompatible with a view of ourselves as autonomous—as authors of our own lives and choices—to grant the state the authority to pre-screen which opinions, arguments, and perspectives we should be allowed to think through, allowing us access only to those of which it approves.

This position is especially well-suited to justify some central doctrines of First Amendment jurisprudence. First, it justifies the claim that freedom of expression especially implicates the purposes with which the state acts. There are all sorts of legitimate reasons why the state might restrict speech (so-called “time, place, and manner” restrictions)—for example, noise curfews in residential neighborhoods, which do not raise serious free speech concerns. Yet when the state restricts speech with the purpose of manipulating the communicative environment and controlling the views to which citizens are exposed, free speech is directly affronted (Rubenfeld 2001; Alexander 2005; Kramer 2021). To be sure, purposes are not all that matter for free speech theory. For example, the chilling effects of otherwise justified speech regulations (discussed below) are seldom intended. But they undoubtedly matter.

Second, this view justifies the related doctrines of content neutrality and viewpoint neutrality (see G. Stone 1983 and 1987) . Content neutrality is violated when the state bans discussion of certain topics (“no discussion of abortion”), whereas viewpoint neutrality is violated when the state bans advocacy of certain views (“no pro-choice views may be expressed”). Both affront free speech, though viewpoint-discrimination is especially egregious and so even harder to justify. While listener autonomy theories are not the only theories that can ground these commitments, they are in a strong position to account for their plausibility. Note that while these doctrines are central to the American approach to free speech, they are less central to other states’ jurisprudence (see A. Stone 2017).

Third, this approach helps us see that free speech is potentially implicated whenever the state seeks to control our thoughts and the processes through which we form beliefs. Consider an attempt to ban Marx’s Capital . As Marx is deceased, he is probably not wronged through such censorship. But even if one held idiosyncratic views about posthumous rights, such that Marx were wronged, it would be curious to think this was the central objection to such censorship. Those with the gravest complaint would be the living adults who have the prerogative to read the book and make up their own minds about it. Indeed free speech may even be implicated if the state banned watching sunsets or playing video games on the grounds that is disapproved of the thoughts to which such experiences might give rise (Alexander 2005: 8–9; Kramer 2021: 22).

These arguments emphasize the noninstrumental imperative of respecting listener autonomy. But there is an instrumental version of the view. Our autonomy interests are not merely respected by free speech; they are promoted by an environment in which we learn what others have to say. Our interests in access to information is served by exposure to a wide range of viewpoints about both empirical and normative issues (Cohen 1993: 229), which help us reflect on what goals to choose and how best to pursue them. These informational interests are monumental. As Raz suggests, if we had to choose whether to express our own views on some question, or listen to the rest of humanity’s views on that question, we would choose the latter; it is our interest as listeners in the public good of a vibrant public discourse that, he thinks, centrally justifies free speech (1991).

Such an interest in acquiring justified beliefs, or in accessing truth, can be defended as part of a fully consequentialist political philosophy. J.S. Mill famously defends free speech instrumentally, appealing to its epistemic benefits in On Liberty . Mill believes that, given our fallibility, we should routinely keep an open mind as to whether a seemingly false view may actually be true, or at least contain some valuable grain of truth. And even where a proposition is manifestly false, there is value in allowing its expression so that we can better apprehend why we take it to be false (1859: chapter 2), enabled through discursive conflict (cf. Simpson 2021). Mill’s argument focuses especially on the benefits to audiences:

It is is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. (1859: chapter 2, p. 94)

These views are sometimes associated with the idea of a “marketplace of ideas”, whereby the open clash of views inevitably leads to the correct ones winning out in debate. Few in the contemporary literature holds such a strong teleological thesis about the consequences of unrestricted debate (e.g., see Brietzke 1997; cf. Volokh 2011). Much evidence from behavioral economics and social psychology, as well as insights about epistemic injustice from feminist epistemology, strongly suggest that human beings’ rational powers are seriously limited. Smug confidence in the marketplace of ideas belies this. Yet it is doubtful that Mill held such a strong teleological thesis (Gordon 1997). Mill’s point was not that unrestricted discussion necessarily leads people to acquire the truth. Rather, it is simply the best mechanism available for ascertaining the truth, relative to alternatives in which some arbiter declares what he sees as true and suppresses what he sees as false (see also Leiter 2016).

Note that Mill’s views on free speech in chapter 2 in On Liberty are not simply the application of the general liberty principle defended in chapter 1 of that work; his view is not that speech is anodyne and therefore seldom runs afoul of the harm principle. The reason a separate argument is necessary in chapter 2 is precisely that he is carving out a partial qualification of the harm principle for speech (on this issue see Jacobson 2000, Schauer 2011b, and Turner 2014). On Mill’s view, plenty of harmful speech should still be allowed. Imminently dangerous speech, where there is no time for discussion before harm eventuates, may be restricted; but where there is time for discussion, it must be allowed. Hence Mill’s famous example that vociferous criticism of corn dealers as

starvers of the poor…ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer. (1859: chapter 3, p. 100)

The point is not that such speech is harmless; it’s that the instrumental benefits of permitting its expressions—and exposing its falsehood through public argument—justify the (remaining) costs.

Many authors have unsurprisingly argued that free speech is justified by our interests as speakers . This family of arguments emphasizes the role of speech in the development and exercise of our personal autonomy—our capacity to be the reflective authors of our own lives (Baker 1989; Redish 1982; Rawls 2005). Here an emphasis on freedom of expression is apt; we have an “expressive interest” (Cohen 1993: 224) in declaring our views—about the good life, about justice, about our identity, and about other aspects of the truth as we see it.

Our interests in self-expression may not always depend on the availability of a willing audience; we may have interests simply in shouting from the rooftops to declare who we are and what we believe, regardless of who else hears us. Hence communications to oneself—for example, in a diary or journal—are plausibly protected from interference (Redish 1992: 30–1; Shiffrin 2014: 83, 93; Kramer 2021: 23).

Yet we also have distinctive interests in sharing what we think with others. Part of how we develop our conceptions of the good life, forming judgments about how to live, is precisely through talking through the matter with others. This “deliberative interest” in directly served through opportunities to tell others what we think, so that we can learn from their feedback (Cohen 1993). Such encounters also offer opportunities to persuade others to adopt our views, and indeed to learn through such discussions who else already shares our views (Raz 1991).

Speech also seems like a central way in which we develop our capacities. This, too, is central to J.S. Mill’s defense of free speech, enabling people to explore different perspectives and points of view (1859). Hence it seems that when children engage in speech, to figure out what they think and to use their imagination to try out different ways of being in the world, they are directly engaging this interest. That explains the intuition that children, and not just adults, merit at least some protection under a principle of freedom of speech.

Note that while it is common to refer to speaker autonomy , we could simply refer to speakers’ capacities. Some political liberals hold that an emphasis on autonomy is objectionably Kantian or otherwise perfectionist, valorizing autonomy as a comprehensive moral ideal in a manner that is inappropriate for a liberal state (Cohen 1993: 229; Quong 2011). For such theorists, an undue emphasis on autonomy is incompatible with ideals of liberal neutrality toward different comprehensive conceptions of the good life (though cf. Shiffrin 2014: 81).

If free speech is justified by the importance of our interests in expressing ourselves, this justifies negative duties to refrain from interfering with speakers without adequate justification. Just as with listener theories, a strong presumption against content-based restrictions, and especially against viewpoint discrimination, is a clear requirement of the view. For the state to restrict citizens’ speech on the grounds that it disfavors what they have to say would affront the equal freedom of citizens. Imagine the state were to disallow the expression of Muslim or Jewish views, but allow the expression of Christian views. This would plainly transgress the right to freedom of expression, by valuing certain speakers’ interests in expressing themselves over others.

Many arguments for the right to free speech center on its special significance for democracy (Cohen 1993; Heinze 2016: Heyman 2009; Sunstein 1993; Weinstein 2011; Post 1991, 2009, 2011). It is possible to defend free speech on the noninstrumental ground that it is necessary to respect agents as democratic citizens. To restrict citizens’ speech is to disrespect their status as free and equal moral agents, who have a moral right to debate and decide the law for themselves (Rawls 2005).

Alternatively (or additionally), one can defend free speech on the instrumental ground that free speech promotes democracy, or whatever values democracy is meant to serve. So, for example, suppose the purpose of democracy is the republican one of establishing a state of non-domination between relationally egalitarian citizens; free speech can be defended as promoting that relation (Whitten 2022; Bonotti & Seglow 2022). Or suppose that democracy is valuable because of its role in promoting just outcomes (Arneson 2009) or tending to track those outcomes in a manner than is publicly justifiable (Estlund 2008) or is otherwise epistemically valuable (Landemore 2013).

Perhaps free speech doesn’t merely respect or promote democracy; another framing is that it is constitutive of it (Meiklejohn 1948, 1960; Heinze 2016). As Rawls says: “to restrict or suppress free political speech…always implies at least a partial suspension of democracy” (2005: 254). On this view, to be committed to democracy just is , in part, to be committed to free speech. Deliberative democrats famously contend that voting merely punctuates a larger process defined by a commitment to open deliberation among free and equal citizens (Gutmann & Thompson 2008). Such an unrestricted discussion is marked not by considerations of instrumental rationality and market forces, but rather, as Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument” (1992 [1996: 37]). One crucial way in which free speech might be constitutive of democracy is if it serves as a legitimation condition . On this view, without a process of open public discourse, the outcomes of the democratic decision-making process lack legitimacy (Dworkin 2009, Brettschneider 2012: 75–78, Cohen 1997, and Heinze 2016).

Those who justify free speech on democratic grounds may view this as a special application of a more general insight. For example, Scanlon’s listener theory (discussed above) contends that the state must always respect its citizens as capable of making up their own minds (1972)—a position with clear democratic implications. Likewise, Baker is adamant that both free speech and democracy are justified by the same underlying value of autonomy (2009). And while Rawls sees the democratic role of free speech as worthy of emphasis, he is clear that free speech is one of several basic liberties that enable the development and exercise of our moral powers: our capacities for a sense of justice and for the rational pursuit a lifeplan (2005). In this way, many theorists see the continuity between free speech and our broader interests as moral agents as a virtue, not a drawback (e.g., Kendrick 2017).

Even so, some democracy theorists hold that democracy has a special role in a theory of free speech, such that political speech in particular merits special protection (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 154ff). One consequence of such views is that contributions to public discourse on political questions merit greater protection under the law (Sunstein 1993; cf. Cohen 1993: 227; Alexander 2005: 137–8). For some scholars, this may reflect instrumental anxieties about the special danger that the state will restrict the political speech of opponents and dissenters. But for others, an emphasis on political speech seems to reflect a normative claim that such speech is genuinely of greater significance, meriting greater protection, than other kinds of speech.

While conventional in the free speech literature, it is artificial to separate out our interests as speakers, listeners, and democratic citizens. Communication, and the thinking that feeds into it and that it enables, invariably engages our interests and activities across all these capacities. This insight is central to Seana Shiffrin’s groundbreaking thinker-based theory of freedom of speech, which seeks to unify the range of considerations that have informed the traditional theories (2014). Like other theories (e.g., Scanlon 1978, Cohen 1993), Shiffrin’s theory is pluralist in the range of interests it appeals to. But it offers a unifying framework that explains why this range of interests merits protection together.

On Shiffrin’s view, freedom of speech is best understood as encompassing both freedom of communication and freedom of thought, which while logically distinct are mutually reinforcing and interdependent (Shiffrin 2014: 79). Shiffrin’s account involves several profound claims about the relation between communication and thought. A central contention is that “free speech is essential to the development, functioning, and operation of thinkers” (2014: 91). This is, in part, because we must often externalize our ideas to articulate them precisely and hold them at a distance where we can evaluate them (p. 89). It is also because we work out what we think largely by talking it through with others. Such communicative processes may be monological, but they are typically dialogical; speaker and listener interests are thereby mutually engaged in an ongoing manner that cannot be neatly disentangled, as ideas are ping-ponged back and forth. Moreover, such discussions may concern democratic politics—engaging our interests as democratic citizens—but of course they need not. Aesthetics, music, local sports, the existence of God—these all are encompassed (2014: 92–93). Pace prevailing democratic theories,

One’s thoughts about political affairs are intrinsically and ex ante no more and no less central to the human self than thoughts about one’s mortality or one’s friends. (Shiffrin 2014: 93)

The other central aspect of Shiffrin’s view appeals to the necessity of communication for successfully exercising our moral agency. Sincere communication enables us

to share needs, emotions, intentions, convictions, ambitions, desires, fantasies, disappointments, and judgments. Thereby, we are enabled to form and execute complex cooperative plans, to understand one another, to appreciate and negotiate around our differences. (2014: 1)

Without clear and precise communication of the sort that only speech can provide, we cannot cooperate to discharge our collective obligations. Nor can we exercise our normative powers (such as consenting, waiving, or promising). Our moral agency thus depends upon protected channels through which we can relay our sincere thoughts to one another. The central role of free speech is to protect those channels, by ensuring agents are free to share what they are thinking without fear of sanction.

The thinker-based view has wide-ranging normative implications. For example, by emphasizing the continuity of speech and thought (a connection also noted in Macklem 2006 and Gilmore 2011), Shiffrin’s view powerfully explains the First Amendment doctrine that compelled speech also constitutes a violation of freedom of expression. Traditional listener- and speaker-focused theories seemingly cannot explain what is fundamentally objectionable with forcing someone to declare a commitment to something, as with children compelled to pledge allegiance to the American flag ( West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 1943). “What seems most troubling about the compelled pledge”, Shiffrin writes,

is that the motive behind the regulation, and its possible effect, is to interfere with the autonomous thought processes of the compelled speaker. (2014: 94)

Further, Shiffrin’s view explains why a concern for free speech does not merely correlate to negative duties not to interfere with expression; it also supports positive responsibilities on the part of the state to educate citizens, encouraging and supporting their development and exercise as thinking beings (2014: 107).

Consider briefly one final family of free speech theories, which appeal to the role of toleration or self-restraint. On one argument, freedom of speech is important because it develops our character as liberal citizens, helping us tame our illiberal impulses. The underlying idea of Lee Bollinger’s view is that liberalism is difficult; we recurrently face temptation to punish those who hold contrary views. Freedom of speech helps us to practice the general ethos of toleration in a manner than fortifies our liberal convictions (1986). Deeply offensive speech, like pro-Nazi speech, is protected precisely because toleration in these enormously difficult cases promotes “a general social ethic” of toleration more generally (1986: 248), thereby restraining unjust exercises of state power overall. This consequentialist argument treats the protection of offensive speech not as a tricky borderline case, but as “integral to the central functions of the principle of free speech” (1986: 133). It is precisely because tolerating evil speech involves “extraordinary self-restraint” (1986: 10) that it works its salutary effects on society generally.

The idea of self-restraint arises, too, in Matthew Kramer’s recent defense of free speech. Like listener theories, Kramer’s strongly deontological theory condemns censorship aimed at protecting audiences from exposure to misguided views. At the core of his theory is the thesis that the state’s paramount moral responsibility is to furnish the social conditions that serve the development and maintenance of citizens’ self-respect and respect for others. The achievement of such an ethically resilient citizenry, on Kramer’s view, has the effect of neutering the harmfulness of countless harmful communications. “Securely in a position of ethical strength”, the state “can treat the wares of pornographers and the maunderings of bigots as execrable chirps that are to be endured with contempt” (Kramer 2021: 147). In contrast, in a society where the state has failed to do its duty of inculcating a robust liberal-egalitarian ethos, the communication of illiberal creeds may well pose a substantial threat. Yet for the state then to react by banning such speech is

overweening because with them the system’s officials take control of communications that should have been defused (through the system’s fulfillment of its moral obligations) without prohibitory or preventative impositions. (2021: 147)

(One might agree with Kramer that this is so, but diverge by arguing that the state—having failed in its initial duty—ought to take measures to prevent the harms that flow from that failure.)

These theories are striking in that they assume that a chief task of free speech theory is to explain why harmful speech ought to be protected. This is in contrast to those who think that the chief task of free speech theory is to explain our interests in communicating with others, treating the further issue of whether (wrongfully) harmful communications should be protected as an open question, with different reasonable answers available (Kendrick 2017). In this way, toleration theories—alongside a lot of philosophical work on free speech—seem designed to vindicate the demanding American legal position on free speech, one unshared by virtually all other liberal democracies.

One final family of arguments for free speech appeals to the danger of granting the state powers it may abuse. On this view, we protect free speech chiefly because if we didn’t, it would be far easier for the state to silence its political opponents and enact unjust policies. On this view, a state with censorial powers is likely to abuse them. As Richard Epstein notes, focusing on the American case,

the entire structure of federalism, divided government, and the system of checks and balances at the federal level shows that the theme of distrust has worked itself into the warp and woof of our constitutional structure.

“The protection of speech”, he writes, “…should be read in light of these political concerns” (Epstein 1992: 49).

This view is not merely a restatement of the democracy theory; it does not affirm free speech as an element of valuable self-governance. Nor does it reduce to the uncontroversial thought that citizens need freedom of speech to check the behavior of fallible government agents (Blasi 1977). One need not imagine human beings to be particularly sinister to insist (as democracy theorists do) that the decisions of those entrusted with great power be subject to public discussion and scrutiny. The argument under consideration here is more pessimistic about human nature. It is an argument about the slippery slope that we create even when enacting (otherwise justified) speech restrictions; we set an unacceptable precedent for future conduct by the state (see Schauer 1985). While this argument is theoretical, there is clearly historical evidence for it, as in the manifold cases in which bans on dangerous sedition were used to suppress legitimate war protest. (For a sweeping canonical study of the uses and abuses of speech regulations during wartime, with a focus on U.S. history, see G. Stone 2004.)

These instrumental concerns could potentially justify the legal protection for free speech. But they do not to attempt to justify why we should care about free speech as a positive moral ideal (Shiffrin 2014: 83n); they are, in Cohen’s helpful terminology, “minimalist” rather than “maximalist” (Cohen 1993: 210). Accordingly, they cannot explain why free speech is something that even the most trustworthy, morally competent administrations, with little risk of corruption or degeneration, ought to respect. Of course, minimalists will deny that accounting for speech’s positive value is a requirement of a theory of free speech, and that critiquing them for this omission begs the question.

Pluralists may see instrumental concerns as valuably supplementing or qualifying noninstrumental views. For example, instrumental concerns may play a role in justifying deviations between the moral right to free communication, on the one hand, and a properly specified legal right to free communication, on the other. Suppose that there is no moral right to engage in certain forms of harmful expression (such as hate speech), and that there is in fact a moral duty to refrain from such expression. Even so, it does not follow automatically that such a right ought to be legally enforced. Concerns about the dangers of granting the state such power plausibly militate against the enforcement of at least some of our communicative duties—at least in those jurisdictions that lack robust and competently administered liberal-democratic safeguards.

This entry has canvassed a range of views about what justifies freedom of expression, with particular attention to theories that conceive free speech as a natural moral right. Clearly, the proponents of such views believe that they succeed in this justificatory effort. But others dissent, doubting that the case for a bona fide moral right to free speech comes through. Let us briefly note the nature of this challenge from free speech skeptics , exploring a prominent line of reply.

The challenge from skeptics is generally understood as that of showing that free speech is a special right . As Leslie Kendrick notes,

the term “special right” generally requires that a special right be entirely distinct from other rights and activities and that it receive a very high degree of protection. (2017: 90)

(Note that this usage is not to be confused from the alternative usage of “special right”, referring to conditional rights arising out of particular relationships; see Hart 1955.)

Take each aspect in turn. First, to vindicate free speech as a special right, it must serve some distinctive value or interest (Schauer 2015). Suppose free speech were just an implication of a general principle not to interfere in people’s liberty without justification. As Joel Feinberg puts it, “Liberty should be the norm; coercion always needs some special justification” (1984: 9). In such a case, then while there still might be contingent, historical reasons to single speech out in law as worthy of protection (Alexander 2005: 186), such reasons would not track anything especially distinctive about speech as an underlying moral matter. Second, to count as a special right, free speech must be robust in what it protects, such that only a compelling justification can override it (Dworkin 2013: 131). This captures the conviction, prominent among American constitutional theorists, that “any robust free speech principle must protect at least some harmful speech despite the harm it may cause” (Schauer 2011b: 81; see also Schauer 1982).

If the task of justifying a moral right to free speech requires surmounting both hurdles, it is a tall order. Skeptics about a special right to free speech doubt that the order can be met, and so deny that a natural moral right to freedom of expression can be justified (Schauer 2015; Alexander & Horton 1983; Alexander 2005; Husak 1985). But these theorists may be demanding too much (Kendrick 2017). Start with the claim that free speech must be distinctive. We can accept that free speech be more than simply one implication of a general presumption of liberty. But need it be wholly distinctive? Consider the thesis that free speech is justified by our autonomy interests—interests that justify other rights such as freedom of religion and association. Is it a problem if free speech is justified by interests that are continuous with, or overlap with, interests that justify other rights? Pace the free speech skeptics, maybe not. So long as such claims deserve special recognition, and are worth distinguishing by name, this may be enough (Kendrick 2017: 101). Many of the views canvassed above share normative bases with other important rights. For example, Rawls is clear that he thinks all the basic liberties constitute

essential social conditions for the adequate development and full exercise of the two powers of moral personality over a complete life. (Rawls 2005: 293)

The debate, then, is whether such a shared basis is a theoretical virtue (or at least theoretically unproblematic) or whether it is a theoretical vice, as the skeptics avow.

As for the claim that free speech must be robust, protecting harmful speech, “it is not necessary for a free speech right to protect harmful speech in order for it to be called a free speech right” (Kendrick 2017: 102). We do not tend to think that religious liberty must protect harmful religious activities for it to count as a special right. So it would be strange to insist that the right to free speech must meet this burden to count as a special right. Most of the theorists mentioned above take themselves to be offering views that protect quite a lot of harmful speech. Yet we can question whether this feature is a necessary component of their views, or whether we could imagine variations without this result.

3. Justifying Speech Restrictions

When, and why, can restrictions on speech be justified? It is common in public debate on free speech to hear the provocative claim that free speech is absolute . But the plausibility of such a claim depends on what is exactly meant by it. If understood to mean that no communications between humans can ever be restricted, such a view is held by no one in the philosophical debate. When I threaten to kill you unless you hand me your money; when I offer to bribe the security guard to let me access the bank vault; when I disclose insider information that the company in which you’re heavily invested is about to go bust; when I defame you by falsely posting online that you’re a child abuser; when I endanger you by labeling a drug as safe despite its potentially fatal side-effects; when I reveal your whereabouts to assist a murderer intent on killing you—across all these cases, communications may be uncontroversially restricted. But there are different views as to why.

To help organize such views, consider a set of distinctions influentially defended by Schauer (from 1982 onward). The first category involves uncovered speech : speech that does not even presumptively fall within the scope of a principle of free expression. Many of the speech-acts just canvassed, such as the speech involved in making a threat or insider training, plausibly count as uncovered speech. As the U.S. Supreme Court has said of fighting words (e.g., insults calculated to provoke a street fight),

such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. ( Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 1942)

The general idea here is that some speech simply has negligible—and often no —value as free speech, in light of its utter disconnection from the values that justify free speech in the first place. (For discussion of so-called “low-value speech” in the U.S. context, see Sunstein 1989 and Lakier 2015.) Accordingly, when such low-value speech is harmful, it is particularly easy to justify its curtailment. Hence the Court’s view that “the prevention and punishment of [this speech] have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem”. For legislation restricting such speech, the U.S. Supreme Court applies a “rational basis” test, which is very easy to meet, as it simply asks whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. (Note that it is widely held that it would still be impermissible to selectively ban low-value speech on a viewpoint-discriminatory basis—e.g., if a state only banned fighting words from left-wing activists while allowing them from right-wing activists.)

Schauer’s next category concerns speech that is covered but unprotected . This is speech that engages the values that underpin free speech; yet the countervailing harm of the speech justifies its restriction. In such cases, while there is real value in such expression as free speech, that value is outweighed by competing normative concerns (or even, as we will see below, on behalf of the very values that underpin free speech). In U.S. constitutional jurisprudence, this category encompasses those extremely rare cases in which restrictions on political speech pass the “strict scrutiny” test, whereby narrow restrictions on high-value speech can be justified due to the compelling state interests thereby served. Consider Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project 2010, in which the Court held that an NGO’s legal advice to a terrorist organization on how to pursue peaceful legal channels were legitimately criminalized under a counter-terrorism statute. While such speech had value as free speech (at least on one interpretation of this contested ruling), the imperative of counter-terrorism justified its restriction. (Arguably, commercial speech, while sometimes called low-value speech by scholars, falls into the covered but unprotected category. Under U.S. law, legislation restricting it receives “intermediate scrutiny” by courts—requiring restrictions to be narrowly drawn to advance a substantial government interest. Such a test suggests that commercial speech has bona fide free-speech value, making it harder to justify regulations on it than regulations on genuinely low-value speech like fighting words. It simply doesn’t have as much free-speech value as categories like political speech, religious speech, or press speech, all of which trigger the strict scrutiny test when restricted.)

As a philosophical matter, we can reasonably disagree about what speech qualifies as covered but unprotected (and need not treat the verdicts of the U.S. Supreme Court as philosophically decisive). For example, consider politically-inflected hate speech, which advances repugnant ideas about the inferior status of certain groups. One could concur that there is substantial free-speech value in such expression, just because it involves the sincere expression of views about central questions of politics and justice (however misguided the views doubtlessly are). Yet one could nevertheless hold that such speech should not be protected in virtue of the substantial harms to which it can lead. In such cases, the free-speech value is outweighed. Many scholars who defend the permissibility of legal restrictions on hate speech hold such a view (e.g., Parekh 2012; Waldron 2012). (More radically, one could hold that such speech’s value is corrupted by its evil, such that it qualifies as genuinely low-value; Howard 2019a.)

The final category of speech encompasses expression that is covered and protected . To declare that speech is protected just is to conclude that it is immune from restriction. A preponderance of human communications fall into this category. This does not mean that such speech can never be regulated ; content-neutral time, place, and manner regulations (e.g., prohibiting loud nighttime protests) can certainly be justified (G. Stone 1987). But such regulations must not be viewpoint discriminatory; they must apply even-handedly across all forms of protected speech.

Schauer’s taxonomy offers a useful organizing framework for how we should think about different forms of speech. Where does it leave the claim that free speech is absolute? The possibility of speech that is covered but unprotected suggests that free speech should sometimes be restricted on account of rival normative concerns. Of course, one could contend that such a category, while logically possible, is substantively an empty set; such a position would involve some kind of absoluteness about free speech (holding that where free-speech values are engaged by expression, no countervailing values can ever be weighty enough to override them). Such a position would be absolutist in a certain sense while granting the permissibility of restrictions on speech that do not engage the free-speech values. (For a recent critique of Schauer’s framework, arguing that governmental designation of some speech as low-value is incompatible with the very ideal of free speech, see Kramer 2021: 31.)

In what follows, this entry will focus on Schauer’s second category: speech that is covered by a free speech principle, but is nevertheless unprotected because of the harms it causes. How do we determine what speech falls into this category? How, in other words, do we determine the limits of free speech? Unsurprisingly, this is where most of the controversy lies.

Most legal systems that protect free speech recognize that the right has limits. Consider, for example, international human rights law, which emphatically protects the freedom of speech as a fundamental human right while also affirming specific restrictions on certain seriously harmful speech. Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights declares that “[e]veryone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds”—but then immediately notes that this right “carries with it special duties and responsibilities”. The subsequent ICCPR article proceeds to endorse legal restrictions on “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence”, as well as speech constituting “propaganda for war” (ICCPR). While such restrictions would plainly be struck down as unconstitutional affronts to free speech in the U.S., this more restrictive approach prevails in most liberal democracies’ treatment of harmful speech.

Set aside the legal issue for now. How should we think about how to determine the limits of the moral right free speech? Those seeking to justify limits on speech tend to appeal to one of two strategies (Howard and Simpson forthcoming). The first strategy appeals to the importance of balancing free speech against other moral values when they come into conflict. This strategy involves external limits on free speech. (The next strategy, discussed below, invokes free speech itself, or the values that justify it, as limit-setting rationales; it thus involves internal limits on free speech.)

A balancing approach recognizes a moral conflict between unfettered communication and external values. Consider again the case of hate speech, understood as expression that attacks members of socially vulnerable groups as inferior or dangerous. On all of the theories canvassed above, there are grounds for thinking that restrictions on hate speech are prima facie in violation of the moral right to free speech. Banning hate speech to prevent people from hearing ideas that might incline them to bigotry plainly seems to disrespect listener autonomy. Further, even when speakers are expressing prejudiced views, they are still engaging their autonomous faculties. Certainly, they are expressing views on questions of public political concern, even false ones. And as thinkers they are engaged in the communication of sincere testimony to others. On many of the leading theories, the values underpinning free speech seem to be militate against bans on hate speech.

Even so, other values matter. Consider, for example, the value of upholding the equal dignity of all citizens. A central insight of critical race theory is that public expressions of white supremacy, for example, attack and undermine that equal dignity (Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw 1993). On Jeremy Waldron’s view (2012), hate speech is best understood as a form of group defamation, launching spurious attacks on others’ reputations and thereby undermining their standing as respected equals in their own community (relatedly, see Beauharnais v. Illinois 1952).

Countries that ban hate speech, accordingly, are plausibly understood not as opposed to free speech, but as recognizing the importance that it be balanced when conflicting with other values. Such balancing can be understood in different ways. In European human rights law, for example, the relevant idea is that the right to free speech is balanced against other rights ; the relevant task, accordingly, is to specify what counts as a proportionate balance between these rights (see Alexy 2003; J. Greene 2021).

For others, the very idea of balancing rights undermines their deontic character. This alternative framing holds that the balancing occurs before we specify what rights are; on this view, we balance interests against each other, and only once we’ve undertaken that balancing do we proceed to define what our rights protect. As Scanlon puts it,

The only balancing is balancing of interests. Rights are not balanced, but are defined, or redefined, in the light of the balance of interests and of empirical facts about how these interests can best be protected. (2008: 78)

This balancing need not come in the form of some crude consequentialism; otherwise it would be acceptable to limit the rights of the few to secure trivial benefits for the many. On a contractualist moral theory such as Scanlon’s, the test is to assess the strength of any given individual’s reason to engage in (or access) the speech, against the strength of any given individual’s reason to oppose it.

Note that those who engage in balancing need not give up on the idea of viewpoint neutrality; they can accept that, as a general principle, the state should not restrict speech on the grounds that it disapproves of its message and dislikes that others will hear it. The point, instead, is that this commitment is defeasible; it is possible to be overridden.

One final comment is apt. Those who are keen to balance free speech against other values tend to be motivated by the concern that speech can cause harm, either directly or indirectly (on this distinction, see Schauer 1993). But to justify restrictions on speech, it is not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary) to show that such speech imposes or risks imposing harm. The crucial point is that the speech is wrongful (or, perhaps, wrongfully harmful or risky) , breaching a moral duty that speakers owe to others. Yet very few in the free speech literature think that the mere offensiveness of speech is sufficient to justify restrictions on it. Even Joel Feinberg, who thinks offensiveness can sometimes be grounds for restricting conduct, makes a sweeping exception for

[e]xpressions of opinion, especially about matters of public policy, but also about matters of empirical fact, and about historical, scientific, theological, philosophical, political, and moral questions. (1985: 44)

And in many cases, offensive speech may be actively salutary, as when racists are offended by defenses of racial equality (Waldron 1987). Accordingly, despite how large it looms in public debate, discussion of offensive speech will not play a major role in the discussion here.

We saw that one way to justify limits on free speech is to balance it against other values. On that approach, free speech is externally constrained. A second approach, in contrast, is internally constrained. On this approach, the very values that justify free speech themselves determine its own limits. This is a revisionist approach to free speech since, unlike orthodox thinking, it contends that a commitment to free speech values can counterintuitively support the restriction of speech—a surprising inversion of traditional thinking on the topic (see Howard and Simpson forthcoming). This move—justifying restrictions on speech by appealing to the values that underpin free speech—is now prevalent in the philosophical literature (for an overview, see Barendt 2005: 1ff).

Consider, for example, the claim that free speech is justified by concerns of listener autonomy. On such a view, as we saw above, autonomous citizens have interests in exposure to a wide range of viewpoints, so that they can decide for themselves what to believe. But many have pointed out that this is not autonomous citizens’ only interest; they also have interests in not getting murdered by those incited by incendiary speakers (Amdur 1980). Likewise, insofar as being targeted by hate speech undermines the exercise of one’s autonomous capacities, appeal to the underlying value of autonomy could well support restrictions on such speech (Brison 1998; see also Brink 2001). What’s more, if our interests as listeners in acquiring accurate information is undermined by fraudulent information, then restrictions on such information could well be compatible with our status as autonomous; this was one of the insights that led Scanlon to complicate his theory of free speech (1978).

Or consider the theory that free speech is justified because of its role in enabling autonomous speakers to express themselves. But as Japa Pallikkathayil has argued, some speech can intimidate its audiences into staying silent (as with some hate speech), out of fear for what will happen if they speak up (Pallikkathayil 2020). In principle, then, restrictions on hate speech may serve to support the value of speaker expression, rather than undermine it (see also Langton 2018; Maitra 2009; Maitra & McGowan 2007; and Matsuda 1989: 2337). Indeed, among the most prominent claims in feminist critiques of pornography is precisely that it silences women—not merely through its (perlocutionary) effects in inspiring rape, but more insidiously through its (illocutionary) effects in altering the force of the word “no” (see MacKinnon 1984; Langton 1993; and West 204 [2022]; McGowan 2003 and 2019; cf. Kramer 2021, pp. 160ff).

Now consider democracy theories. On the one hand, democracy theorists are adamant that citizens should be free to discuss any proposals, even the destruction of democracy itself (e.g., Meiklejohn 1948: 65–66). On the other hand, it isn’t obvious why citizens’ duties as democratic citizens could not set a limit to their democratic speech rights (Howard 2019a). The Nazi propagandist Goebbels is said to have remarked:

This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. (as quoted in Fox & Nolte 1995: 1)

But it is not clear why this is necessarily so. Why should we insist on a conception of democracy that contains a self-destruct mechanism? Merely stipulating that democracy requires this is not enough (see A. Greene and Simpson 2017).

Finally, consider Shiffrin’s thinker-based theory. Shiffrin’s view is especially well-placed to explain why varieties of harmful communications are protected speech; what the theory values is the sincere transmission of veridical testimony, whereby speakers disclose what they genuinely believe to others, even if what they believe is wrongheaded and dangerous. Yet because the sincere testimony of thinkers is what qualifies some communication for protection, Shiffrin is adamant that lying falls outside the protective ambit of freedom of expression (2014) This, then, sets an internal limit on her own theory (even if she herself disfavors all lies’ outright prohibition for reasons of tolerance). The claim that lying falls outside the protective ambit of free speech is itself a recurrent suggestion in the literature (Strauss 1991: 355; Brown 2023). In an era of rampant disinformation, this internal limit is of substantial practical significance.

Suppose the moral right (or principle) of free speech is limited, as most think, such that not all communications fall within its protective ambit (either for external reasons, internal reasons, or both). Even so, it does not follow that laws banning such unprotected speech can be justified all-things-considered. Further moral tests must be passed before any particular policy restricting speech can be justified. This sub-section focuses on the requirement that speech restrictions be proportionate .

The idea that laws implicating fundamental rights must be proportionate is central in many jurisdictions’ constitutional law, as well as in the international law of human rights. As a representative example, consider the specification of proportionality offered by the Supreme Court of Canada:

First, the measures adopted must be carefully designed to achieve the objective in question. They must not be arbitrary, unfair, or based on irrational considerations. In short, they must be rationally connected to the objective. Second, the means, even if rationally connected to the objective in this first sense, should impair “as little as possible” the right or freedom in question[…] Third, there must be a proportionality between the effects of the measures which are responsible for limiting the Charter right or freedom, and the objective which has been identified as of “sufficient importance” ( R v. Oakes 1986).

It is this third element (often called “proportionality stricto sensu ”) on which we will concentrate here; this is the focused sense of proportionality that roughly tracks how the term is used in the philosophical literatures on defensive harm and war, as well as (with some relevant differences) criminal punishment. (The strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny tests of U.S. constitutional law are arguably variations of the proportionality test; but set aside this complication for now as it distracts from the core philosophical issues. For relevant legal discussion, see Tsesis 2020.)

Proportionality, in the strict sense, concerns the relation between the costs or harms imposed by some measure and the benefits that the measure is designed to secure. The organizing distinction in recent philosophical literature (albeit largely missing in the literature on free speech) is one between narrow proportionality and wide proportionality . While there are different ways to cut up the terrain between these terms, let us stipulatively define them as follows. An interference is narrowly proportionate just in case the intended target of the interference is liable to bear the costs of that interference. An interference is widely proportionate just in case the collateral costs that the interference unintentionally imposes on others can be justified. (This distinction largely follows the literature in just war theory and the ethics of defensive force; see McMahan 2009.) While the distinction is historically absent from free speech theory, it has powerful payoffs in helping to structure this chaotic debate (as argued in Howard 2019a).

So start with the idea that restrictions on communication must be narrowly proportionate . For a restriction to be narrowly proportionate, those whose communications are restricted must be liable to bear their costs, such that they are not wronged by their imposition. One standard way to be liable to bear certain costs is to have a moral duty to bear them (Tadros 2012). So, for example, if speakers have a moral duty to refrain from libel, hate speech, or some other form of harmful speech, they are liable to bear at least some costs involved in the enforcement of that duty. Those costs cannot be unlimited; a policy of executing hate speakers could not plausibly be justified. Typically, in both defensive and punitive contexts, wrongdoers’ liability is determined by their culpability, the severity of their wrong, or some combination of the two. While it is difficult to say in the abstract what the precise maximal cost ceiling is for any given restriction, as it depends hugely on the details, the point is simply that there is some ceiling above which a speech restriction (like any restriction) imposes unacceptably high costs, even on wrongdoers.

Second, for a speech restriction to be justified, we must also show that it would be widely proportionate . Suppose a speaker is liable to bear the costs of some policy restricting her communication, such that she is not wronged by its imposition. It may be that the collateral costs of such a policy would render it unacceptable. One set of costs is chilling effects , the “overdeterrence of benign conduct that occurs incidentally to a law’s legitimate purpose or scope” (Kendrick 2013: 1649). The core idea is that laws targeting unprotected, legitimately proscribed expression may nevertheless end up having a deleterious impact on protected expression. This is because laws are often vague, overbroad, and in any case are likely to be misapplied by fallible officials (Schauer 1978: 699).

Note that if a speech restriction produces chilling effects, it does not follow that the restriction should not exist at all. Rather, concern about chilling effects instead suggests that speech restrictions should be under-inclusive—restricting less speech than is actually harmful—in order to create “breathing space”, or “a buffer zone of strategic protection” (Schauer 1978: 710) for legitimate expression and so reduce unwanted self-censorship. For example, some have argued that even though speech can cause harm recklessly or negligently, we should insist on specific intent as the mens rea of speech crimes in order to reduce any chilling effects that could follow (Alexander 1995: 21–128; Schauer 1978: 707; cf. Kendrick 2013).

But chilling effects are not the only sort of collateral effects to which speech restrictions could lead. Earlier we noted the risk that states might abuse their censorial powers. This, too, could militate in favor of underinclusive speech restrictions. Or the implication could be more radical. Consider the problem that it is difficult to author restrictions on hate speech in a tightly specified way; the language involved is open-ended in a manner that enables states to exercise considerable judgment in deciding what speech-acts, in fact, count as violations (see Strossen 2018). Given the danger that the state will misuse or abuse these laws to punish legitimate speech, some might think this renders their enactment widely disproportionate. Indeed, even if the law were well-crafted and would be judiciously applied by current officials, the point is that those in the future may not be so trustworthy.

Those inclined to accept such a position might simply draw the conclusion that legislatures ought to refrain from enacting laws against hate speech. A more radical conclusion is that the legal right to free speech ought to be specified so that hate speech is constitutionally protected. In other words, we ought to give speakers a legal right to violate their moral duties, since enforcing those moral duties through law is simply too risky. By appealing to this logic, it is conceivable that the First Amendment position on hate speech could be justified all-things-considered—not because the underlying moral right to free speech protects hate speech, but because hate speech must be protected for instrumental reasons of preventing future abuses of power (Howard 2019a).

Suppose certain restrictions on harmful speech can be justified as proportionate, in both the narrow and wide senses. This is still not sufficient to justify them all-things-considered. Additionally, they must be justified as necessary . (Note that some conceptions of proportionality in human rights law encompass the necessity requirement, but this entry follows the prevailing philosophical convention by treating them as distinct.)

Why might restrictions on harmful speech be unnecessary? One of the standard claims in the free speech literature is that we should respond to harmful speech not by banning it, but by arguing back against it. Counter-speech—not censorship—is the appropriate solution. This line of reasoning is old. As John Milton put it in 1644: “Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” The insistence on counter-speech as the remedy for harmful speech is similarly found, as noted above, throughout chapter 2 of Mill’s On Liberty .

For many scholars, this line of reply is justified by the fact that they think the harmful speech in question is protected by the moral right to free speech. For such scholars, counter-speech is the right response because censorship is morally off the table. For other scholars, the recourse to counter-speech has a plausible distinct rationale (although it is seldom articulated): its possibility renders legal restrictions unnecessary. And because it is objectionable to use gratuitous coercion, legal restrictions are therefore impermissible (Howard 2019a). Such a view could plausibly justify Mill’s aforementioned analysis in the corn dealer example, whereby censorship is permissible but only when there’s no time for counter-speech—a view that is also endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

Whether this argument succeeds depends upon a wide range of further assumptions—about the comparable effectiveness of counter-speech relative to law; about the burdens that counter-speech imposes on prospective counter-speakers. Supposing that the argument succeeds, it invites a range of further normative questions about the ethics of counter-speech. For example, it is important who has the duty to engage in counter-speech, who its intended audience is, and what specific forms the counter-speech ought to take—especially in order to maximize its persuasive effectiveness (Brettschneider 2012; Cepollaro, Lepoutre, & Simpson 2023; Howard 2021b; Lepoutre 2021; Badano & Nuti 2017). It is also important to ask questions about the moral limits of counter-speech. For example, insofar as publicly shaming wrongful speakers has become a prominent form of counter-speech, it is crucial to interrogate its permissibility (e.g., Billingham and Parr 2020).

This final section canvasses the young philosophical debate concerning freedom of speech on the internet. With some important exceptions (e.g., Barendt 2005: 451ff), this issue has only recently accelerated (for an excellent edited collection, see Brison & Gelber 2019). There are many normative questions to be asked about the moral rights and obligations of internet platforms. Here are three. First, do internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users? Second, do internet platforms have moral duties to restrict (or at least refrain from amplifying) harmful speech posted by their users? And finally, if platforms do indeed have moral duties to restrict harmful speech, should those duties be legally enforced?

The reference to internet platforms , is a deliberate focus on large-scale social media platforms, through which people can discover and publicly share user-generated content. We set aside other entities such as search engines (Whitney & Simpson 2019), important though they are. That is simply because the central political controversies, on which philosophical input is most urgent, concern the large social-media platforms.

Consider the question of whether internet platforms have moral duties to respect the free speech of their users. One dominant view in the public discourse holds that the answer is no . On this view, platforms are private entities, and as such enjoy the prerogative to host whatever speech they like. This would arguably be a function of them having free speech rights themselves. Just as the free speech rights of the New York Times give it the authority to publish whatever op-eds it sees fit, the free speech rights of platforms give them the authority to exercise editorial or curatorial judgment about what speech to allow. On this view, if Facebook were to decide to become a Buddhist forum, amplifying the speech of Buddhist users and promoting Buddhist perspectives and ideas, and banning speech promoting other religions, it would be entirely within its moral (and thus proper legal) rights to do so. So, too, if it were to decide to become an atheist forum.

A radical alternative view holds that internet platforms constitute a public forum , a term of art from U.S. free speech jurisprudence used to designate spaces “designed for and dedicated to expressive activities” ( Southeastern Promotions Ltd., v. Conrad 1975). As Kramer has argued:

social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube have become public fora. Although the companies that create and run those platforms are not morally obligated to sustain them in existence at all, the role of controlling a public forum morally obligates each such company to comply with the principle of freedom of expression while performing that role. No constraints that deviate from the kinds of neutrality required under that principle are morally legitimate. (Kramer 2021: 58–59)

On this demanding view, platforms’ duties to respect speech are (roughly) identical to the duties of states. Accordingly, if efforts by the state to restrict hate speech, pornography, and public health misinformation (for example) are objectionable affronts to free speech, so too are platforms’ content moderation rules for such content. A more moderate view does not hold that platforms are public forums as such, but holds that government channels or pages qualify as public forums (the claim at issue in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump (2019).)

Even if we deny that platforms constitute public forums, it is plausible that they engage in a governance function of some kind (Klonick 2018). As Jack Balkin has argued, the traditional model of free speech, which sees it as a relation between speakers and the state, is today plausibly supplanted by a triadic model, involving a more complex relation between speakers, governments, and intermediaries (2004, 2009, 2018, 2021). If platforms do indeed have some kind of governance function, it may well trigger responsibilities for transparency and accountability (as with new legislation such as the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act).

Second, consider the question of whether platforms have a duty to remove harmful content posted by users. Even those who regard them as public forums could agree that platforms may have a moral responsibility to remove illegal unprotected speech. Yet a dominant view in the public debate has historically defended platforms’ place as mere conduits for others’ speech. This is the current position under U.S. law (as with 47 U.S. Code §230), which broadly exempts platforms from liability for much illegal speech, such as defamation. On this view, we should view platforms as akin to bulletin boards: blame whoever posts wrongful content, but don’t hold the owner of the board responsible.

This view is under strain. Even under current U.S. law, platforms are liable for removing some content, such as child sexual abuse material and copyright infringements, suggesting that it is appropriate to demand some accountability for the wrongful content posted by others. An increasing body of philosophical work explores the idea that platforms are indeed morally responsible for removing extreme content. For example, some have argued that platforms have a special responsibility to prevent the radicalization that occurs on their networks, given the ways in which extreme content is amplified to susceptible users (Barnes 2022). Without engaging in moderation (i.e., removal) of harmful content, platforms are plausibly complicit with the wrongful harms perpetrated by users (Howard forthcoming).

Yet it remains an open question what a responsible content moderation policy ought to involve. Many are tempted by a juridical model, whereby platforms remove speech in accordance with clearly announced rules, with user appeals mechanisms in place for individual speech decisions to ensure they are correctly made (critiqued in Douek 2022b). Yet platforms have billions of users and remove millions of pieces of content per week. Accordingly, perfection is not possible. Moving quickly to remove harmful content during a crisis—e.g., Covid misinformation—will inevitably increase the number of false positives (i.e., legitimate speech taken down as collateral damage). It is plausible that the individualistic model of speech decisions adopted by courts is decidedly implausible to help us govern online content moderation; as noted in Douek 2021 and 2022a, what is needed is analysis of how the overall system should operate at scale, with a focus on achieving proportionality between benefits and costs. Alternatively, one might double down and insist that the juridical model is appropriate, given the normative significance of speech. And if it is infeasible for social-media companies to meet its demands given their size, then all the worse for social-media companies. On this view, it is they who must bend to meet the moral demands of free speech theory, not the other way around.

Substantial philosophical work needs to be done to deliver on this goal. The work is complicated by the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is central to the processes of content moderation; human moderators, themselves subjected to terrible working conditions at long hours, work in conjunction with machine learning tools to identify and remove content that platforms have restricted. Yet AI systems notoriously are as biased as their training data. Further, their “black box” decisions are cryptic and cannot be easily understood. Given that countless speech decisions will necessarily be made without human involvement, it is right to ask whether it is reasonable to expect users to accept the deliverances of machines (e.g., see Vredenburgh 2022; Lazar forthcoming a). Note that machine intelligence is used not merely for content moderation, narrowly understood as the enforcement of rules about what speech is allowed. It is also deployed for the broader practice of content curation, determining what speech gets amplified — raising the question of what normative principles should govern such amplification; see Lazar forthcoming b).

Finally, there is the question of legal enforcement. Showing that platforms have the moral responsibility to engage in content moderation is necessary to justifying its codification into a legal responsibility. Yet it is not sufficient; one could accept that platforms have moral duties to moderate (some) harmful speech while also denying that those moral duties ought to be legally enforced. A strong, noninstrumental version of such a view would hold that while speakers have moral duties to refrain from wrongful speech, and platforms have duties not to platform or amplify it, the coercive enforcement of such duties would violate the moral right to freedom of expression. A more contingent, instrumental version of the view would hold that legal enforcement is not in principle impermissible; but in practice, it is simply too risky to grant the state the authority to enforce platforms’ and speakers’ moral duties, given the potential for abuse and overreach.

Liberals who champion the orthodox interpretation of the First Amendment, yet insist on robust content moderation, likely hold one or both of these views. Yet globally such views seem to be in the minority. Serious legislation is imminent that will subject social-media companies to burdensome regulation, in the form of such laws as the Digital Services Act in the European Union and the Online Safety Bill in the UK. Normatively evaluating such legislation is a pressing task. So, too, is the task of designing normative theories to guide the design of content moderation systems, and the wider governance of the digital public sphere. On both fronts, political philosophers should get back to work.

• Alexander, Larry [Lawrence], 1995, “Free Speech and Speaker’s Intent”, Constitutional Commentary , 12(1): 21–28.
• –––, 2005, Is There a Right of Freedom of Expression? , (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Alexander, Lawrence and Paul Horton, 1983, “The Impossibility of a Free Speech Principle Review Essay”, Northwestern University Law Review , 78(5): 1319–1358.
• Alexy, Robert, 2003, “Constitutional Rights, Balancing, and Rationality”, Ratio Juris , 16(2): 131–140. doi:10.1111/1467-9337.00228
• Amdur, Robert, 1980, “Scanlon on Freedom of Expression”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 9(3): 287–300.
• Arneson, Richard, 2009, “Democracy is Not Intrinsically Just”, in Justice and Democracy , Keith Dowding, Robert E. Goodin, and Carole Pateman (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 40–58.
• Baker, C. Edwin, 1989, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009, “Autonomy and Hate Speech”, in Hare and Weinstein 2009: 139–157 (ch. 8). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548781.003.0009
• Balkin, Jack M., 2004, “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society”, New York University Law Review , 79(1): 1–55.
• –––, 2009, “The Future of Free Expression in a Digital Age Free Speech and Press in the Digital Age”, Pepperdine Law Review , 36(2): 427–444.
• –––, 2018, “Free Speech Is a Triangle Essays”, Columbia Law Review , 118(7): 2011–2056.
• –––, 2021, “How to Regulate (and Not Regulate) Social Media”, Journal of Free Speech Law , 1(1): 71–96. [ Balkin 2021 available online (pdf) ]
• Barendt, Eric M., 2005, Freedom of Speech , second edition, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199225811.001.0001
• Barnes, Michael Randall, 2022, “Online Extremism, AI, and (Human) Content Moderation”, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly , 8(3/4): article 6. [ Barnes 2022 available online ]
• Beauharnais v. Illinois 343 U.S. 250 (1952).
• Billingham, Paul and Tom Parr, 2020, “Enforcing Social Norms: The Morality of Public Shaming”, European Journal of Philosophy , 28(4): 997–1016. doi:10.1111/ejop.12543
• Blasi, Vincent, 1977, “The Checking Value in First Amendment Theory”, American Bar Foundation Research Journal 3: 521–649.
• –––, 2004, “Holmes and the Marketplace of Ideas”, The Supreme Court Review , 2004: 1–46.
• Brettschneider, Corey Lang, 2012, When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Brietzke, Paul H., 1997, “How and Why the Marketplace of Ideas Fails”, Valparaiso University Law Review , 31(3): 951–970.
• Bollinger, Lee C., 1986, The Tolerant Society: Free Speech and Extremist Speech in America , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Bonotti, Matteo and Jonathan Seglow, 2022, “Freedom of Speech: A Relational Defence”, Philosophy & Social Criticism , 48(4): 515–529.
• Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
• Brink, David O., 2001, “Millian Principles, Freedom of Expression, and Hate Speech”, Legal Theory , 7(2): 119–157. doi:10.1017/S1352325201072019
• Brison, Susan J., 1998, “The Autonomy Defense of Free Speech”, Ethics , 108(2): 312–339. doi:10.1086/233807
• Brison, Susan J. and Katharine Gelber (eds), 2019, Free Speech in the Digital Age , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190883591.001.0001
• Brown, Étienne, 2023, “Free Speech and the Legal Prohibition of Fake News”, Social Theory and Practice , 49(1): 29–55. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract202333179
• Buchanan, Allen E., 2013, The Heart of Human Rights , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199325382.001.0001
• Cepollaro, Bianca, Maxime Lepoutre, and Robert Mark Simpson, 2023, “Counterspeech”, Philosophy Compass , 18(1): e12890. doi:10.1111/phc3.12890
• Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire 315 U.S. 568 (1942).
• Cohen, Joshua, 1993, “Freedom of Expression”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 22(3): 207–263.
• –––, 1997, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy”, in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics , James Bohman and William Rehg (eds), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 67–92.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1981, “Is There a Right to Pornography?”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 1(2): 177–212. doi:10.1093/ojls/1.2.177
• –––, 1996, Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2006, “A New Map of Censorship”, Index on Censorship , 35(1): 130–133. doi:10.1080/03064220500532412
• –––, 2009, “Forward.” In Extreme Speech and Democracy , ed. J. Weinstein and I. Hare, pp. v-ix. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2013, Religion without God , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Douek, Evelyn, 2021, “Governing Online Speech: From ‘Posts-as-Trumps’ to Proportionality and Probability”, Columbia Law Review , 121(3): 759–834.
• –––, 2022a, “Content Moderation as Systems Thinking”, Harvard Law Review , 136(2): 526–607.
• –––, 2022b, “The Siren Call of Content Moderation Formalism”, in Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy , Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 139–156 (ch. 9). doi:10.1093/oso/9780197621080.003.0009
• Ely, John Hart, 1975, “Flag Desecration: A Case Study in the Roles of Categorization and Balancing in First Amendment Analysis”, Harvard Law Review , 88: 1482–1508.
• Emerson, Thomas I., 1970, The System of Freedom of Expression , New York: Random House.
• Epstein, Richard A., 1992, “Property, Speech, and the Politics of Distrust”, University of Chicago Law Review , 59(1): 41–90.
• Estlund, David, 2008, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Feinberg, Joel, 1984, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law Volume 1: Harm to Others , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195046641.001.0001
• –––, 1985, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Volume 2: Offense to Others , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195052153.001.0001
• Fish, Stanley Eugene, 1994, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Fox, Gregory H. and Georg Nolte, 1995, “Intolerant Democracies”, Harvard International Law Journal , 36(1): 1–70.
• Gelber, Katharine, 2010, “Freedom of Political Speech, Hate Speech and the Argument from Democracy: The Transformative Contribution of Capabilities Theory”, Contemporary Political Theory , 9(3): 304–324. doi:10.1057/cpt.2009.8
• Gilmore, Jonathan, 2011, “Expression as Realization: Speakers’ Interests in Freedom of Speech”, Law and Philosophy , 30(5): 517–539. doi:10.1007/s10982-011-9096-z
• Gordon, Jill, 1997, “John Stuart Mill and the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’:”, Social Theory and Practice , 23(2): 235–249. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract199723210
• Greenawalt, Kent, 1989, Speech, Crime, and the Uses of Language , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Greene, Amanda R. and Robert Mark Simpson, 2017, “Tolerating Hate in the Name of Democracy”, The Modern Law Review , 80(4): 746–765. doi:10.1111/1468-2230.12283
• Greene, Jamal, 2021, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart , Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson, 2008, Why Deliberative Democracy? Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Habermas, Jürgen, 1992 [1996], Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Translated as Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy , William Rehg (trans.), (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
• Hare, Ivan and James Weinstein (eds), 2009, Extreme Speech and Democracy , Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548781.001.0001
• Hart, H. L. A., 1955, “Are There Any Natural Rights?”, The Philosophical Review , 64(2): 175–191. doi:10.2307/2182586
• Heinze, Eric, 2016, Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198759027.001.0001
• Heyman, Steven J., 2009, “Hate Speech, Public Discourse, and the First Amendment”, in Hare and Weinstein 2009: 158–181 (ch. 9). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548781.003.0010
• Hohfeld, Wesley, 1917, “Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning,” Yale Law Journal 26(8): 710–770.
• Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project 561 U.S. 1 (2010).
• Hornsby, Jennifer, 1995, “Disempowered Speech”, Philosophical Topics , 23(2): 127–147. doi:10.5840/philtopics199523211
• Howard, Jeffrey W., 2019a, “Dangerous Speech”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 47(2): 208–254. doi:10.1111/papa.12145
• –––, 2019b, “Free Speech and Hate Speech”, Annual Review of Political Science , 22: 93–109. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051517-012343
• –––, 2021, “Terror, Hate and the Demands of Counter-Speech”, British Journal of Political Science , 51(3): 924–939. doi:10.1017/S000712341900053X
• –––, forthcoming a, “The Ethics of Social Media: Why Content Moderation is a Moral Duty”, Journal of Practical Ethics .
• Howard, Jeffrey W. and Robert Simpson, forthcoming b, “Freedom of Speech”, in Issues in Political Theory , fifth edition, Catriona McKinnon, Patrick Tomlin, and Robert Jubb (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Husak, Douglas N., 1985, “What Is so Special about [Free] Speech?”, Law and Philosophy , 4(1): 1–15. doi:10.1007/BF00208258
• Jacobson, Daniel, 2000, “Mill on Liberty, Speech, and the Free Society”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 29(3): 276–309. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2000.00276.x
• Kendrick, Leslie, 2013, “Speech, Intent, and the Chilling Effect”, William & Mary Law Review , 54(5): 1633–1692.
• –––, 2017, “Free Speech as a Special Right”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 45(2): 87–117. doi:10.1111/papa.12087
• Klonick, Kate, 2018, “The New Governors”, Harvard Law Review 131: 1589–1670.
• Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump 928 F.3d 226 (2019).
• Kramer, Matthew H., 2021, Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lakier, Genevieve, 2015, “The Invention of Low-Value Speech”, Harvard Law Review , 128(8): 2166–2233.
• Landemore, Hélène, 2013, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many , Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
• Langton, Rae, 1993, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 22(4): 293–330.
• –––, 2018, “The Authority of Hate Speech”, in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law (Volume 3), John Gardner, Leslie Green, and Brian Leiter (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press: ch. 4. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198828174.003.0004
• Lazar, Seth, forthcoming, “Legitimacy, Authority, and the Public Value of Explanations”, in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy (Volume 10), Steven Wall (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, forthcoming, Connected by Code: Algorithmic Intermediaries and Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Leiter, Brian, 2016, “The Case against Free Speech”, Sydney Law Review , 38(4): 407–439.
• Lepoutre, Maxime, 2021, Democratic Speech in Divided Times , Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
• MacKinnon, Catharine A., 1984 [1987], “Not a Moral Issue”, Yale Law & Policy Review , 2(2): 321–345. Reprinted in her Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987, 146–162 (ch. 13).
• Macklem, Timothy, 2006, Independence of Mind , Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199535446.001.0001
• Maitra, Ishani, 2009, “Silencing Speech”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 39(2): 309–338. doi:10.1353/cjp.0.0050
• Maitra, Ishani and Mary Kate McGowan, 2007, “The Limits of Free Speech: Pornography and the Question of Coverage”, Legal Theory , 13(1): 41–68. doi:10.1017/S1352325207070024
• Matsuda, Mari J., 1989, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story Legal Storytelling”, Michigan Law Review , 87(8): 2320–2381.
• Matsuda, Mari J., Charles R. Lawrence, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlè Williams Crenshaw, 1993, Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment (New Perspectives on Law, Culture, and Society), Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Reprinted 2018, Abingdon: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429502941
• McGowan, Mary Kate, 2003, “Conversational Exercitives and the Force of Pornography”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 31(2): 155–189. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2003.00155.x
• –––, 2019, Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198829706.001.0001
• McMahan, Jeff, 2009, Killing in War , (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics), Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548668.001.0001
• Milton, John, 1644, “Areopagitica”, London. [ Milton 1644 available online ]
• Meiklejohn, Alexander, 1948, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government , New York: Harper.
• –––, 1960, Political Freedom: The Constitutional Powers of the People , New York: Harper.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1859, On Liberty , London: John W. Parker and Son. [ Mill 1859 available online ]
• Nagel, Thomas, 2002, Concealment and Exposure , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Pallikkathayil, Japa, 2020, “Free Speech and the Embodied Self”, in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy (Volume 6), David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne, and Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 61–84 (ch. 3). doi:10.1093/oso/9780198852636.003.0003
• Parekh, Bhikhu, 2012, “Is There a Case for Banning Hate Speech?”, in The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses , Michael Herz and Peter Molnar (eds.), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 37–56. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139042871.006
• Post, Robert C., 1991, “Racist Speech, Democracy, and the First Amendment Free Speech and Religious, Racial, and Sexual Harassment”, William and Mary Law Review , 32(2): 267–328.
• –––, 2000, “Reconciling Theory and Doctrine in First Amendment Jurisprudence Symposium of the Law in the Twentieth Century”, California Law Review , 88(6): 2353–2374.
• –––, 2009, “Hate Speech”, in Hare and Weinstein 2009: 123–138 (ch. 7). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548781.003.0008
• –––, 2011, “Participatory Democracy as a Theory of Free Speech: A Reply Replies”, Virginia Law Review , 97(3): 617–632.
• Quong, Jonathan, 2011, Liberalism without Perfection , Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594870.001.0001
• R v. Oakes , 1 SCR 103 (1986).
• Rawls, John, 2005, Political Liberalism , expanded edition, (Columbia Classics in Philosophy), New York: Columbia University Press.
• Raz, Joseph, 1991 [1994], “Free Expression and Personal Identification”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies , 11(3): 303–324. Collected in his Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 146–169 (ch. 7).
• Redish, Martin H., 1982, “Value of Free Speech”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review , 130(3): 591–645.
• Rubenfeld, Jed, 2001, “The First Amendment’s Purpose”, Stanford Law Review , 53(4): 767–832.
• Scanlon, Thomas, 1972, “A Theory of Freedom of Expression”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 1(2): 204–226.
• –––, 1978, “Freedom of Expression and Categories of Expression ”, University of Pittsburgh Law Review , 40(4): 519–550.
• –––, 2008, “Rights and Interests”, in Arguments for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya Sen , Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 68–79 (ch. 5). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239115.003.0006
• –––, 2013, “Reply to Wenar”, Journal of Moral Philosophy 10: 400–406
• Schauer, Frederick, 1978, “Fear, Risk and the First Amendment: Unraveling the Chilling Effect”, Boston University Law Review , 58(5): 685–732.
• –––, 1982, Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry , Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1985, “Slippery Slopes”, Harvard Law Review , 99(2): 361–383.
• –––, 1993, “The Phenomenology of Speech and Harm”, Ethics , 103(4): 635–653. doi:10.1086/293546
• –––, 2004, “The Boundaries of the First Amendment: A Preliminary Exploration of Constitutional Salience”, Harvard Law Review , 117(6): 1765–1809.
• –––, 2009, “Is It Better to Be Safe than Sorry: Free Speech and the Precautionary Principle Free Speech in an Era of Terrorism”, Pepperdine Law Review , 36(2): 301–316.
• –––, 2010, “Facts and the First Amendment”, UCLA Law Review , 57(4): 897–920.
• –––, 2011a, “On the Relation between Chapters One and Two of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty ”, Capital University Law Review , 39(3): 571–592.
• –––, 2011b, “Harm(s) and the First Amendment”, The Supreme Court Review , 2011: 81–111. doi:10.1086/665583
• –––, 2015, “Free Speech on Tuesdays”, Law and Philosophy , 34(2): 119–140. doi:10.1007/s10982-014-9220-y
• Shiffrin, Seana Valentine, 2014, Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law (Carl G. Hempel Lecture Series), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Simpson, Robert Mark, 2016, “Defining ‘Speech’: Subtraction, Addition, and Division”, Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , 29(2): 457–494. doi:10.1017/cjlj.2016.20
• –––, 2021, “‘Lost, Enfeebled, and Deprived of Its Vital Effect’: Mill’s Exaggerated View of the Relation Between Conflict and Vitality”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume , 95: 97–114. doi:10.1093/arisup/akab006
• Southeastern Promotions Ltd., v. Conrad , 420 U.S. 546 (1975).
• Sparrow, Robert and Robert E. Goodin, 2001, “The Competition of Ideas: Market or Garden?”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 4(2): 45–58. doi:10.1080/13698230108403349
• Stone, Adrienne, 2017, “Viewpoint Discrimination, Hate Speech Laws, and the Double-Sided Nature of Freedom of Speech”, Constitutional Commentary , 32(3): 687–696.
• Stone, Geoffrey R., 1983, “Content Regulation and the First Amendment”, William and Mary Law Review , 25(2): 189–252.
• –––, 1987, “Content-Neutral Restrictions”, University of Chicago Law Review , 54(1): 46–118.
• –––, 2004, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism , New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Strauss, David A., 1991, “Persuasion, Autonomy, and Freedom of Expression”, Columbia Law Review , 91(2): 334–371.
• Strossen, Nadine, 2018, Hate: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship , New York: Oxford University Press
• Sunstein, Cass R., 1986, “Pornography and the First Amendment”, Duke Law Journal , 1986(4): 589–627.
• –––, 1989, “Low Value Speech Revisited Commentaries”, Northwestern University Law Review , 83(3): 555–561.
• –––, 1993, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech , New York: The Free Press.
• –––, 2017, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Tadros, Victor, 2012, “Duty and Liability”, Utilitas , 24(2): 259–277.
• Turner, Piers Norris, 2014, “‘Harm’ and Mill’s Harm Principle”, Ethics , 124(2): 299–326. doi:10.1086/673436
• Tushnet, Mark, Alan Chen, and Joseph Blocher, 2017, Free Speech beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment , New York: New York University Press.
• Volokh, Eugene, 2011, “In Defense of the Marketplace of Ideas/Search for Truth as a Theory of Free Speech Protection Responses”, Virginia Law Review , 97(3): 595–602.
• Vredenburgh, Kate, 2022, “The Right to Explanation”, Journal of Political Philosophy , 30(2): 209–229. doi:10.1111/jopp.12262
• Waldron, Jeremy, 1987, “Mill and the Value of Moral Distress”, Political Studies , 35(3): 410–423. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1987.tb00197.x
• –––, 2012, The Harm in Hate Speech (The Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures, 2009), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Weinstein, James, 2011, “Participatory Democracy as the Central Value of American Free Speech Doctrine”, Virginia Law Review , 97(3): 491–514.
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
• Whitten, Suzanne, 2022, A Republican Theory of Free Speech: Critical Civility , Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-78631-1
• Whitney, Heather M. and Robert Mark Simpson, 2019, “Search Engines and Free Speech Coverage”, in Free Speech in the Digital Age , Susan J. Brison and Katharine Gelber (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 33–51 (ch. 2). doi:10.1093/oso/9780190883591.003.0003
• West, Caroline, 2004 [2022], “Pornography and Censorship”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 edition), Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/pornography-censorship/ >.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) , adopted: 16 December 1966; Entry into force: 23 March 1976.
• Free Speech Debate
• Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
• van Mill, David, “Freedom of Speech”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/freedom-speech/ >. [This was the previous entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – see the version history .]

ethics: search engines and | hate speech | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, John Stuart | Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy | pornography: and censorship | rights | social networking and ethics | toleration

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the editors and anonymous referees of this Encyclopedia for helpful feedback. I am greatly indebted to Robert Mark Simpson for many incisive suggestions, which substantially improved the entry. This entry was written while on a fellowship funded by UK Research & Innovation (grant reference MR/V025600/1); I am thankful to UKRI for the support.

Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey W. Howard < jeffrey . howard @ ucl . ac . uk >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2024 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Social media giants say they have First Amendment rights that protect their speech

Bobby Allyn

BIG TECH & 1st AMENDMENT

"Corporations are people, too" is an old legal principle now being embraced by social media companies like Meta and TikTok. They say they have First Amendment rights that protect their speech.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Advertisement

Rallying in Las Vegas, Harris Pledges to End Federal Taxes on Tips

In the final stop of the Harris-Walz introductory tour, Vice President Kamala Harris said that, if elected, she would end federal income tax on tips, mirroring a proposal made by former President Donald J. Trump.

• Share full article

By Nicholas Nehamas Reid J. Epstein and Kellen Browning

Nicholas Nehamas reported from Las Vegas, Reid J. Epstein from Washington and Kellen Browning from Phoenix.

• Aug. 10, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris said on Saturday that she would seek to end federal income taxes on tips if she were elected president, mirroring a policy proposal that former President Donald J. Trump made earlier this year.

The proposal from Ms. Harris — which she announced in Las Vegas, where thousands of casino employees depend on tipped wages — is a priority of Nevada’s influential Culinary Workers Union. Both Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, recognized the union in their remarks to a packed basketball arena on Saturday night.

“When I am president,” Ms. Harris told the Las Vegas crowd, “we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”

The “no tax on tips” pitch has garnered bipartisan support since Mr. Trump first floated it in June , including from Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and both of Nevada’s Democratic senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen. Mr. Trump also announced his support for the policy in Las Vegas.

The former president responded immediately to Ms. Harris’s proposal on Saturday night, posting on his social media website, Truth Social, that she had “copied” his own. “This was a TRUMP idea,” he wrote. “She has no ideas, she can only steal them from me.”

The Las Vegas stop was the last public event of a five-city introduction of the Harris-Walz ticket. As with the other rallies, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz drew a crowd many times larger than any that had shown up for President Biden while he was seeking re-election.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .