Free Expression or Equal Speech

The priority of free expression has long been defended as a necessary extension of free thought. Recently, critics of the classical liberal doctrine have argued that contemporary conflicts over speech and its limits are rather between those committed to freedom of expression, as a license to harm, as opposed to equality of expressive freedom, which requires protecting vulnerable speakers from others’ “silencing speech.” This framing presents the conflict as one of distributive justice and the “equality of expressive opportunity.” But this obscures a tension between free expression and equal speech as alternative ideals: the former describing the right to manifest one’s thoughts externally without interference—the latter claiming the right to a public hearing and others’ engaged attention. I argue that ideal of equal speech represents not a quantitative demand for “more equal” expressive opportunities, but rather an evaluative assertion of parity between “marginalized” and “privileged” voices as deserving of equal consideration by their peers.