79 - Freedom of speech

Summary

Freedom of speech occupies a central place in Rawls’s theory of justice. Like other liberal theorists, Rawls assigns great importance to the protection of freedom of speech. But unlike some liberals, he does not ground the value of freedom of speech in the purported value of liberty per se and he distinguishes between different kinds of speech with a view to determining the appropriate kind of protection different categories of speech should receive. Also in contrast to liberals who adopt a Millian approach in which the regulation of speech is grounded solely in the harm principle, Rawls analyzes the value of free speech and the grounds on which it may be regulated via an account of the moral powers of free and equal citizens. Political speech, artistic and literary expression, along with freedom of scientiic and other forms of intellectual inquiry are amongst the basic liberties that have a special status in Rawls’s theory. Under Rawls’s irst principle of justice “each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all” (JF 42). Protection of the basic liberties has lexical priority over pursuit of either of the other dimensions of Rawls’s second principle of justice.