Schauer on Free Speech: A Lifelong Enquiry

Over a career that spanned for decades, from his influential book Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry (1982) to very recent articles, Frederick Schauer developed a nuanced conception of free speech and its limits. This essay offers an overview of Schauer’s approach, by providing a first approximation to the Free Speech Principle (FSP) (§2) and then focusing on his answers to three fundamental questions: what is ‘speech’ (§3), why speech is or must be special (§4), and what type of principle is the FSP (§5). Furthermore, it offers an overview of Schauer’s answer to the possibility of a FSP between free speech absolutism and the denial of a FSP (§6), his analysis of the justification of the FSP (focusing on his criticisms and the arguments he considers most convincing) (§7), and his position on the limits of free speech (§8).