The Unfortunate Consequences of a Misguided Free Speech Principle

Are Americans “losing their appetite for candid and constructive dialogue?” Robert Post, Yale Law professor, joined us during the Spring 2023 semester at the Center for Constitutional Design at ASU Law, to make the case that we have misdiagnosed America’s social malady as a free speech problem, when, in fact, the challenges to free speech in America are more a symptom than a cause of the problems we are experiencing in the public sphere.  Post argues that the decline in the nature and quality of our public discourse is not a problem that more free speech will necessarily resolve. Instead, Post maintains that “our public discourse has become rancid because our politics has become diseased.” In order to heal and ameliorate our public discourse, he explains, we must restore our politics to a healthy condition. To hear his full argument about the relationship between politics and free speech, watch the video we are sharing this week for the Constitutional Conversations post.