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The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

Thomas Healy

Abstract

Most scholarly discussions about “cancel culture” focus on the extent to which imposing economic or social sanctions on speakers violates the principle of free speech. In this essay, I consider a related question, which is whether deliberately avoiding, ignoring, or blocking speakers one disagrees with is antithetical to free speech. Although it might seem strange to suggest that a principle concerned with the right to speak entails an obligation to listen, I argue that genuine “good faith” listening is necessary to further the goals free speech is designed to serve. However, I also argue that this obligation is imperfect, or limited; it does not require us to listen to everything said by every speaker. Nor does it require us to listen in perpetuity to arguments that have been repeatedly discredited. We send messages through the things we listen to as well as the things we say. Providing an audience for those who deny the Holocaust or claim the earth is flat suggests those views have something to recommend them. It does not violate a principle of free speech to refrain from sending that message.

This paper is part of a Symposium on “Free Speech Beyond The Constitution” published in 27 Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (2025).

Volume

27

Issue

1

Start Page

47

Faculty Editor

Maimon Schwarzschild & Larry Alexander

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