A recent New York Times story claiming conservatives have “weaponized” free speech put the spotlight on a law review article by Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman titled, “Can Free Speech Be Progressive?” Seidman's answer to his question is “no.” He is probably not wrong, even if some of his arguments are.
At the outset, Seidman devotes a section of his article to his version of history, in which courts were generally hostile to progressive speech, then erratic or belated in protecting such speech, and then briefly favorable under the Warren Court before taking a “sharp right turn.” His piece is more a political cost-analysis of free speech from a progressive perspective than it is a legal argument.
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