Free Speech and Pornography: A Response to James Weinstein

Introduction

Professor James Weinstein offers a new iteration of an old argument, which holds that the suppression of pornography raises no free speech issue at all. Weinstein’s reformulation is a valuable contribution, not least because it captures an intuition that is shared by many, including, evidently, the Supreme Court. But the argument fails. It is a mistake to pretend that, when we suppress pornography, we are not infringing on values that lie at the heart of free speech.