Public Fora and the Problem of Too Much Speech

Abstract

This Article asks whether there is, overall, simply too much private party speech in public fora, with public fora being defined as government owned and controlled spaces. We can easily imagine a society in which public forum speech in general, public forum speech on a particular subject, or public forum speech from a particular viewpoint is reasonably judged to be undersupplied. But what about the opposite? Is a general oversupply of such speech possible? Should we instead assume that law, culture, voting, and markets all interact to ensure the optimal overall amount of public forum speech? One would have to argue for such a miracle. The claim of this Article is that given our history, technology, and other contextual matters, our culture currently suffers from too much private party speech, overall, in public fora. Analyzed below is this general oversupply of speech in various public fora, including public streets, public buses, airports, and other contexts. In recognizing this oversupply, we take full account of the value of speakers' ability to seek out an audience, and the disvalue of allowing critics of speech of a particular content to suppress that content.