‘Positive’ in positive free speech can mean enabled freedom or a legally (and perhaps judicially) protected right. Both meanings can be important. Understanding arguments for positive free speech and how some courts protect it reveals what the freedom entails, provides ideas and techniques for various constitutional actors, and suggests the improbability of legislatures alone protecting positive free speech enough. A partial framework for the positive freedom is taken from earlier chapters, drawing on media studies models of diverse media, the freedom’s democratic basis, analyses of positive human rights, political freedom, the US First Amendment, and constitutional law from Germany and France. Questions about democratic legitimacy and judicial rights protection are examined. Criticisms of judicial rights review can presuppose effective public speech, but such speech appears unlikely without legal protection of positive free speech which may well require judicial action, although questions remain about such action’s effectiveness. Finally, points are raised about applying historical lessons of this study to the changed contemporary environment for public speech.

This chapter outlines the structural diversity of public speech that democratic government requires, and the claim that democracy entails positive freedom of communication, not only a negative freedom or liberty. The state has obligations to support communicative freedom; both positive and negative dimensions of free speech need protection for democracy to have substantial communicative legitimacy. This book, often using historical comparative material, examines speech and varied forms of democracy; what it would mean for society to have a voice, formulate judgments and make claims of government that are heard; and free speech law’s role in the voice, judgments and claims. The chapter explains terminology, challenges in the approach and sources used: media studies, human rights, political theory and legal writing and case law. Further possible sources are considered, including analyses based on communication rights and republican freedom. The book is not an exegesis of any one legal system but explores ideas and techniques relevant to positive dimensions of free speech. The aim is show how law should treat positive free speech and raise questions for democratic systems.

This chapter examines the idea of ‘sustained plural public speech’ and the place of positive free speech within it. Two models of diverse media, taken from media studies, illustrate the structural diversity within positive free speech. They suggest how constitutional speech protections could frame a democratic architecture for public speech, which should aim to support sustained plural public speech through diverse media entities, funding, missions and people. Legal research is used to consider how courts determine the meaning of freedom within free speech law, the positive freedom’s democratic rationale, some dubious assumptions that can underlie negative approaches to free speech, and the breadth of the positive freedom. Possible roles for judges and other actors are also considered. Later examples suggest the theoretical value in courts doing more, where others fail to act sufficiently, to support positive free speech by framing obligations for legislative, executive and regulatory action. This need may not be rare but central to democracy’s communicative requirements.