Free Speech and Speaker's Intent.

A few years ago, in an exchange with Cass Sunstein and Frederick Schauer, I criticized efforts to distinguish "high value" and "low value" speech, as the Supreme Court, Sunstein, and others have urged from time to time.t Any particular "unit" of speech, however such a unit is individuated, may convey an indefinite number of ideas to its audience. The ideas conveyed vary depending upon what the unit of speech is taken to be, the context into which it is placed, and the audience to which it is presented. Some ideas may seem more valuable than othersbecause we think some are true and important, while others are either false or banal-but we cannot locate the ideas that audiences derive from speech in the speech itself. We cannot ban "low value" ideas by banning, say, "low value" movies because audiences may derive low value ideas from high value movies and vice versa. A medical textbook may be neglected by physicians but eagerly sought by those who are sexually aroused by its pictures of sexual organs; a book of "pornographic" photographs may be profitably studied by psychologists and sociologists in whom it produces no sexual arousal whatsoever. The ideas that speech evokes are not locatable in the symbols employed.2 In the same exchange, I also argued against locating the "value" of speech in the intentions of its authors.3 My reason was similar to my reason against locating value in the speech it-