Looking For the Meaning of “Speech”: A Waste of Time?

Larry Alexander, University of San Diego School of Law, has published The Misconceived Search for the Meaning of ‘Speech’ in Freedom of Speech as San Diego Legal Studies Paper No. 14-173. Here is the abstract.

In this (very) short essay, I establish these points: All speech is symbolic; any conduct can be used to communicate a message (i.e., symbolically); government’s purpose in regulating, and not a speaker’s intention to communicate, defines the realm of freedom of expression; and determining the value of speech has a denominator problem.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.