Free Speech and the Mandated Disclosure of Information

This essay focuses on one element of an important, unresolved question in free speech law. The broader unresolved question concerns how freedom of speech, as a legal and social institution, operates best or most efficiently. Our society has often debated how an economy, as a legal and social institution, functions best. On this analogous question, we have generally concluded that the national economy ought to manifest a mixture of at least minimally voluntary marketplace exchanges and appropriate forms of government regulation.