Keynote Address: Staying Afloat and Engaged in Today's Flooded Marketplace of Speech

The contributions to this Symposium cover substantial ground, address important issues, and offer much to react to. This Symposium, I submit, also occurs at a time of significance for the First Amendment in the Supreme Court. Perhaps the Court’s most fervent and consequential defender of free speech, Justice Anthony Kennedy, has retired. His impact on American constitutional law was enormous, including, in my view, in the area of free speech.

I had the privilege of clerking for Justice Kennedy, admire him deeply as judge and person, and want to offer some reflections on what I see as a few of Justice Kennedy’s more important contributions to the law of free speech and what lessons those contributions may provide as the law marches forward.