{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.024096385542168676, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.645714285714286, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Free-Expression Rationales, Truth, and the Marketplace of Ideas

The First Amendment makes no mention of truth. Assumptions about truth, however, have become the foundations for free-expression rationales, the very basis for such freedoms in democratic society. The Supreme Court gradually, over time, wedded Enlightenment assumptions about truth to the marketplace of ideas rationale for free expression. This paper examines, in light of massive, widespread adoption of networked technologies and AI, as well as Supreme Court decisions that have undermined the distinctive role of truth, whether truth should be removed or replaced as a crucial, justifying concept in freedom of expression. The paper examines the marketplace approach’s history and assumptions, as well as alternative, philosophical understandings of truth and how the Supreme Court has communicated understandings about truth in its opinions. The paper concludes by outlining how installing revised truth assumptions, those that align more with discursive and phenomenological understandings, will better protect these freedoms, as well as the flow of information, in the twenty-first century.