Marketplace of ideas

The "marketplace of ideas" is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. The "marketplace of ideas" belief holds that the truth or the best policy arises out of the competition of widely various ideas in free, transparent public discourse, an important part of liberal democracy. This concept is often applied to discussions of patent law as well as freedom of the press and the responsibilities of the media. More recently the term has come into use by educators in higher education who have linked the concept to academic freedom.

The first reference in a Supreme Court of the United States opinion to the "free trade in ideas" within "the competition of the market" appears in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s dissent in Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919). But Richard Hofstadter and Walter Metzger (1955) suggest that the concept has ancient roots. The Socratic Method can be seen as the pedagogical embodiment of the "marketplace of ideas."

The concept also has roots in John Milton's argument for freedom of expression. Milton argued that the individual is capable of using reason and distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad. But in order to be able to exercise this reason correctly, the individual must have unlimited access to the ideas of his fellow men in "a free and open encounter." In Milton's writings can be found the idea that when people argue against each other the better argument will prevail.

In the modern era, John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859) and Thomas Jefferson, provided their own explications of the "marketplace of ideas," without using that phrase. Referring to the University of Virginia, Jefferson said, "This institution will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it" (Letter, Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820).

In 1813, as part of a correspondence with Isaac McPherson, Thomas Jefferson wrote on the issues confronting patent law: "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation."

Jefferson, who was highly scrutinized by the press, also said: "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." –Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57.

Fredrick Siebert glosses the notion of the marketplace of ideas in Four Theories of the Press: "Let all with something to say be free to express themselves. The true and sound will survive. The false and unsound will be vanquished. Government should keep out of the battle and not weigh the odds in favor of one side or the other."

The idea of a "marketplace of ideas" has also been applied to the study of scientific research as a social institution.

Makau Mutua argues in Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief, A Deskbook that the idea of the marketplace of ideas as applied to religion "incorrectly assumes a level playing field" among religions.

See also

• Sedition Act of 1918