In this chapter I am going to show why any right of freedom of expression must have as its central concern government's purposes for regulating activities rather than the effects of regulations on messages intended to be conveyed by speakers or on messages received by audiences. I am going to do so by demonstrating that principle (4), the principle that freedom of expression is implicated whenever government affects an audience's ability to receive messages intended by speakers, is potentially limitless and incapable of being cabined in any internally consistent way. If principle (4) is untenable, then principle (5), whose focus is on government's purposes in regulating rather than on the effects of regulation, is the only principle defining the scope of freedom of expression left in play.

To eliminate principle (4) and secure the dominance of principle (5), I shall focus on government regulations that are not enacted to affect what messages are sent and received but that nonetheless have an impact on what messages are conveyed and received. The free speech cases generated by such regulations in American constitutional law are what Laurence Tribe calls Track Two cases, and those cases, along with some analogous cases from other countries, shall serve as my principal positive law examples in this chapter. (The American Track Two jurisprudence is far more extensive and developed than any other jurisdiction's Track Two jurisprudence.)