William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Abstract
This Manifesto begins with a discussion of the accomplishments of the prior generation of free expression scholarship. The core of the Manifesto starts with a description of the idea of epistemic authority and draws upon Leiter’s analysis to show its importance in free expression theory. It emphasizes, with Leiter, that epistemic authority is relational: between and among epistemic authorities, and between such authorities and “ordinary” citizens (that is, those who aren’t near the core of an epistemic community that, as a collective, defines the community’s core and boundaries).
That discussion is followed by a description of challenges to the idea of epistemic authority coming from within a number of epistemic communities: the natural sciences, journalism, and the university, including several disciplines. These internal challenges pose obvious questions for ordinary citizens: If insiders disagree, what are outsiders to do? Those questions are deepened by concerns taken up next: What social and political factors affect the ways in which epistemic communities are constituted in the first place and then allocate authority within the communities and determine who is within and who outside the community?
The Manifesto’s final Section briefly examines the normative implications of the preceding discussion. My personal normative takeaway is that the serious (that is, nonfrivolous) questions about epistemic authority and the accompanying sociopolitical analysis should lead to a normative modesty acknowledging that in almost all the interesting cases, whether there is some regulation of expression is likely to be a close question.
This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.