ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a close look at two kinds of balancing principles that have been proposed in the literature: rights-based balancing and interests-based balancing. It suggests that interests-based balancing, when it involves miscellaneous fundamental human goods and values the realization of what makes people's lives go better. It shows that interests-based balancing faces a serious philosophical challenge in the shape of the problem of incommensurability. This problem tells something about the difficulty of sustaining the claim that a given governmental or institutional authority has struck the right balance between interests in dealing with the issue of hate speech. It also casts in a new light Baker's argument that a legitimate government always treats its citizens as formally autonomous and this value cannot be outweighed by any goods or values that might be realized by hate speech law. It sets forth a range of principles of basic morality, personal development, civic morality, cultural morality, and political morality.
