Free speech advocates often face the accusation that they are defending a right that embeds existing structural privilege. Many claim that free speech protects the wealthy and powerful from the consequences of language and beliefs that oppress others. For this reason, they argue, legal limitations are needed on free speech to defend the powerless. 

Yet this is demonstrably false.  

Research which will be published next month in the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization by academics from Victoria University of Wellington and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research demonstrates a fact we have long claimed at the Free Speech Union: free speech defends...