Wie frei ist die Meinungsfreiheit?

The article develops an analytical framework for comparing different constitutional protections of freedom of speech (speech rights). It introduces three ideal types - liberal, republican, and positional speech rights - and uses them to reconstruct the German constitutional guarantee of freedom of opinion. Freedom of opinion under the Basic Law has never followed a purely liberal model. It has adopted the liberal principle that speech may not be regulated for what is said but allows broad regulation of speech acts in other respects. German constitutional law conceptualizes speech as the power of individuals to change the social world, and freedom of opinion as a participatory right to engage on free and equal terms in a shared but antagonistic practice.