Modern discussions of censorship center on the legitimacy of the regulatory structures and actions through which expression and communication are governed, and the extent to which these structures meet the requirements of democratic societies. In this entry, we first survey prominent historical examples of centralized censorship systems in the West. This history provides a context for a discussion of modern conceptions of censorship and issues associated with the term itself. We then turn to legal structures regulating speech and press in the United States, to government control of political speech, and to some modern-day controversies over the regulation of expression.

Early Systems of Government Censorship

Traditional conceptions of censorship are rooted in rigid systems of ecclesiastic and governmental control over discourse and printing. The term itself derives from the office of the census in early Rome, where the...