An I liable if my speech encourages or inspires a third party to break a law?
If that was your intent, then absolutely, legally at least you’re civilly and criminally on the hook. See: inciting riot. Even it wasn’t your intent, if a court finds that a reasonable person should have predicted the outcome, yes. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences or responsibility.
I realize that this may be unpalatable for some who’s idea or free speech differs from the legal reality, so please understand that I’m just laying out the legal landscape. You are of course, free to believe in whatever you wish should be, I’m just addressing what is.
@Jack9
The solution to abuses of the law isn’t to throw out the law, but throw out the abuse. I despise idealistic arguments that ignore the reality of daily enforcement. Most people brought up on charges of assault and battery are not being framed or railroaded, they committed assault and battery. The times when those laws are abused need to be aggressively addressed, but not by attacking the law in general unless it’s badly written.
For example, traffic and public order laws can be used to good effect, or to harass a group of people. The problem isn’t that it’s wrong to have those laws, but the underlying issues thst lead to people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum being disproportionately targeted, and then poorly represented. It’s good that everyone can’t just parade through downtown every rush hour, but bad when those same regulations are used as flimsy excuses to deny people their right to assembly.
The real problems are more subtle and difficult to address than most people understand or care to admit. There is no Platonic ideal of law or ideology that can withstand human intentions and abuses. We need to focus less on perfecting an imperfect system, and more on the underlying abuses. Otherwise you get things that look good on paper, but are trivially subverted. In theory the US president can’t declare war, but 17 years ago the US congress put the US effectively in a state of perpetual war so they’re out of the intended loop. Even before that how long was Vietnam a “police action?” exactly?
The systems have to be enacted by poeple, which is why putting decent people with good intentions in charge is so very fucking important!
I disagree. Acts that you do can be powerful and dangerous therefore your acts should be within the law. This includes your speech. If the law inhibits your free speech too much, you should target the law, and not free speech. If you can kill people with your comments, it should be against the law, no question. The tautology you mention, is only when you take the word free literally. The law defines how free you are. You are also not allowed to kill somebody in the freedom paradise of the US.
In theory, yes, but we are also a system of due process. It's not reasonable to expect that if the law says something is illegal, and a person is shown to have done it, that the good judgment of the system will understand and not prosecute. Things like self-defense and fair use are specifically encoded into the law, not just unspoken common sense. And that's not even getting into legal/political careers, lobbying, etc, that entrench the system to introduce and over-enforce technicalities.
The judgment of most of the court activity is focused on whether or not someone broke the law, not whether the law is "reasonable". That's a much bigger battle that can't be reasonably expected to be fought in any individual case, and ideally should be done before signing into law, not after. The law, as written, should apply to all cases and all sides equally. Justice being blind and all.
The history of free speech in the USA has had it pretty wide open, and these issues are about whether and how much to constrain it. That means criminalizing or penalizing in some way speech that used to be free, bringing up all the issues above and in my last post.
literally what I wrote, no?
"you do not have a constitutional right to spouting off in the public square without consequence. What you say publicly can & will be used against you in the court of law."
like I can say what I want, but if I say "I DID CRIMES" then guess what.. that could be used as evidence that I DID CRIMES
That gives rise to the fair question of, 'is free speech the only law that exists?' To what extent do all other considerations go by the wayside in order to draw a bright line sanctioning ALL possible expressions of ideas in speech, by definition rendering them immune from any sort of judgement or consequence?
I think there's a fair amount of existing law that's made rather ridiculous by this position. In particular, the whole notion of conspiracy goes out the window when it's by definition not possible to share in responsibility for an act by persuasion. I'm not even sure it's possible to extort: if you can plausibly say you will wreak mayhem on a person for failing to comply, and you do so, and they comply rather than get mayhem wrought upon them, you've got what you want but you have never done more than speak. Your actions have never once crossed the line. The fact that your speech functioned as plausible threats is irrelevant: it was always and only speech, because nobody called you on it.
I'm not saying that speech cannot be used to organize great crimes. I am saying that the bar for responsibility or fault is nowhere even near "inspired".
The author approvingly references the US Supreme Court ruling that incitement must consist of speech that provokes imminent lawless action. Is that too permissive a system for you?
To me it's clear that there are limits to what one should be allowed to say. Especially, people should have the right to stop associating with an individual that is saying or has said dubious things.
Those are two very different things. Freedom of association is generally considered to be a _part_ of freedom of expression, not something in tension with it.
And why is it clear to you? What line can you draw between legal and illegal speech that can't be misused by the government?
Probably. There’s plenty of areas where you can be liable for speech without the 1st amendment being relevant.
There’s parallels to the test for incitement. If you say “Let’s go burn down the grocery store” while you’re out with your friends, and everybody chuckles and nobody does anything to burn down the grocery store, you’re pretty much free and clear of incitement. Your random outburst wasn’t likely to cause imminent lawless action.
If you shout “fire” in the theatre and nothing happens, nobody has been damaged and so there’s no civil claim. But if you shout fire and that leads to a stampede and I get hurt, I have a decent pitch for holding you liable for the harm your statement caused me.
A mistake that I've made before, that I think is quite common, is to assume government will enforce laws the way I would. Regarding speech, because I am a person of good will, tolerance, and open-mindedness, I assume government will enforce the law this way. This is a grave mistake. The people who would seek out jobs in which they can control other people's speech are exactly the sort of people who should not be given that power.
Even if the actual enforcers of speech law were honest, they would never be allowed to enforce the law where it is most needed, namely government itself. Wars are usually supported with lies. [1] [2] Will speech laws be used to punish government officials who lie the country into war? I think not. Instead, such laws will be used to protect powerful people, especially people in government. For example, in Citizen's United, a case that Democrats still criticize, the government was prosecuting the members of a small non-profit with felonies for publishing a 90-minute documentary critical of then Senator Hillary Clinton. [3]
It is legal in the US to yell fire in a crowded theater. It is not legal to intentionally create a false emergency situation, verbally or otherwise.
Similar to threats, it’s not the speech that is illegal but the intent to commit a crime. Like any other criminal trial, your words can be used against you.
Not sure what more you’d mean when you say “freedom from consequences” (or how this relates to the article) but youre arguing against a point no one is attempting to make it seems. None of what you’ve mentioned is what’s meant by ‘freedom of speech’.
No, that's punishing the speech itself - NOT addressing the consequences thereof. Do I really have to explain the concept? Saying that "I have it on clear authority that vacri & sillygoose are thieves; liars; adulterers; responsible for a toxic spill that poisoned kids; stole from the pension accounts; rigged elections; etc" is of itself not actionable, but if such libel can be adjudicated the cause of otherwise baseless abuse by society inflicted on vacri & sillygoose then yes I can be incarcerated as a danger to society.
Apparently some people can't discern the difference between punishment of speech and punishment for consequences of speech. Obviously such people need be kept out of legislative office.
Its entirely relevant. Your speech is subject to civil law, never criminal law, because speech is free. If it is somehow subject to criminal law its not really the speech that is, but some other act which the speech is facilitating.
Yelling fire in a theater isn't illegal, but deliberately doing something that will cause a panic is.
But the government isn't allowed to regulate the speech based on harm unless that harm would result from lawless action which is also incited by the speech and probable to happen based on the speech.
> No matter what your standard of "real harm," free speech has examples where it risks causing real harm.
I think you must have either a very broad interpretation of what counts as "speech" or a very loose concept of causality. My standard of "real harm", which I do not consider particularly idiosyncratic, essentially comes down to bodily injury or property damage. (How other people think about you—reputation—is not included; neither does IP count as actual property.) Speech is purely the communication of information (of any sort) from one person to another, which by its nature causes neither bodily injury nor property damage. Speech may influence listeners may go on to inflict bodily injury or property damage, but to say that the speech caused the harm ignores the agency of those responsible for acting on it. Mere influence does not nullify choice or personal responsibility.
Freedom of religion falls under a similar category; your beliefs are your own and you ought not be persecuted (or prosecuted) for them, but that doesn't mean you get a free pass if you act on those beliefs in a way that harms others. Theft is still theft, and punishable as such, even if your religion disavows private property. Murder is still murder even if your religion calls for human sacrifice. Etc.
In both cases you have to start with the much more fundamental right to do anything which does not directly harm other people or their property in order to answer the question of which particular forms of expression (of speech or religious sentiment) are actually protected. Speech and religious expression are subsets of the set of things you already have every right to do specifically because they do not harm others, and only really make sense in that context. The key point of the dual freedoms of speech and religion is to emphasize that actions you would otherwise be free to take do not suddenly become out-of-bounds based on the information content or religious affiliation.
Great - you are really fixating on my outdated understanding of that particular statement, in lieu of actually addressing the substance of the argument which is that some speech is not legal. Specifically this kind of speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
The decision in this case was eventually narrowed to just any speech that incites immediate lawbreaking - which the 'fire statement' did not do. In which case what we're taking about here still applies because we are examining a case where it was suspected by some well-placed individuals that individuals were inciting each other to imminent lawless action. Whether they actually did or not is clearly disputed, but let's at least focus on the substance of this issue instead of going after a red herring.
I don't see why you think that one shouldn't be able to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater, and be prosecuted accordingly for inciting a riot and damage to the property if such were the case (but not for the speech itself).
The problem with your position, is since we aren't dealing with 'what did happen' but with 'what could have happened' it becomes an ambiguous and potentially abusive provision - highly subjective to personal biases.
I believe that is a divergence from free speech when it delves into malicious intent or intent to do harm or intent to defraud. If I swat your home and someone is harmed or property is damaged as a result, I should most certainly be held culpable for any and all damages.
If that was your intent, then absolutely, legally at least you’re civilly and criminally on the hook. See: inciting riot. Even it wasn’t your intent, if a court finds that a reasonable person should have predicted the outcome, yes. Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences or responsibility.
I realize that this may be unpalatable for some who’s idea or free speech differs from the legal reality, so please understand that I’m just laying out the legal landscape. You are of course, free to believe in whatever you wish should be, I’m just addressing what is.
@Jack9
The solution to abuses of the law isn’t to throw out the law, but throw out the abuse. I despise idealistic arguments that ignore the reality of daily enforcement. Most people brought up on charges of assault and battery are not being framed or railroaded, they committed assault and battery. The times when those laws are abused need to be aggressively addressed, but not by attacking the law in general unless it’s badly written.
For example, traffic and public order laws can be used to good effect, or to harass a group of people. The problem isn’t that it’s wrong to have those laws, but the underlying issues thst lead to people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum being disproportionately targeted, and then poorly represented. It’s good that everyone can’t just parade through downtown every rush hour, but bad when those same regulations are used as flimsy excuses to deny people their right to assembly.
The real problems are more subtle and difficult to address than most people understand or care to admit. There is no Platonic ideal of law or ideology that can withstand human intentions and abuses. We need to focus less on perfecting an imperfect system, and more on the underlying abuses. Otherwise you get things that look good on paper, but are trivially subverted. In theory the US president can’t declare war, but 17 years ago the US congress put the US effectively in a state of perpetual war so they’re out of the intended loop. Even before that how long was Vietnam a “police action?” exactly?
The systems have to be enacted by poeple, which is why putting decent people with good intentions in charge is so very fucking important!
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