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What I've found interesting in all this, and I don't really intend it as pessimism, is that people think 'innocent until proven guilty' is a common thing, when

What I've found interesting in all this, and I don't really intend it as pessimism, is that people think 'innocent until proven guilty' is a common thing, when the scope seems quite limited. It mostly only applies in criminal court, it doesn't really exist in that form in civil court, it certainly doesn't exist in peoples' minds watching the news. I'm not discounting the correctness of the idea, but in a legal realism sense, is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? It's similar free speech when people figure out it doesn't protect your job. Free speech protecting you in a public sphere seems to only be effective if your life is mostly defined in the public sphere. The more your life is defined in a private sphere, I'd argue the less those rights really exist in a practical sense.

hirundo 8y ago
> is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? I would expect it to evolve in any group where false accusations are cheap to make and costly to bear, whether the context is formal or informal.
nostromo 8y ago
Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction? It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.
- oconnor663 8y ago
  True, but at the same time the conventional value of free speech has a lot more exceptions than the Constitutional version. If someone's calling you out for being a jerk, and your best defense is "hey our culture usually values letting people disagree," everyone's probably going to think you're a jerk.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  The concept of free speech has a long history, sure. Just as long is the history of that concept being totally divorced from the types of things you can actually get away with saying in any given situation. You can basically think of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment as an approximate upper bound on pragmatic free speech. It is not (at least in the minds of most people) an optimum that we should be striving for in all contexts. It's just the level where we don't think anyone should be locked up or fined for exercising.
- gimmeThaBeet 8y ago
  No, I'm not going to retire my trite remark. You can't stage a protest in a shopping mall, no matter how much it looks like a public space. There's no expectation you would have freedom of speech there. The liberty of property would seem to be the most powerful of all. If your life looks more like a shopping mall than a public square, I don't know what other expectations any modern person or Athenian alike may have.

hirundo 8y ago

> is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? I would expect it to evolve in any group where false accusations are cheap to make and costly to bear, whether the context is formal or informal.

nostromo 8y ago

Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction? It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.

oconnor663 8y ago
True, but at the same time the conventional value of free speech has a lot more exceptions than the Constitutional version. If someone's calling you out for being a jerk, and your best defense is "hey our culture usually values letting people disagree," everyone's probably going to think you're a jerk.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
The concept of free speech has a long history, sure. Just as long is the history of that concept being totally divorced from the types of things you can actually get away with saying in any given situation. You can basically think of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment as an approximate upper bound on pragmatic free speech. It is not (at least in the minds of most people) an optimum that we should be striving for in all contexts. It's just the level where we don't think anyone should be locked up or fined for exercising.
gimmeThaBeet 8y ago
No, I'm not going to retire my trite remark. You can't stage a protest in a shopping mall, no matter how much it looks like a public space. There's no expectation you would have freedom of speech there. The liberty of property would seem to be the most powerful of all. If your life looks more like a shopping mall than a public square, I don't know what other expectations any modern person or Athenian alike may have.