8 ms·

Lawyer here, and this definitely strikes me as one of a surprising number topics in which, the law has for some time, already a very effective and useful way to

• csdvrx 4y ago
  > the law has generally done very good job of reminding us that this tends to be a VERY NARROW possibility, i.e. the harm has to be very specific and directed and measurable. Here in the US, yes. In the rest of the world (like, EU) they aren't very specific.
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    The one good thing about America.
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      There are other good things, but it is certainly a deficiency in Europe. Some criminalize insults pretty heavily. While the thought behind that might be decent, I don't believe it to work in the future. For example in Germany the first amendment protects dignity. An ideal law nobody can really fully adhere to. It works because there is a societal consensus about its meaning. Nothing the law can really determine. I believe this consensus will not really survive the 21st century. Perspectives will be too different. Dignity in religious communities means something entirely different than in a secular society, and even in that values will diverge more and more. A lot of these laws are ancient and many were intended to protect monarchy from vulgar peasants, so I am a bit surprised "progressive" forces seem to have found their love for it. In the interest of civil liberties, these laws would need to be changed at some point. They basically allow authority to selectively punish anyone under almost any pretense.
• garbagecoder 4y ago
  Most people don't realize this and they also don't realize that equal opportunity laws also apply to white, male, christians, etc.
  • farmaway 4y ago
    The laws are almost never enforced that way and almost always flouted in that direction, so the common misperception is understandable.
    • s1artibartfast 4y ago
      This hyperbolic nonsense to say laws are almost never enforced that way. There are real biases and Injustice, but it doesn't a disservice do any reasonable debate to make such exaggerating claims
      • farmaway 4y ago
        It's not an exaggeration. My city government has funded a "Black Excellence Center" which will use public funds to build a racially-exclusive art gallery/business incubator/cultural space for black people, who represent ~6% of my city's population and are not excluded from any of the similar places which already exist: https://www.theblackcenter.org/ https://www.theblackcenter.org/ This is blatantly unconstitutional, but no one has challenged it in court and no one will. Other examples abound, such as racial discrimination in Ivy League admissions (now challenged in court, but for its impact on Asians mainly) and observed differences across race in admitted med students' MCAT scores. Teddy Roosevelt once said that, "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism" and, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." Well, here we are. Separate schools, separate standards, separate funding, separate public investment, except for the one largest demographic group... all driving my country into further conflict and disunity.
        • s1artibartfast 4y ago
• dqpb 4y ago
  If you convince someone not to have kids, is that harmful?
  • seydor 4y ago
    how can convincing (not coercing) be harmful? What's the definition of harm
    • jojobas 4y ago
      You can convince someone to go shoot up a school, good luck arguing convincing is not coercing in court.
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        The court won't need to get that far, convincing itself falls under conspiracy without having to conflate it with coercion.
        • OkayPhysicist 4y ago
          That strongly depends on how you convince them. If you one-on-one talk someone into shooting up a school, that's conspiracy. If you tell a large audience that teachers and children are a scourge upon society that must be eliminated and count on some small fraction to be unhinged enough to connect the dots, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
          • s1artibartfast 4y ago
            Even the private conversation does not raise to the level of conspiracy without a plan.
      • seydor 4y ago
        it's not coercing though
      • gowld 4y ago
• password11 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • dqpb 4y ago
    Please don't break the lawyer
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• msla 4y ago
  And yet people don't get how narrow the Brandenburg test is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test > The test determined that the government may prohibit speech advocating the use of force or crime if the speech satisfies both elements of the two-part test: > The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” > AND > The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.” [snip] > The Supreme Court in Hess v. Indiana (1973) applied the Brandenburg test to a case in which Gregory Hess, an Indiana University protester, said, “We’ll take the fucking street later (or again)." The Supreme Court ruled that Hess’s profanity was protected under the Brandenburg test, as the speech “amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.” The Court held that “since there was no evidence, or rational inference from the import of the language, that his words were intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent disorder, those words could not be punished by the State on the ground that they had a ‘tendency to lead to violence.’” > In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co.(1982), Charles Evers threatened violence against those who refused to boycott white businesses. The Supreme Court applied the Brandenburg test and found that the speech was protected: “Strong and effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled in purely dulcet phrases. An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause. When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech.” And because I also see this doctrine over-applied online: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words > In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court redefined the scope of the fighting words doctrine to mean words that are "a direct personal insult or an invitation to exchange fisticuffs." There, the Court held that the burning of a United States flag, which was considered symbolic speech, did not constitute fighting words. > In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Supreme Court found that the "First Amendment prevents government from punishing speech and expressive conduct because it disapproves of the ideas expressed." Even if the words are considered to be fighting words, the First Amendment will still protect the speech if the speech restriction is based on viewpoint discrimination. The page I linked to links to multiple law review articles on the subject: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2423&context=law_lawreview http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=mulr http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... http://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2867&context=law-review http://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=28... Suffice it to say: If someone online claims a speech act isn't protected due to the fighting words exemption, no it isn't.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  150 dB speech could melt someone’s face.
  • Swizec 4y ago
    Violates noise level laws so that’s covered. Whether such laws are commonly enforced … well we know from modified motorcycles that they’re not.
  • catach 4y ago
    Charge for the melting, not the method used to achieve the melting.
  • Xeoncross 4y ago
    Even doing regular speaking can be an issue: https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/02/10/ohio-attorney-general-oversee-investigation-into-reporters-arrest/ https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/02/10/ohio-attorney-general...
  • WaitWaitWha 4y ago
    Did you see the face before? Could it be self defense?
• comte7092 4y ago
  As is oft repeated, the law you refer to only applies to state action. The notion we could easily apply this to private individuals quickly breaks down. Employee X gets fired for publicly stating that their employers products are trash, said employee sues, nothing about what they said was illegal.
  • belorn 4y ago
    From the companies perspective, the harm done by an employee talking trash about products is very similar to the harm done by an employee talking about unions or employee conditions. And the law generally recognize this. It is not protected to intentionally harm the company if the intention is purely to cause harm. It is protected if the intent is to warn the public about a harmful product (Whistleblowing), or to protect fellow employees for harm. When those cases do end up in court, what judges and juries will focus on is on intent as the deciding factor once harm has been agreed/established.
    • comte7092 4y ago
      I guess I don’t really see what your point is then. If you’re going to the point where we are getting into civil disputes, then how isn’t “employee became the center of controversy on social media and caused damage to company X’s reputation” not covered under this rubric? Because that is essentially what “cancel culture” is.
  • jrm4 4y ago
    Those oft repeaters should talk to a real lawyer? Libel, slander, the occasional tortious interference with contract?
    • comte7092 4y ago
      A real lawyer would know about Lloyd corp v tanner and be able to contextualize the fact that most of this controversy exists because it is legal to limit speech in the ways we are debating all over the internet. People saying “we should limit it to what the law says” don’t make a ton of sense… because the law says that Twitter limiting speech is perfectly acceptable. The first amendment doesn’t even apply in civil cases. Everything you listed aren’t exceptions to free speech, they are positive constructions as to the kinds of speech that you can make a civil claim of injury over. As such, they are not exhaustive.