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>That same year, members of Stanford’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization, filed a complaint against a law student who had m
by sigmar 4y ago
>That same year, members of Stanford’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization, filed a complaint against a law student who had mocked the group with a satirical flier. The university briefly put the student’s graduation on hold but eventually said the flier was protected speech.
Sorry, what? This stands out to me way more than some heckling at a speech that this article seems focused on. Really feels like what gets lost in these conversations is how "free speech" should mean you can voice opinions without having your livelihood threatened, not some requirement that people are literally quiet while you are talking.
- ceejayoz 4y agoAs with Musk, the loudest claimants to the throne of “free speech absolutist” tend to have some… quirky exceptions.
- cudgy 4y agoThis only strengthens the free speech argument. People are naturally inconsistent on issues and most issues are nuanced, so it is important to give space for discussion that goes beyond the boundaries we set for ourselves.
- causality0 4y agoDo the Federalist Society claim to be free speech absolutists? Actual free speech advocates like FIRE immediately came to the student's defense.
- cudgy 4y agoAs a speaker, isn’t your livelihood threatened if people yell over your speech? A brief interruption to express disagreement is one thing, but a constant yelling simply to drown out the event participant is a completely different thing.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThe judge in question has a lifetime appointment. His livelihood is not threatened.
- cudgy 4y agoHis livelihood as a speaker at the college is.
- ceejayoz 4y agoCan you provide the definition of livelihood you’re using so we can share context?
- cudgy 4y agoHow about “viability to perform a freely chosen pursuit and possibly receive remuneration or rewards regardless of whether that money is required to eat a buy one get one free Big Mac”?
- joshuamorton 4y agoUnder this definition, my livelihood threatened because my employer doesn't pay me as much as I'd prefer.
- cudgy 4y agoI fail to see your example as fitting within my eloquent definition. You are free to work for less than you want from your employer; I presume they are not trying to prevent this.
- joshuamorton 4y agoI am not free to work for more than my employer wants to pay.
- rnk 4y ago
- slg 4y agoSounds like you are arguing that we need to restrict free speech to protect free speech.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cudgy 4y agoMy argument is simple. Humans can typically only hear one person speak at a time. In order to have a proper societal discussion, there needs to be some rules of engagement to ensure that listeners can get something out of what is being said. Yelling over people constantly with the express intent of preventing that person’s audience from hearing what they are saying is harassment, not free speech.
- slg 4y agoPeople have a right to speech. They don't have a right to be heard. You are suggesting that we stop some people from speaking to allow other people to be heard. You are making an argument against free speech and not for it.
- cudgy 4y agoNo. You are creating a red herring. What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? How is that effectively different than some people purposefully yelling over your conversations and scrambling the sound waves entering the intended listener’s ear?
- slg 4y ago>What is speech if no one can hear it or read it? Take your thought process here a step further. If we establish that speech needs to be heard in order to satisfy the principle of free speech, how many people need to hear something before it qualifies? >If I intercepted the post you just made and scrambled it with random characters so noone else would understand it, are you still calling that free speech? Are you arguing that downvoting a comment until the text is gray and difficult to read is HN infringing on a user's free speech?
- ummonk 4y agoAs a speaker, you’re free to buy / rent your own private venue and you trespass any hecklers who attempt to threaten your livelihood there by yelling over your speech. You don’t have a right to force a private university to host your speech and prevent its students from heckling.
- Georgelemental 4y agoThe school had written rules against these sorts of disruptions. By permitting this behavior, Stanford is violating their prior written commitments.
- ummonk 4y agoThey aren't permitting this behavior. But if they were to change their rules to allow these sorts of disruptions, as stupid as that would be, they would have every right to do so and it wouldn't be a violation of anyone's right to free speech or to earn a livelihood.
- Georgelemental 4y agoIt would not be a violation of the First Amendment (probably, Stanford is a private university but they do receive federal funds). It would be a violation of the spirit and principle of free expression.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y agoSure, heckle and hold counter-events. But the current state of university mobs today is literally closer to murderous than insightful. SFSU let Riley Gaines be beaten and held against her will by the braying mob. New Zealand let Posie Parker and a bunch of old ladies be attacked be assaulted by shrieking thugs. There's nothing of speech in their actions, just terroristic political violence against the enemy. > you’re free to buy / rent your own private venue Actually, no you're not. The mob will blockade even an entirely private event held off-campus, or in a public square with permit, etc.
- jltsiren 4y agoFreedom of speech, as a political right, is fundamentally a right to protest. It's about the ability to speak against those in power without excessive consequences. When you have some students against a high-level public official, the students' rights are obviously more important from a freedom of speech perspective. Of course, freedom of speech is not an absolute right, and it's not the only thing that matters. If the university finds it valuable to host controversial speakers, maintaining the order by suppressing the freedom of speech of those who try to disrupt the talk can be a valid choice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Georgelemental 4y ago> It's about the ability to speak against those in power without excessive consequences. "Those in power" is such a nebulous concept. In certain situations (legal cases that come before him), the circuit court judge has a lot of power. In others (Stanford campus environment), the students have more power than he does. Freedom of speech is fundamentally the right to express one's opinion—it is irrelevant whose interests that opinion serves. In the Stanford incident, the hecklers interfered with the judge's ability to express his opinion, while the judge's actions in no way interfered with the ability of the students to communicate their opinions.
- jltsiren 4y agoFirst, this would be a far more interesting case for freedom of speech if the speaker was someone from a private think tank. Now it's effectively citizens vs. the government. With high-ranking government officials, it's often impossible to separate the person from the office. Second, opinions are irrelevant. Everyone has them, and they are almost always worthless. Placing excessive value on opinions is the reason why we are in this endless quagmire of political polarization. The students disrupted the talk instead of arguing with the speaker, because they believed they have the right (rather than just the freedom) to express their opinions. Freedom of speech is at its core the right to express politically actionable ideas. It protects those who reveal secrets the authorities would keep hidden, those who criticize the way things are done, and those who propose doing things in a different way. It allows citizens to debate matters and to make better, more informed decisions. The freedom to express opinions is a trivial consequence.
- gnicholas 4y agoApparently the student mass-emailed a flyer on letterhead meant to impersonate the Federalist Society. [1] They complained not because they were being mocked but because the fake email looked enough like their emails and could have damaged their reputations. Based on the reporting, I don't think they had any intention that their classmate's diploma be put on hold temporarily, just that there be an investigation into his conduct impersonating them. 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/email-mocking-stanford-s-federalist-society-nearly-cost-law-student-n1269514 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/email-mocking-stanford-...
- boole1854 4y ago>That same year, members of Stanford’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization, filed a complaint against a law student who had mocked the group with a satirical flier. There's more to the story. The flyer presented itself as a Federalist Society flyer including using their logo and template, and there was indeed some confusion about whether or not it had been put out by the Society: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/stanford-federalist-society-complaint-re-nicholas-wallace https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/stanford-federalist-s...
- ceejayoz 4y agoThis is common in parody. People not being sure if “violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government” was genuinely espoused by the Society makes the parody even more meaningful.
- stale2002 4y agoThe point is here, that even if someone intent is to parody, this can transition into actual defamation depending on the context. For example, if someone put up a poster, with your name and photo on it, and the poster said "I, the person in the photo, support Killing a bunch of people, on this date, at this time, at this location", this would be defamation. When you start getting into actual death threats, this can cross the line into illegal defamation. And no, defamation is not protected by the 1st amendment, nor are many types of death threats.
- CodeWriter23 4y agoGuess we better abundantly optimize for those corner cases until all speech is illegal.
- stale2002 4y agoNo, actually. There is no slippery slope that inevitably leads to all speech being illegal. Instead, the court system in the USA mostly does a pretty good job determining what is or is not speech, and ways of having very limited restricts on speech that only prevent the extremely harmful stuff, while maintaining people's rights. Addressing these "corner cases" is exactly what the court system does, and it has resulted in a society where the vast vast majority of speech is protected, and only very extreme and damaging edge cases are banned.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]