Supremes to decide if lying is protected speech.

crimresearch said:
As I predicted, I'm not suprised... :D
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[SkepticGinger]

Alright, you charlatan, I'm not letting you get away with this ridiculous claim yet again.

Please provide written, notarized proof that you did indeed make this prediction.

Fail to do so, and you will be called out as a dastardly mountebank.

[/SkepticGinger]
 
Gosh, a 6-3 vote with Scalia, Scalia Dark and Alito dissenting. Go figure.

But it does look like the court left open the possibility of rewriting the act in a way that made it constitutional. Fraud, after all, is still illegal, but just plain old lying is not fraud. It would need to be written such that the lying was done clearly to gain financial benefit etc. But you can't make it against the law for people to lie. As Wildcat et. al. have pointed out, that would be the end of most politicians, as well as most ad agencies.
 
On an unrelated note, I went out with this lawyer chick and said that I hope Scalia "chokes on his morning puppy blood," and John Roberts has a seizure and drowns in a pool. She was one of the more self-absorbed people I've ever met. Didn't ask me one question, which is crazy because I'm, like, 10,000 times more interesting. So it was just me asking about her trips to Europe and teaching criminology. Worth it when I asked "Who's your daddy?"
 
Wangler said:
[SkepticGinger]

Alright, you charlatan, I'm not letting you get away with this ridiculous claim yet again.

Please provide written, notarized proof that you did indeed make this prediction.

Fail to do so, and you will be called out as a dastardly mountebank.

[/SkepticGinger]
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Let me fire up the time machine, and go back to fix that... :roll:
 
Muldur said:
I vote for letting your local vets know so that they can get a group of big burly vets together to go and "explain the error of their ways" to the liar...slowly and painfully...
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So you vote to edit the 5th,14th,and 8th amendments and overruling the current precedent on incitement?

How bold of you. No wait, what is the pejorative form of "bold"?
 
Our veterans risked their lives to protect our rights, including the right to lie about being a veteran who risked his/her life to protect our rights.

I wish that would have been in the majority's statement.
 
Someone brought up fraud earlier in the thread but I don't think anyone addressed it directly. According to wiki (picks up grain of salt) the common law elements of fraud are:

  1. a representation of an existing fact;
  2. its materiality;
  3. its falsity;
  4. the speaker's knowledge of its falsity;
  5. the speaker's intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
  6. plaintiff's ignorance of its falsity;
  7. plaintiff's reliance on the truth of the representation;
  8. plaintiff's right to rely upon it; and
  9. consequent damages suffered by plaintiff.
9 seems the most relevant. Lying about a being a hero may cause outrage, but it doesn't cause "damages" in a legal sense. If outrage was elevated to the level of damages, when COULDN'T we sue?
 
thaiboxerken said:
I would agree, if money didn't buy that speech. Those with the most money determine truth these days.
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First off, those with more money have always been able to buy more speech. There is nothing new about that. In fact, you have the situation backwards: it's never been easier to be heard even without money. Money still helps, but we have never before had less monopoly on information than at any point in our history. And money doesn't buy truth. People don't always believe what they hear, and as long as you can't stop your opponents from speaking, then they can make their own choices about what and who to believe. There are plenty of examples of when the little guy beat the big guy in the marketplace of ideas because the truth determined the truth.
 
thaiboxerken said:
I would agree, if money didn't buy that speech. Those with the most money determine truth these days.
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Not really. Because we all have the freedom of association as an integral part of our first amendment free speech rights, we are free to pool our money (and we do) in order to make speech acts.
 
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The Central Scrutinizer said:
As the only Medal Of Honor recipient on this forum, this decision sickens me. :mad:
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I support your first amendment right to express that it sickens you.

I still don't think there is a legitimate state interest, however, in enforcing respect for your Medal of Honor that outweighs the First Amendment right to free speech. So I applaud the decision.

And again, even if we did recognize the "harm" done to these medals by someone lying about receiving one, there is a quick and easy remedy to that "harm" that doesn't requiring the limiting of First Amendment rights: just point out that the liar is lying.
 
KingMerv00 said:
9 seems the most relevant. Lying about a being a hero may cause outrage, but it doesn't cause "damages" in a legal sense. If outrage was elevated to the level of damages, when COULDN'T we sue?
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Exactly. That's what I meant when I said treating this law as if it pertained to fraud just presupposes damages. And it's a vague, arm-waving meaning of damages (or even "harm" which is why I keep using the scare quotes).
 
KingMerv00 said:
You have a point but outrage makes a decent substitute for money at times. That's why I'm in the "pro-liar" camp as well.
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:D

Personally, I prefer the term "pro-free speech" camp.

It's easy to be pro-free speech when people say things you agree with. But IMO, the real test of free speech only comes when we recognize the right of people to say things we find disgusting or even odious.

No one says you have to like speech the First Amendment protects.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Exactly. That's what I meant when I said treating this law as if it pertained to fraud just presupposes damages. And it's a vague, arm-waving meaning of damages (or even "harm" which is why I keep using the scare quotes).
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Speaking of arm-waving "damages", your avatar reminds me of flag burning, hippie. :(
 
KingMerv00 said:
Speaking of arm-waving "damages", your avatar reminds me of flag burning, hippie. :(
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No, that was just kerosene in the mouth---very real (self-inflicted) damages, I'm afraid. :p

ETA: Now if I could only manage to sing a parody of the Star Spangled Banner at the same time. . . .
 
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