Whether such laws are commonly enforced … well we know from modified motorcycles that they’re not.
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
> 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...
http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
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.
Theoretically, how much outrage do I need to manufacture to get the legal system to ignore the Brandenburg test and prosecute today's flavor of thought villain?
Edit: to wit, the parent post claim in ridiculous action: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34811787
what fact is that? who enforces the "can't" ?
Regardless, does that remove the offense?
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
"Kill x people" is fine and protected. "Kill x people at y date at z mall" is not.
Note:
>Hess uttered, "We'll take the fucking street later" or "We'll take the fucking street again." Hess was convicted in Indiana state court of disorderly conduct.
>The Supreme Court reversed Hess's conviction because Hess' statement, at worst, "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time." In contrast to such an indefinite future time, the Court emphasized the word imminent in the "imminent lawless action" test of Brandenburg. Because the evidence did not show that Hess' speech was intended and likely to produce "imminent disorder", the state could not punish Hess' speech.[3][4]
Here in the US, yes. In the rest of the world (like, EU) they aren't very specific.
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.
Not having children is a life decision that's harmful to the society the same way suicide is harmful to the society.
Childfree groups should be treated as suicide cults.
The law does not only care about causality. It is also cares free speech, reasonable interpretation, and comparative responsibility.
I could craft and publish an argument School shootings are in fact a positive good a we should have more of them. I am legally in the clear, even If someone finds my argument convincing and goes and shoots up a school because of it.
In short, "reasonable" means nothing until the people in power tell you what it means.
When it comes to this example, it is a lot more clear. I can write a book on why you should shoot up schools and it would be protected. Reasonable does not come in to that part of the question.
Not really. The boundaries of "reasonable" are... wait for... it reasonableness.
I.e. if a jury or a judge isn't reasonable, then an appeals court can overturn it. A judge or jury is not given free reign to determine anything to be reasonable.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michelle-carter-found-g...
Sheesh indeed my friend, sheesh indeed.
If I killed someone, I can't be like "Whats the problem? Nature kills people all the time. Why are you so sentimental?"
There are real biases and Injustice, but it doesn't a disservice do any reasonable debate to make such exaggerating claims
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.
But you're doubling down not just on that people aren't aware of it but that it's a dead letter. That's wrong. You're confusing the government's spending power with discrimination in employment.
That is not repealing our civil rights law, the FEHA, or amending it to remove protections for white people, who are, by the way, only a plurality here. Even if we had, the federal law, Title VII, still protects everyone. The question isn't who you are, it's whether you were discriminated against on that basis.
Personally, I am really glad the rest of the country hates us and thinks we're shit so they don't come here, but it gets annoying when people just make stuff up. No, the place is far from perfect, but it's nothing like what people imagine. Even in San Francisco, they recalled the prosecutor who wouldn't do anything and San Francisco is probably the most extreme. People think that must mean every city around it is the same. Other than Berkeley, sometimes, they just aren't. In fact most of us go, thank god I don't live in San Francisco, which, by the way isn't the second biggest city in the state. San Jose has more people than San Francisco and so does San Diego. San Diego is much, much more purple. It's almost like 40m people are different.
They sure seem happy to take our tax dollars though.
Employee X gets fired for publicly stating that their employers products are trash, said employee sues, nothing about what they said was illegal.
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.
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.
Sure, speech can be harmful and hurtful, to the point that someone should get punished for it. But 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.