"If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment."
-
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment. So, I think we can be more aggressive in the way that we handle that type of use of the internet."
Isn't that exactly what the 1st Amendment is needed to protect?
Happy talk doesn't need protection.
Speech espousing hate and violence needs protection.
-
@jon-nyc said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
We need a “Bad First Amendment Takes” permathread
Would you add the senator's take to that thread?
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.
-
@jon-nyc said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
We need a “Bad First Amendment Takes” permathread
Would you add the senator's take to that thread?
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.
@Horace said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
@jon-nyc said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
We need a “Bad First Amendment Takes” permathread
Would you add the senator's take to that thread?
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.
Of course.
-
At what point does encouraging violence become a problem legally?
Remember that girl in Massachusetts who encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide? She went to jail, I seem to think.
Be kind, I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I'm not 100% sure of the complexities.
I was only joking
-
"If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely for views you despise."
-Noam Chomsky -
The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” Notice that there are no exceptions, exemptions, or qualifiers attached to that pronouncement. Jurisprudence around the First Amendment is no kinder to Cardin’s assertions.
Case law decrees that the government has little ability to regulate so-called hate speech, or even violent speech, be it narrowly or broadly defined. The Supreme Court has ruled that bigots reserve the right to picket outside of soldiers’ funerals with signs that read “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.” It’s ruled that certain laws banning cross and flag-burning are unconstitutional. And in a 2017 majority opinion observed that “speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.'”
There are exceptions to the First Amendment, but they are exceedingly narrow. Government may regulate speech meant to incite imminent unlawful action, that by their very nature may induce an imminent breach of the peace, or constitutes a “true threat” to someone’s physical safety.
On Thursday, Cardin attempted to correct himself, but again failed to accurately articulate the First Amendment’s parameters.
“Although the First Amendment protects even hateful speech, if that speech motivates someone to commit a crime, engage in violence, or take action that infringes on someone else’s right, that speech is not protected under the First Amendment and there must be accountability,” wrote Cardin.
But that simply isn’t the case. In order for such speech to be unprotected, it must be made with the immediate intention of producing such acts — not just have incidentally produced them. In the landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio case, for example, a Ku Klux Klan rally advocating generalized “revengeance” against blacks and Jews was found to be constitutionally protected despite its hateful and even dangerous nature.
-
At what point does encouraging violence become a problem legally?
Remember that girl in Massachusetts who encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide? She went to jail, I seem to think.
Be kind, I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I'm not 100% sure of the complexities.
@Doctor-Phibes said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
At what point does encouraging violence become a problem legally?
Remember that girl in Massachusetts who encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide? She went to jail, I seem to think.
Be kind, I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I'm not 100% sure of the complexities.
From a recent Ken White piece ranting about bad first amendment takes:
The Established First Amendment Exceptions Aren’t Whatever You Want Them To Be
Even if they accept that there’s a limited set of First Amendment exceptions, people often try to force speech into exceptions where it doesn’t fit. The exceptions to the First Amendment are, like the Supreme Court said, “familiar.” That means there’s a huge volume of cases interpreting them. Their meaning is not absolutely immutable, but nor is flexible.
Incitement is a popular example. Incitement is a First Amendment exception. But incitement means “speech that is intended, and likely, to cause imminent lawless action.” All of those words mean things, things defined by decades of court decisions. They don’t mean whatever you want them to mean — they specifically don’t mean “saying things that are bad for America on TV.” Might the courts gradually develop their understanding of one of these words - for instance, by developing a broader understanding of “imminence” based on an internet culture? Yes, over time, through a familiar process. But the point is that you must engage the existing law on what “incitement” means to be accurate — you can’t just declare it to mean whatever you want, and expect that to matter in court. The Supreme Court has been saying for almost a century that First Amendment exceptions are “well-defined and narrowly limited.” The fact that the words in the names of the exceptions — like “incitement,” or “threat” — have flexible colloquial meanings does not signify that the legal meaning of those exceptions is flexible. It isn’t.
-
@Doctor-Phibes said in "If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you're not protected under the First Amendment.":
At what point does encouraging violence become a problem legally?
Remember that girl in Massachusetts who encouraged her boyfriend to commit suicide? She went to jail, I seem to think.
Be kind, I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I'm not 100% sure of the complexities.
From a recent Ken White piece ranting about bad first amendment takes:
The Established First Amendment Exceptions Aren’t Whatever You Want Them To Be
Even if they accept that there’s a limited set of First Amendment exceptions, people often try to force speech into exceptions where it doesn’t fit. The exceptions to the First Amendment are, like the Supreme Court said, “familiar.” That means there’s a huge volume of cases interpreting them. Their meaning is not absolutely immutable, but nor is flexible.
Incitement is a popular example. Incitement is a First Amendment exception. But incitement means “speech that is intended, and likely, to cause imminent lawless action.” All of those words mean things, things defined by decades of court decisions. They don’t mean whatever you want them to mean — they specifically don’t mean “saying things that are bad for America on TV.” Might the courts gradually develop their understanding of one of these words - for instance, by developing a broader understanding of “imminence” based on an internet culture? Yes, over time, through a familiar process. But the point is that you must engage the existing law on what “incitement” means to be accurate — you can’t just declare it to mean whatever you want, and expect that to matter in court. The Supreme Court has been saying for almost a century that First Amendment exceptions are “well-defined and narrowly limited.” The fact that the words in the names of the exceptions — like “incitement,” or “threat” — have flexible colloquial meanings does not signify that the legal meaning of those exceptions is flexible. It isn’t.
