XPost: alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.politics   
   From: noway@nowhere.com   
      
   On 7/16/2023 12:34 PM, Just Wondering wrote:   
      
   {snip}   
      
   > Absent libel laws which allow damages for deliberate lies concerning   
   > facts about others that damage their reputations, people have a   
   > constitutional right to publish lies.   
      
   Firstly, in addition to defamation, commercial fraud and lies that cause   
   emotional distress are punishable (as well as lying to an police   
   investigator or lying under oath, though neither involves publishing).   
      
   Secondly and more importantly, more lies may be punishable because the   
   Court left us hanging in the most current case involving punishing lies   
   (United States v. Alvarez,   
   https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/11-210/case.pdf).   
      
   The justices split 4-2-3, with the 4 concluding lies are presumptively   
   protected speech (except in the cases mentioned above such as   
   defamation). The 3 concluded lies are presumptively unprotected speech   
   (except in controversial topics such as philosophy, religion, history,   
   the social sciences and the arts). The 2 gave the controlling opinion   
   which held there is no presumption either way and instead a balancing   
   test applies which compares the harm to censoring speech versus the harm   
   of not censoring it.   
      
   What I found most interesting is which justices fit into which group.   
   Can you guess without looking (at the time, we had Roberts, Scalia,   
   Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor and Kagan)?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)