None of those is examples of political speech.
So the first amendment is the right to free political speech?
No matter; the supreme court has made rulings that were specifically described as exceptions to the right to free speech. They don’t believe a naive reading will work for any and all situations.
You can read all about the long history of what that phrase has meant in the law and in political philosophy here.
Indeed. Here too.
So then you do favor regulating books and movies that are designed to influence elections?
Should we also be allowed to regulate skits on SNL or the Daily Show that are designed to get people to support or oppose certain political candidates.
Can you quote the section concerning political speech. I must have missed it, because I didn’t see it.
Well for a start at least two sections are indeed relevant to political speech: the sections on incitement and telling falsehoods.
More importantly, what is even your point now?
I’m saying that the supreme court considers the first amendment to not naively apply in all cases, and judges have themselves described some rulings as “exceptions”.
What are you saying? That what they meant to say was that they were not really exceptions at all, and freedom of speech can be naively applied to all situations?
The Supreme Court does consider the First Amendment to apply to all cases of political speech, which is what we are discussing.
Regards,
Shodan
If I have ignored Buckley v Valeo I am not alone. No one has mentioned it before this since the OP. Let us consider the decision then. It ruled that spending on advertising fell under the First Amendment. I do not dispute this. But it also ruled campaign contributions did as well:
*"As the general discussion in Part I-A, supra, indicated, the primary First Amendment problem raised by the Act’s contribution limitations is their restriction of one aspect of the contributor’s freedom of political association. [p25] The Court’s decisions involving associational freedoms establish that the right of association is a “basic constitutional freedom,” Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. at 57, that is “closely allied to freedom of speech and a right which, like free speech, lies at the foundation of a free society.” *
Yet the limits on campaign contributions were upheld.
“It is unnecessary to look beyond the Act’s primary purpose – to limit the actuality and appearance of corruption resulting from large individual financial contributions – in order to find a constitutionally sufficient justification for the $1,000 contribution limitation.”
So while I don’t agree that the decision properly balances the 1st Amendment within our constitutional system we can clearly see that the court did balance it. It was not considered an absolute right.
What are you basing that on? If my interpretation of free speech (“The right to state any opinion”) was baseless and an “originalist interpretation”, what is this?
The simple fact is that supreme court judges have ruled in several cases that there was an exception to the first amendment. There is no record of them then winking, or saying “Well, not an exception per se..”
In any case, you ignored my last post. There have been rulings on falsehoods and incitement, and both those are relevant to political speech. So it is simply not the case that all political speech is considered constitutionally enshrined.
Their decisions.
It wasn’t baseless, and I have no problem with an originalist interpretation.
Who cares? Outlawing slander or violations of national security does not establish that you can outlaw speech that has nothing to do with slander or violations of national security.
Okay, name some political speech that was outlawed because it was false.
Regards,
Shodan
No, your cite here does not say that campaign contributions are forms of political expression. Read what’s quoted. Because however “closely allied to freedom of speech” the wise justices found this right, it is not speech. Consequently permitting that restriction was not incorrect, at least not on grounds of restricting free expression. Also from that decision:
We can debate their logic, but they are specifically drawing a line that says this is not a restriction of political expression. Because that would not be permitted.
Yes that is correct. But as I said it does say that this activity falls under the 1st Amendment.
What was balanced once can be rebalanced.
The restrictions were not made on the basis that it was consistent with the First Amendment free speech freedoms, which is the point. “First Amendment” in this thread has been shorthand for this section of the First Amendment:
I would think that’s obvious. If some other First Amendment issue (e.g., something associated with the establishment clause) were in play, it’s irrelevant in that doesn’t speak at all to the issue we’re debating: the government has no basis for restricting controversial or unpopular political expression (I’m going to assume sedition is understood at this point and not offer that exception every time). Pointing out that the other aspect is also a First Amendment issue misses the point.
The restrictions on campaign contributions were permitted by strenuously arguing that they had nothing to do with free speech. Consequently, whatever Solomon-like balancing the justices pulled off in this decision, it does not form a foundation for “further” balancing other rights against the right to freely express a political perspective, since this decision specifically drew a line pointing out it did no such thing.
The analogies of laws prohibiting falsely shouting fire, obscenity, and sedition are not proper. The first amendment is not absolute as we all have recognized and it is there primarily to protect political speech, again as we have all recognized.
In the three exceptions above, we have rightfully held that protecting the public against false fear, indecency, and a threat to our way of life are all more important than an individual’s non-political speech in those instances. We don’t cry because a person is forbidden from scaring the bejebus out of a crowd of moviegoers when there really is no fire. Suppressing such speech does no disservice to the ideals behind the first amendment.
Some posters would argue that there is an overriding public benefit here: that too much political spending will skew the election process. My counter is that skewing election processes is EXACTLY the kind of speech that the first amendment is there to protect. Why else should a free person be allowed political speech if not to influence his friends and neighbors to see things his way? The “danger” that is trying to be prevented is the freedom itself.
It would be as if there was a constitutional right to scare moviegoers and someone argued that the right had to be limited because, if allowed, it would scare moviegoers. The right to free speech subsumes the idea that this free speech will convince large numbers of people in a particular direction, and the right is there to prevent attempts to stop this very type of thing proposed in this thread.
Right. So there is a spirit in which the principle of free speech applies. Stopping someone from, say, shouting obscenities in front of a school doesn’t go against that spirit.
There’s at least 2 kinds of thing you could mean by skewing here. Firstly, skewing an election by having a good idea, which becomes popular. Sure that kind of skewing is good.
OTOH browbeating, spamming, whatever you want to call it, such that one idea is far more vivid in a population’s minds than the others…that kind of skewing is not conducive to political debate.
And to be clear, my position is not that huge spending should be considered an exception. My position is that I don’t believe this is a first amendment issue in the first place; I think it is outside of scope. The spirit of the amendment doesn’t cover this kind of practical issue.
That’s actually a great way to summarize this. I’m going to remember this; it’s a way to show the distinction we’re trying to draw with real clarity, IMO.
“Sure, the First Amendment exists to protect political expression that others might find offensive or exerting too much influence–but you don’t understand, in this instance, the speech is offensive and exerts too much influence!”
So you don’t think the First Amendment is relevant when questioning whether or not the government can fine the Sierra Club for distributing leaflets criticizing a Senator’s environmental record and as to whether or not the Cranston, RI teachers union can put out radio ads encouraging Rhode Islanders to vote in favor of a ballot initiative that would increase school funding?
Please explain your logic because I don’t see it.
So this thread has already established that political speech has been curtailed in the past. So it is possible.
The question would be, does the wealth-based-influence garnered by Citizens United rise to that level.
If you think that billionaires should sway our elections, fine. I contend that exactly zero of the founding fathers would invite you over for cake. But you certainly have the right to think that the world will be better if rich people write all the laws.
Just don’t try and defend the oligarchy you want by hiding behind the first amendment. Political speech is important, but the a tenth of a percent of the population dictating elections is *more *important.
That’s a good point. And now I can see why we should have much more vigorously suppressed the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Every freakin’ night on all 3 news stations, seeing those images of Negro spammers out in the streets. Not conducive to political debate. Who the hell was funding them, anyway? Communists, probably.
We needed someone in charge back then like Dick Cheney. We’d all trust him to make sure no one was skewing the political debate.