So will the same logic hold if I wear, say, a police uniform and badge when called to testify?
Why should Impersonating a police officer be a crime if they are doing it 'to make a statement"?
If you are impersonating someone, you are making a statement by definition. Even protected speech is not immune from incidental regulation. As I’ve pointed out many times, you can burn as many flags as you like without fear of prosecution for flag desecration but you can still be charged with violating the fire code. As a matter of practicality, if you just wear a badge and call yourself Officer Floppy you’re probably okay.
Which is it? Am I allowed to wear a police badge to boost my credibility for the jury, or not? If not, why should I be allowed to wear another pin I am not actually entitled to for the same purpose?
It was really drilled into our heads that we cannot, absolutely cannot provide legal advice. I am a law school graduate. I passed the NY bar (on my first time, hooray!). But I did not join the bar. My understanding is that I can call myself a lawyer (if for some reason I wanted to), but cannot give anything resembling legal advice whether or not for profit or gain. You can call yourself a lawyer (if you wanted to), but cannot give legal advice.
The line between advice and opinion gets grey and there’s a hell of a lot of nuance to it, but there are rational reasons why certain professions are protected in such a way as to trump blanket free speech. Contrast that with the zero harm from hurt feelings or whatever stems from what the Stolen Valour Act penalized.
Wouldn’t that be a case of either perjury or contempt, not the Stolen Valour Act? I’d even side against the wearer if someone sued him after the fact because the lie of wearing the medal made a material difference to a jury (whether that would have legal grounds is a different story).
Why? The person here wore his fake medal on the stand. So, why is wearing a police badge any more special?
It’s not perjury. The oath or affirmation of a witness doesn’t require him to dress honestly.
ETA: What person? Swisher was convicted of falsely wearing medals based on a photograph, not because he wore them on the stand.
If you wear a police uniform and/or badge to the witness stand, opposing counsel can question you to establish whether or not you are in fact an actual police officer, which you DO have to answer truthfully under oath, and if the answer is “no” then you will be asked why are you dressed like one. You’ll end up looking to the jury like a putz who has some issues, and the judge may find you in contempt for showing up to testify in your Halloween costume.
Whatever the rulings, the guy next to me at work, who never served and who moonlights as a security guard, has an official-looking SWATish black jacket with a Punisher patch (“Like Chris Kyle’s unit wore in American Sniper!”) and it creeps me out.
I know that this is several years old, but the dissent, IMHO, adequately addressed your concerns. If the government wanted to criminalize telling a woman in a bar that you were not married, but actually are married, then I do not believe that such a law violates the first amendment. Telling such lies do not go to the heart of the first amendment to protect speech that has any value. No political or expressive speech is chilled, and no viewpoints are silenced.
The parade of horribles that the majority saw has not been a danger in our history and is very unlikely to be enacted into law. It would be a really stupid law that democracy can solve and not the constitution. “Not every foolish law is unconstitutional.”
Can I be the one who decides what speech has “value”? :dubious:
To be clear, my post wasn’t so much a quest for a hypothetical that has tangential rationale (sanctity of marriage/state interest in promoting families, etc.), but a very direct question: “Should [the government] have the authority to [criminalize] lying under any circumstances that meet the following 5 criteria?”
So a law is passed that says “**Any **lie told by **any **person for **any **reason is hereby deemed a felony so long as it passes criteria 1-5 above.” That’s Constitutional?
Or if hypotheticals are a must, woudl you consider a law that makes lying on an employment application for jobs that pay under 30K a year a misdemeanor Constitutionally sound? A law that makes it a felony if the potential job is 31K or above? Whether it’s inflating your salary or fudging the dates of employment or leaving out a job you don’t want known (but there is a checkbox that asks if it’s complete), etc.
The Constitution does not prohibit bad policy. I’m not sure such a law would be constitutional but it would be terrible policy.
No. Our elected representatives make that choice, and their laws are reviewed by judges who interpret the restriction on speech based upon case law and historical principles.
These laws, IMHO, would likely violate other provisions of the Constitution (depending on the exact wording), but they would not violate the First Amendment.