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410. Translating the euphemisms

By Joel Jacobsen

In my former life as a first amendment lawyer (well, as a low-level associate who glommed onto as much first amendment work as I could sniff out) I would, at least once a week, read these words or an excerpt from them: Thus we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. (You can follow that link to the new Google legal website, which would make me feel sick at heart if I were a manager of a certain division of either Reed Elsevier or Thomson Reuters.) That was from New York Times v. Sullivan, a disguised civil rights case that dramatically altered state libel laws in a way impossible to justify from the text of the first amendment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Judging Crimes on November 20, 2009 (boomark / email).