Legal Commentary

Scrivener?s Error

By Eugene Volokh

The Louisiana cyber-tormenting statute also has an error in it: It says that ?The provisions of this Section shall not be construed to prohibit or restrict religious free speech pursuant to Article I, Section 18 of the Constitution of Louisiana,? but the religious freedom provision of the Louisiana Constitution is in section 8, and section 18 is the right-to-bail provision. Whoops!

Still, I assume that courts would be willing to effectuate the legislature?s likely intent by reading the provision as referring to ?section 8,? under the ?scrivener?s error? doctrine. I also called it in to the Louisiana Public Update Legislative Services line, so maybe the Legislature can somehow fix that, though I don?t know how likely that is.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on July 09, 2010 (boomark / email).