A Jurisprudence I Can Get Behind!
Will Baude ponders devising a new reading of the First Amendment:
All joking aside, the obvious flaw to such a rule would be that it would make laws against oral and written fraud unconstitutional, which, one thinks, would probably be bad. Might have a slight negative effect on the functioning of the market.
But that's no reason to stop with the general project of trying to constitutionally criminalize mime! For goodness sake, Will, keep trying!
UPDATE:
In a just world...
FURTHER UPDATE: via email, Will explains that his theory is just about when the First Amendment is implicated, and is not meant to be dispositive. That is, you could still have exceptions for fraud, and presumably slander/libel, etc. It's just that the Amendment wouldn't be implicated, at all, for non-speech acts. The important thing is: we still get to jail mimes. Huzzah, Will!
...maybe an underinclusive/overinclusive rule that spoken and printed expression are off-limits while mime can be, however unwisely, criminalized would be better than unhelpful judicial exposition.But why would it be unwise to criminalize mime? An end to mime would cut the number of fist-fights I get into by about a third!
All joking aside, the obvious flaw to such a rule would be that it would make laws against oral and written fraud unconstitutional, which, one thinks, would probably be bad. Might have a slight negative effect on the functioning of the market.
But that's no reason to stop with the general project of trying to constitutionally criminalize mime! For goodness sake, Will, keep trying!
UPDATE:
In a just world...
FURTHER UPDATE: via email, Will explains that his theory is just about when the First Amendment is implicated, and is not meant to be dispositive. That is, you could still have exceptions for fraud, and presumably slander/libel, etc. It's just that the Amendment wouldn't be implicated, at all, for non-speech acts. The important thing is: we still get to jail mimes. Huzzah, Will!
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