Supreme Court to consider giving First Amendment protections to social media posts | The Conversation

The First Amendment does not protect messages posted on social media platforms. The companies that own the platforms can – and do – remove, promote or limit the distribution of any posts according to corporate policies. But all that might soon change. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear five cases during this current term, which ends in…

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Jack Smith’s requested gag order, like judicial orders restricting Trump’s speech, seeks to balance constitutional rights | The Conversation

In each of former President Donald Trump’s four indictments, he has been allowed to stay out of jail before his trial so long as he abides by certain conditions commonly applied to most people accused of crimes in the U.S. In the federal case in Washington, D.C., that concerns Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the…

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Jack Smith’s Trump indictment goes where free speech ends and criminal conspiracy begins | The Hill

Before Monday’s additional state indictment in Georgia, former President Trump stood accused in federal court of criminal conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election results. Conspiracy charges, by their very nature, include communication. But on the second page of the federal indictment, in the third enumerated paragraph, the prosecution attempts to make clear that Trump is not being…

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Indoctrination, Orthodoxy and The First Amendment | Medium

Whether it comes from the right or the left, viewpoint discrimination is poison to democracy. And these days, it is coming from both sides. It is positively Orwellian — each side hopes it can exorcize words and phrases from the lexicon and thereby purge unwanted perspectives from our collective thoughts. Each seeks to cancel the…

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Incitement to Violence and The Big Lie | Medium

The work of the January 6 committee serves as a masterclass on the power, potency, and purpose of the First Amendment: to subject all ideas, bad and good, to review and debate as an exercise in discovering the truth. But as some of us watch the televised hearings, we might wonder if the First Amendment…

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Depp v Heard: The jury’s burden | The Hill

Millions of dollars were at stake in the voyeuristic defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. But if either of them believed this action was going to salvage their reputations and vindicate them, they were sadly mistaken. They were also mistaken if they believed this was going to be a cake walk for either of them.…

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