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Fixing False Truths: Rethinking Truth Assumptions And Free-Expression Rationales In The Networked Era, Jared Schroeder
Fixing False Truths: Rethinking Truth Assumptions And Free-Expression Rationales In The Networked Era, Jared Schroeder
William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
The First Amendment makes no mention of truth. Assumptions about truth, however, have become the foundations for free-expression rationales, the very bases for such freedoms in a democratic society. The Supreme Court gradually, over time, wedded Enlightenment assumptions about truth to the marketplace of ideas rationale for free expression. This Article examines, in light of massive, widespread adoption of networked technologies and AI and Supreme Court decisions that have undermined the distinctive role of truth, whether truth should be removed or replaced as a crucial, justifying concept in freedom of expression. The Article examines the marketplace approach’s history and assumptions, …
The Pure-Hearted Abrams Case, Andres Yoder
The Pure-Hearted Abrams Case, Andres Yoder
William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
One hundred years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes changed his mind about the right to free speech and wound up splitting the history of free speech law into two. In his dissent in Abrams v. United States, he called for the end of the old order—in which courts often ignored or rejected free speech claims—and set the stage for the current order—in which the right to free speech is of central constitutional importance. However, a century on, scholars have been unable to identify a specific reason for Holmes’s Abrams transformation, and have instead pointed to more diffuse influences. By …