Every lawyer worth their salt in America knows that you can’t get an injunction to prevent someone from publishing something. That’s a prior restraint and is about as close as you can get to something absolutely forbidden under American law.
You can't, in theory.
In practice this sort of thing happens all the time. I had a judge issue a clearly unconstitutional order limiting my speech (there was no action on my part leading up to this, it was a broad order applying to more than just me). My lawyer's take was that while it was clearly not allowed, it wasn't particularly important so best to just ignore it.
It's really, really common.
It seem like all it takes is a plausible legal theory that could be dragged out combined with enough financial clout to make the defendant give.
He was keenly aware that the issue wasn't significant enough to appeal and that his power was essentially unchecked.
Lawyers are very aware of this dynamic.
But to really research a judge candidate I think would take access to a legal case database and a fairly sophisticated understanding of law, and far too much time.
Nobody is going speak about about Judge A because the political machinery and peer pressure are very powerful. When Judge B rats out Judge A, all of the sudden those appellate court opportunities or various other lucrative appointments suddenly are out of reach.
Judicial elections are a good way to get bad judges out and mediocre or better judges get to mostly do their thing. The places where the broader political environment is corrupt are no more corrupt than if judges were appointed. There’s the benefit with an election that the local party leaders can just opt to not support a bad judge versus making a decision to oppose him.
If any change were to be made, I think making the clerks protected civil service employees would probably blunt the judges power, particularly if cousin Rufus get appointed to be county judge because he’s drinking too much at the law firm.
These checks and balances must include legal as well as practical costs and difficulties in having those orders implemented.
The system should assume malice on all parties, and work accordingly.
One such example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
Edit: someone posted the rules that says we should accept people's comments in good faith. I'll try to do that. Leaving this comment for posterity.
You’re not owed anything by anyone here, and they did bring up an example about family court and link to an article about it. :)
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
That does not, in any way, say "assume anecdotes are trustworthy." Nowhere in the rules does it say or even imply this.
It is also laughable to suggest the HN community assumes good faith; the comments section has a substantial amount of comments from software engineers thinking they're qualified to rip apart the work of people who are professionals in their fields, usually with high levels of derision.
Regardless of what HN rules say, anecdotes are literally the worst way of supporting an argument, subject to no end of observer biases.
2) That there are HN commenters who don’t follow the guidelines doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
3) I did not “conveniently” leave out that sentence, which implies malice on my part. I left it out because I deemed it irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. The strongest plausible interpretation of the GP’s comment is that they are telling the truth but can’t or are uncomfortable sharing details due to legal or personal matters, especially given that it was posted with a throwaway account, which the guidelines also specify is OK for sensitive information, implying that the GP was posting… sensitive information. As before: please try to assume good faith.
The scope of that sentence assigned to it by the only other sentence in that paragraph was indeed "irrelevant" to your claim "assume good faith" is a general policy for HN comments.
It was beyond disingenuous, and you're still being disingenuous; you're now shifting the goalposts.
> As before: please try to assume good faith.
You selectively quoted in a way that radically changed meaning in order to chastise another user making a comment you didn't like. This isn't a matter of "faith." You're running around telling other people how to act.
Furthermore, I read through some of your other comments and might add: I haven’t found one in which you’ve been anything but negative. Please consider reading through your comments and adjusting your general demeanor on this forum; I’d argue there’s a reason every third or fourth comment of yours gets downvoted.
That said, I think we’re done here. Enjoy the rest of your night; or day, wherever you are. :)
Do you have examples of similar forums that are better examples? This isn’t a rhetorical question; I haven’t been able to find a better forum where the commentary is (mostly) full of honest, thorough, and respectful discourse. If HN is “laughable”, I’m certainly interested in recalibrating.
This is why censorship is so dangerous … especially in a society that presumes freedom of speech.
There was a fascinating article (can’t find it) about the recipient of a NSL complaining to their congressman about being censored.
Their congressman told them such censorship was impossible under the current law so they shouldn’t worry about it.
They wanted to say “yes it’s possible, it’s happened to me.”
But that would have been illegal. So it was impossible to convince their congressman to look into it, and therefore impossible to get the law changed.
If you want to see the Judiciary rein it in, get a Congressperson involved. The Executive is fudged for, the Legislative can rewrite the entire corpus with due process.
"Dear mobsters, this is the address where the FBI has sequestered a witness" is around the place the bar is.
"That report might be defamatory to a corporation because we can argue it is untrue" is nowhere near the bar (truth is an affirmative defense, and the possible harm is reconcilable in law via monetary compensation and damages).
FISA court orders, family court, settlement agreements, arbitration, civil lawsuits, criminal trials, etc
There are so many different ways you can be “gagged” it’s very common.
There’s a reason they tried to get the publication stopped - because it often works.
Both are protected by the first amendment.
“Freedom of the press” has focused on the need for an informed public and institutional autonomy of the press. It is a public, not private, right.
The freedom of the press also has a commercial element. It’s controversial to say “corporations have freedom of speech.” It uncontroversial and obvious that corporations have freedom of the press.
“Freedom of speech” has focused on individual speakers. There’s a public element, but private speech is still incredibly important.
That is true.
> “Freedom of the press” has focused on the need for an informed public and institutional autonomy of the press. It is a public, not private, right.
But that's wildly wrong.
https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/press.pdf
> Blackstone, for instance, wrote in 1769 that “[e]very freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press.” Jean-Louis de Lolme, an author widely cited by 1780s American writers, likewise wrote in his chapter on “Liberty of the Press” that “[e]very subject in England has not only a right to present petitions, to the King, or the Houses of Parliament; but he has a right also to lay his complaints and observations before the Public, by the means of an open press.”
> State supreme courts in 1788 and 1791 similarly described the liberty of the press as “permitting every man to publish his opinions,” and as meaning that “the citizen has a right to publish his sentiments upon all political, as well as moral and literary subjects.”
> Several early state constitutions echoed this as well, providing that “[e]very citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.”
The difference between freedom of speech and freedom of the press is that the press involves mass production, making it easy to communicate a message to large numbers of people at low cost. When people rephrase "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" as "the freedom to speak, write, and print on any subject", the freedoms to speak and write come from the freedom of speech, and the freedom to print (or publish) comes from the freedom of the press.
I wouldn't be surprised.
My mother worked for the VP a company that was involved in a lawsuit that went on for decades. It was commonly known in the company that the lawsuit was being deliberately dragged out for the benefit of the opposition's lawyers, and that the case was even handed down as a kind of sick inheritance from father-to-son as people retired.
I've only been involved in a court case once. I was picked as a juror in a case where two divorce lawyers were suing each other over how to split the fee from a high-profile divorce.
I'm sure there are good lawyers out there, but they seem as rare as hen's teeth and well-intentioned social media companies.
It seems the incentive for lawers as a group is, make everything more complicated for everyone else, so everyone else is more dependant on lawers to do anything at all.
I did hear people complain about some new UI/UX, on how it makes it too easy for nontechnical people to use it.
You can if you are the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_order#United_States
Though it didn’t last long.
But you're right, there's always a judge stupid enough out there to do something outrageously illegal.
Isn't there certain Project Veritas info that the NYT is currently forbidden from publishing? did I misunderstand? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/business/media/nyt-projec...
A lot of contracts people sign (NDAs and federal security clearance paperwork being the two examples that spring to mind) include clauses allowing a judge to issue a prior restraint injunction if you try to violate them.
Nobody ever goes to jail for violating an NDA. What you can have happen is be found to be in breach of contract and obligated to follow the consequences of that breach (including possibly restitution for damaging the aggrieved party).
The bar in civil law is lower because the penalties are generally money, and correction is simple if an error is later found (move that money back). Criminal law involves deprivation of liberty and other penalties that can't be reversed (can't give a person back the years in prison).
(It's a bit nonsense that we as a country let corps get laws passed to make "trade secret theft" criminal, but it is what it is).
You could write a similar contract allowing an injunction to prevent anything else.
Could you please be more specific? Because I've lived here for a long time and I'd call this statement utter BS.
Press freedom is important because it can keep in check the other branches of power. But it shouldn't be so free as to be able to publish known lies.
A determined litigant can bury you in paperwork, costs, and other hindrances to the point that your speech is essentially surpressed. The OP case is a good example.
Showing up to contest the requested inunction likely cost a lot more than the story is worth. J+J knew they were going to lose this, but they wanted to remind the publisher that they need a lawyer on speed dial. As much as journalists and editors claim they aren't cowed by this kind of behavior, you can bet that they will tread carefully around j+j in the future
I wasn't trying to make a full and ideal rule set, just pointing out that the one you said is extremely narrow and even really bad free speech rules could pass it. Like one that prevents me from talking about someone in a park playing with a kite.
The other category is libel/slander which is properly protected in the UK where a real burden of proof is put on the person making the claim, meanwhile in the USA, "news" shows lie with impunity, and almost always for the benefit of the oligarchy.
Its a better system than the USA's and by far. Right-wing types, who also dominate this forum, dislike it because it limits the lies and racism and islomaphobia they so deeply identify with, and is reinforced to them by the dishonest right-wing media they consume which has almost no limits on dishonest or hateful speech in the USA. So its an ugly cycle of extremists radicalizing new extremists for political gain (read: faithful GOP voters) by the billionaire owners of these media outlets who gain from these narratives both politically and economically.
It is absolutely forbidden to report on family court proceedings; there is no public interest defence.
This makes the UK court system a popular venue for rich people to try and suppress negative press.
I'm genuinely asking because looking on from the outside it is clear to me that nowhere in Europe is there anything even approaching freedom of expression and conscience.
https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort...
Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections?
The US 3/4
Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population?
Canada 3/4 - because Indigenous women went missing?
Are there free and independent media?
US 3/4 Canada 4/4 Switzerland 4/4
- Shouldn't these be reversed?
Seems like randomly rating to get some predetermined result. What do many of these things have to do with press freedoms?