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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

> He [judge] also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”

We should have "spirit of the law" courts. This is absurd.

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This is a double edged sword right? Allowing judges to interpret the “spirit of the law” more widely would create a different set of absurdities, I think.

It's one of those things people only want when it benefits their ideas in the moment.

> Allowing judges to interpret the “spirit of the law” more widely would create a different set of absurdities, I think.

Yeah, kinda genuinely terrifying to think about that timeline. That's how you get George Orwell's worst nightmares come true.

this happens all the time anyhow. "originalism" is ironically a pretty new strain of thought

I think it’s time for an amendment that says something like “public officials shall never mislead the public or issue materially false statements”. That would be a huge progress for the US.

Spirit of what law exactly? It is indeed absurd that anyone thinks the Constitution deals at this level at all. It's plain goofy.

The Constitution declares only your right to persue and defend your needs, not to provide them to you.

Sure, many bad wrongs were done by people who are guilty of any number of crimes or failures to perform duties in good faith or failures of integrity. They just aren't Constitutional issues.

I completely disagree. Not everything can be included in the Constitution. We have ordinary laws to address things like this.

Never once tried to argue that it should be included in the Constitution. I suppose one of those "other laws" will cover when the government deliberately gives people lead poisoning? I wonder why they didn't go with that one...

You literally just did.

You said it was absurd for the judge to rule it wasn't in the constitution, and advocated for a "spirit of the law" court. If that court's going to find any differently, don't they need to say it's part of the spirit of the constitution? That counts as including.

And then entities litigate to have those laws overturned on highly abstract theoretical grounds, alleging that they violate the framers' intent in drafting the Constitution, or exceed enumerated powers or whatever.

What ordinary law requires officials to issue truthful statements? We're living in the era of unrestrained executive power.

> What ordinary law requires officials to issue truthful statements?

There are plenty of laws on the books against malfeasance in office. They go back to the freaking Code of Hammurabi. Proscriptions against "high crimes and misdemeanors" covers exactly this type of governance that willfully (or even negligently) brings harm.

Knowingly deceiving to the public in a way that causes them harm should be a no-brainer case for these laws. This judgment absolving the government is frankly an indictment of the judicial system.

While I agree with most of that, this judgement does not absolve the government of anything. As the judgement explicitly states, the plaintiffs do still have legal claims against their local government even though they do not have a Constitutional claim.

> unrestrained executive power.

I don’t think any of the branches have adequate restraints at this point.

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