Publication Date
1-2025
Abstract
In United States v. Alvarez, the US Supreme Court ruled that an official of a water district who introduced himself to his constituents by falsely stating in a public meeting that he had earned the Congressional Medal of Honor had a First Amendment right to make that demonstrably untrue claim. Audience members misled by the statement might well be considered to have a First Amendment interest in not being directly and knowingly lied to in that way. Other members of the community might be thought to have a First Amendment interest in public officials such as Xavier Alvarez telling the truth about their credentials and experiences. Nevertheless, as both the plurality and the concurring justices who together formed the majority in Alvarez viewed the case, it was the liar’s interest in saying what he wished that carried the day. Why is that? Crucial to answering this question is whether ‘the freedom of speech’ that the First Amendment tolerates ‘no law abridging’ is understood to be primarily speaker-centered, audience-centered, or society-centered.
Disciplines
First Amendment | Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Vincent A. Blasi,
For Whose Benefit Is the Freedom of Speech?,
Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy: Legal Approaches in Comparative Context, Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., András Koltay, Charlotte Garden (Eds.), Cambridge University Press
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4618
Comments
This material has been published in "Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy: Legal Approaches in Comparative Context", edited by Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., András Koltay, and Charlotte Garden. This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC 4.0.