Harassment of public officials rears its ugly head

“Never argue with an idiot…”

 

I’m really confused here. We have a non lawyer arguing with a lawyer about the law?

 

They need to get a room.

 

I’m pretty sure if I argued with my lawyer about interpretations of the law he’d smack me in the back of the head and then charge me 6 minutes for being an idiot.

 

No need to feed the egos. Lawyers, despite what they may think or say are not always the smartest people in the room.

 

But they are, generally, more knowledgable about the law than non-lawyers.

 

Really??? You're justifying and excusing sexual harassment?

 

When you can no longer distinguish satire from real life.

 

That's a student note. When applied to speech, stalking laws are not content neutral. Take the case you posted, Maier. They arrested Maier for sending threatening notes to jurors. How did they determine that those notes violated the stalking law? By examining their content and determining that the message was threatening! (Of course, because it was a true threat, the First Amendment did not protect that speech.)

"'Government regulation of speech is content based if a law applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.' . . . This commonsense meaning of the phrase 'content based' requires a court to consider whether a regulation of speech 'on its face' draws distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys. . . . Our precedents have also recognized a separate and additional category of laws that, though facially content neutral, will be considered content-based regulations of speech: laws that cannot be '"justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech,"' or that were adopted by the government 'because of disagreement with the message [the speech] conveys,' Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989)." Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155, 163-64 (2015).

 

Most of the lawyers I've met, even the bad ones, know more about the law than non-lawyers, as shocking as that sounds...

 

She's saying some interesting things about the capital police. I think the dude broke her.

 

When do you graduate law school? I think it's only fair to let the nonlawyers know when they are no longer allowed to argue with you.

 

Are you saying all you need is a teary hug from Robin Williams to stop being a right-wing shithead? Its not your fault.

 

All I'll say is that if you need any advice or a sounding board while in law school, feel free to PM me any time. I strongly disagree with your politics, but you're still a Gator.

 

1. Yes.
2. Stalking laws are typically enforced in a way that doesn't implicate protected speech. When they do implicate protected speech, the enforcement is generally not content neutral.
3. Yes.