Jeff Kosseff on Why the First Amendment Protects False Speech
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2023
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The First Amendment protects speech, but what kind? True speech, sure. But what about false or misleading speech? What if it's harmful? After all, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater—or can you?
To answer these questions, Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and Senior Editor at Lawfare spoke with Jeff Kosseff, who is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law in the United States Naval Academy’s Cyber Science Department and a Contributing Editor at Lawfare. Jeff is releasing his latest book this month, titled "Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation," in which he describes, and defends, the First Amendment's robust protections for false and misleading speech.
They spoke about the book, why you sometimes can yell fire in a crowded theater, and how new technology both superchargers misinformation and provides new tools to fight it.
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| 1:12.4 | In the book I look at other countries that all have their justifications for passing fake |
| 1:24.8 | news laws and they don't have anything like the First Amendment or anything even close, |
| 1:29.4 | and they're able to do it and they have all of their rational justifications that misinformation |
| 1:35.7 | is poisoning democracy and all of their reasons, but even in sort of the Western democracies what you |
| 1:44.7 | see is politicians, once they get power, they will use that power for their own ends and they |
| 1:54.0 | will use it to suppress dissent and you see that with regulations on false speech. So I think the |
| 2:00.7 | self-governance theory when you combine it with marketplace and some other reasons, I think |
| 2:05.7 | that paints a fuller picture of why it becomes dangerous to start whittling away at the First |
| 2:11.1 | Amendment. I'm Alan Rosenstein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota |
| 2:16.7 | and Senior Editor at Lawfare and this is the Lawfare Podcast for October 6, 2023. |
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