Opinion | Have Trump s Lies Wrecked Free Speech? – The New York Times
Trump has brought into sharp relief the vulnerability of democracy in the midst of a communication upheaval more pervasive in its impact, both destructive and beneficial, than the invention of radio and television in the 20th Century.
In making, embracing and disseminating innumerable false statements, Trump has provoked a debate among legal scholars over whether the once-sacrosanct constitutional protection of free speech has itself become a threat to democracy by enabling the widespread and instantaneous transmission of lies in the service of political gain.
Advertisement
In the academic legal community, there are two competing schools of thought concerning how to go about restraining the proliferation of flagrant misstatements of fact in political speech.
via www.nytimes.com
If Mr. Edsall’s survey of law professors is representative, very few professors of constitutional law actually support freedom of speech. I assume this would be different if it were a Democrat president and his supporters whose speech was being impinged upon.