Already mentioned that in my previous reply. Actually it has been a few cases. They have been ruled on the basis that a clear call to tort-based action (given its tort consequences) crosses over to the realm of expression rather than mere speech.
You simply
cannot make pre-emptive laws in the US that curtail free speech (expression is different and can be delineated by tort and other means).
No other constitution in the world says a government CANNOT do something....the wording is always fundamentally additive, not subtractive....the rights end up being negative and positive respectively in their inherent inalienable nature.
For example, in any other country, the govt simply needs to have enough votes to pass legislation that restricts free speech pre-emptively (I have brought this up before with
@Joe Shearer regarding the story of "Minority Report")....it is a consensus thing in the end....it has already happened and is continuing to happen (example being numerous cases of what "harmful" speech should be illegal and prevented from ever happening...and this is
not tort expression stuff like yelling fire in a crowded theater etc.).
The US is the only one that has stipulated,
no matter what the consensus is in the govt of the day....people have fundamental rights that can never be taken away from them...period. Because those people had those rights
before the govt came into existence...they were invested by an all together different (and arguably higher) authority.
You would need to read deeply into the works of Locke, Burke (both somewhat ironically not from the US themselves but from the colonial power that was rebelled against) and all the federalist papers (esp the debates on federalism vs non-federalism) to get why the US is a special case regarding this.
The very way the
Magna Carta was merely "devolved" from imperial "god given" might and right (at essentially the imperial forces fancying/claiming
them being the representation of the godhead morality on "thy kingdom come"), left a very sticky foul taste in a lot (in fact most) of the American founding fathers mouths...because they saw (firsthand) how it had built up in their case to excessive, quite unrestricted and unbounded tyranny.
Thus even before they could finally liberate themselves from its clutches....they went right to the root of the issue and how to expunge that from ever happening again as best they could (if you see what is actually required now to remove a US amendment without a complete revolution/rejection/refounding process)....by founding the rights on something far beyond the reach of men. This is why the US constitution in the end, specifies what the govt can
never be able to do. No other constitution before or after it was written in this specific way.
@VCheng @Hamartia Antidote @KAL-EL @RabzonKhan @Desert Fox @jhungary @AgNoStiC MuSliM @Vibrio @LeGenD @gambit @GeraltofRivia @Atlas @bluesky @Skies @Signalian @The Sandman
@Indus Pakistan asked me once what was the difference between the two large cousin-countries of North America "ideologically" (given how similar they seem to be on the surface on many things)....well here it is in greater detail....but still somewhat of a nutshell (this is an extremely long topic to get into).
