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You know, I just realized you never quite fully explained why you believe that Arthur's and Rummel's sentences were cruel and unusual punishment. This isn't just that "Arthur was innocent", this is saying that they received seriously excessive punishment ("patently unnecessary"), or punishment doled out in an inconsistent manner ("inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion"). Keep in mind, Furman was primarily about the death penalty. That's the level of seriousness we're talking here. In contrast, I disagree with Shiloh Hendrix's conviction, but I can't seriously argue that she received cruel and unusual punishment. Would you say that she received cruel and unusual punishment, or are you only saying that just because you would also disagree with her conviction?
How are the guidelines irrelevant?
Still proves too much. Every FBI agent and/or prosecutor is able to say "I put this murderer/rapist/sick fuck in jail, pls promote me."
What? That's absurd. A defense attorney can't balance out a conflict of interest. If there were some case where a prosecutor was paid if and only if the defendant went to jail (and didn't get paid if they didn't), then no defense attorney in the world could balance that just off their interest alone. The solution to conflict of interest is recusal, not to put in an equally balancing interest in the opposite direction.
Is that really how it works? It would be absurd if the law was that you can't interview people about events that happened before the alleged crime. That would preclude anything about planning, motivation, opportunity, etc.
What are these standards, exactly?
Ok. Still an arbitrary exception, they don't apply this logic to, for example, porn of adult rape victims.
I find your logic confusing to apply consistently. You said that
So... is the general principle here that only art is speech? That seems to conform with
which doesn't say filming something fictional isn't speech. Presumably, this is so movies can also be counted as art, and thus, speech. But most porn filmed isn't of something "real", they are scripted acts just like a movie would, and so should be classified as fiction.
Actually, I just realized, you straight up said filming something real isn't speech. So if I filmed an instance of, say, police brutality, it's not speech because it was something real. So... does that mean I don't get free speech protections when I upload it to social media because it's not speech, or what? Like it's now kosher for the platform to censor the video because it was a film of something real? I don't get it. Surely your intention was not to exclude cell phone recordings of police brutality from free speech protections.
To be clear, I am not saying that every act is speech. That is obviously absurd. I am saying that photos, videos, text, and the usual multimedia shared online all count as speech. Punching someone in the face is not free speech, but filming someone else doing it and uploading it to the Internet is. Whether it's speech that's protected or even made illegal to share depends on the contents, and the box of illegal content is arbitrarily drawn, but an arbitrary exception to speech in this way hasn't swallowed the rest of all speech with it.
No. I was just saying that if his case had problems, what are the implications for me? There seem to be none.
Well, principles affect me too. If there really was a principle that had a loophole that could be used to convict anyone in the country for mere speech, it could also be used to convict me for saying nigger. However, I doubt that it could be used that way, as I have almost exhaustively explained to you.
Meanwhile, the problems I have brought up do violate principles, and in an arguably bigger way than whatever Arthur's case may have. Shiloh's conviction directly violates the principle of free speech. Payment processors debanking people directly violates the principle of due process. DMCA subpoena doxing tools violate free speech by making anonymous speech impossible. I would take discussion of any one of these problems much more seriously than whatever happened in Arthur's case.
So again, I am saying, if his case had problems (not that I am agreeing with you that it did), are the implications with regards to principle really as dire as you think? More importantly, are they bigger or smaller than the other cases I have brought up?
Ok, let's clarify what we mean by "quantity makes right". I was under the impression that by "right", you meant in the sense that it is a morally justifiable decision and a good outcome. But you seem to be using it in the sense of how the legal system decides outcomes. The case of Shiloh Hendrix is once again illustrative for this distinction. I don't think that quantity makes right, because I disagree with the 12 jurors on her guilt. But it's also true that quantity makes right in the sense that 12 people decided on her guilt, and this quantity resulted in the outcome.
So, once again, I am not saying that just because enough people decided a certain outcome, that makes the outcome good or morally justified. But in practice... how else are outcomes to be decided but by people? There's no higher power, no magical black box of legal stuff that can decide for us. It has to be done by people at the end of the day. Theoretically, with enough people voting the right way, the First Amendment could be repealed. Does that make it a good and morally justified outcome? Obviously not. So you can say "quantity makes right" because that's how the outcome happened, but you can also say "quantity does not make right" because obviously the outcome is bad. See where the confusion stems from?
Also, it's not necessarily a sign of bad principles to be wrongfully jailed under your own principles. It's entirely banal and (unfortunately) happens all the time. We can see this illustrated more clearly with self-defense cases. Presumably, everyone holds the principle that murder is wrong. Yet it's possible for innocent people acting entirely in self-defense to be charged with murder and wrongfully jailed, under principles that the defendant presumably also holds ("murder is wrong"). Does that mean the conviction is good and morally justified because of the quantity? Obviously not! Rather, the jury, judge, prosecutor, and police are all mistaken about the reasonable person standard, and incorrect on what a reasonable person would have done in their circumstances. This also doesn't mean that we should abandon the murder-is-wrong principle either, or any of the principles we have for what constitutes lawful self-defense.
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