[rsync]

No.

Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.

It's a terrible story being told here and I am saddened by her loss but this judge and you, and I, and everyone else are peers.

Judges may be interesting and special for brief periods of time while they adjudicate on their bench but out in the world they are normal people just like everyone else. If privacy laws are inadequate for them then they are inadequate for all of us.

I can't imagine a situation where I would know, much less disseminate, the address of a judge but that is without any question speech protected by the first amendment.

[dalbasal]

I think it's worth noting that attacks on judges is probably more detrimental to society than most murders. It's similar for elected office, which is one reason we have these special protections.

That said, I agree with you. As Judge Salas says herself in this article, this is about the foundations of democracy. Peerage is certainly that too.

Also, since prosecutors and police are covered by this law, we need to think of this as mostly relating to law enforcement. They are the vast majority of this population.

Meanwhile, privacy is obviously an area that needs 21st century attention. We should at least get a reason why we don't get these protections too. Extending their rights to privacy separately from everyone else doesn't sit right with me.

[bb88]

> Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.

The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get.

Does a federal judge deserve extra protection under the law than an average citizen? Probably. It's just a question of how much -- precisely for the reasons given in the article.

Now whether or not we should all have that right may be a question worth asking, but it seems pretty certain that federal judges are worthy of this kind of protection.

[rsync]

"The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get."

I'm not talking about that - and I have no problem if judges (or anyone else) have extra bodyguards or special limousines.

I can say anything I like about the president. The same is true for these judges. The equal protection I am speaking of is not what kind of armor their car has, but what I am, and am not, allowed to say to or about them.

[GavinMcG]

Go ahead and say anything you like about them. Your political opinions are entitled to the highest order of protection under the 1st Amendment.

There's little reason to say that "X judge lives at Y address" is equivalently deserving of protection. We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense.

[rsync]

"We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense."

Investigative journalism revealing corruption.

It might not be the address per se but it will be similarly identifying and revealing information about a persons day to day life. This information would be communicated both while reporting the story, between reporters and other sources, etc., as well as exposed in the journalistic product itself.

Or, given five seconds of thought, that was the first, obvious thing that came to mind.

[GavinMcG]

But there you go: you yourself just distinguished it, acknowledging that the address itself isn't what needs to be published in order to preserve society's interest in free publication about corruption.

[tekknik]

Does this mean their life is more valuable than yours?

[Diggsey]

No, it means it's more important that they not be coerced.

[tekknik]

So then what is the solution? If their life is not more important than everybody else’s then why do they get extra protection? Why can’t we extend the same protection to all? Why do we have special cases? Why can’t an individual, and a judge, be entitled to the same protection?

[GavinMcG]

Because your premise is all wrong.

Their life is more important to protect from particular threats than everyone else's, because they're in a position where we expect them to make rulings based on their expertise and judgment rather than their fear or concern for popularity, and because they are more frequently in a position to garner someone's resentment or hatred than most of us are.

Just because we're all equal in the eyes of God doesn't mean our society should pretend the world isn't complex.

[tekknik]

So same question to you, is their life more valuable than yours?

[GavinMcG]

How much First Amendment history and jurisprudence do you know? There's a naive view that speech is speech, and it's all protected, but that is an absolutely radical view compared to what "free speech" has meant for most of the post-Enlightenment period.

[dalbasal]

What does this have to do with the article or the comment?

Are you saying that a judge's address is not free speech" in this post-Enlightenment (unenlightened?) period.

[GavinMcG]

The comment said that it is without any question speech protected by the 1st Amendment. My comment is obviously following up on that.

I do not think it is clear that publishing a judge's address is the kind of speech that is necessarily protected by the 1st Amendment, and certainly not the kind that would have been considered inherently worthy of protection around when the 1st Amendment was written. And I suspect the claim that it is "without question" is a naive one.

[jdkee]

I will answer. Publishing the address of an individual is absolutely protected by the First Amendment unless it can be reasonably deemed a true threat, or an incitement to violence, under the appropriate judicial tests.

[dalbasal]

Fair enough. Apologies for the confrontational tone.