At 10:13 AM 4/17/02 EDT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
><< The problem with the law was that it covered everything, and anything.
>Under the law shakespeare and the bible and the koran and films etc. ad
>nauseum could cause a person to be prosecuted. >>
>
>Showing his contempt for protecting rights, Rehnquist's dissent from the
>ruling said there was no need to invalidate the law on the grounds that it
>might be used to censor Shakespeare since there was no evidence that anyone
>had yet used it to censor Shakespeare.
>
>In other words, trust the prosecutors. But if we could trust prosecutors, we
>wouldn't need enumerated rights in the first place.
It should be noted that this is actually a long-established legal principle
in the United States (not recalling off-hand if you are an American) that
you must have "standing" to sue. In other words, in order to file suit
against somebody in a Court you have to show that you have been
demonstrably harmed (otherwise, you are just wasting *everybody*'s time,
and a lot of taxpayer money.) Thus, Rehnquist is actually on very sound
legal grounds here - that if you can't demonstrate that there was even a
reasonable likelihood that the government was planning on prosecuting for
your current (or planned) speech, then you don't have a basis to sue. The
United States does not permit "theoretical" lawsuits.
Thus, it is not a matter of "trusting the prosecutors", but simply a matter
that there is no reasonable likelihood that such speech is threatened. As
such, the majority *should* have limited their decision to the question as
to whether or not computer-simulated children engaged in sexual acts is
"free speech."
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"We fight against poverty because faith requires it and
conscience demands it." - George W. Bush 3/22/02
