On Sun, Jun 08, 1997 at 10:31:41AM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
Drug regulation muddies the waters quite a bit -- the issue is commercial speech in general. And that issue is a more basic one -- some entity (the government, in this case) is designated as the "enforcer of contracts". Contracts are special documents that by their very nature involve "enforcement". What you say in a contract binds you. What you say outside of a contract does not. What you say in a contract is, therefore, and by definition, not "free".
<sigh> Ofcource what I say in a contract is "free". I can say anything I want in a contract solong as the parties involved agree.
What is controled is my actions not my speech. If I enter into a "contract" to provide borshch on the promise that it will cure your cancer *knowing* that it will not then I am guilty of fraud. This fraud is caused by my not honoring the contract. The government does not have a right to restrict my speech in a contract only as an arbitrator of contracts do they have a right to restrict my actions (ie: that I live up to the conditions of the contract).
By this reasoning the mutual fund companies don't have restricted speech either -- they are perfectly free to put whatever they want in their prospecti -- the government will just come along and restrict their actions, later. Therefore, their freedom of speech is in no way being impinged. The fact is, a contract, by definition, implies that there are remedies, and an authority to enforce those remedies. Furthermore, the rules that the authority uses need to be clear and explicit, and people entering into contracts under that authority better follow those rules. In particular, they would be well advised to use speech in the contract that the authority understands. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html