Funniest amicus brief ever

It’s actually on a serious subject: can a state (Ohio) purport to ban false, exaggerated or “truthy” speech about candidates, or does that impermissibly chill speech protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment? My colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus and Gabriel Latner co-authored it on behalf of political humorist/Cato fellow P.J. O’Rourke in the pending SCOTUS case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. Read it here, alongside Ilya Shapiro’s summary, and here’s David Lat of Above the Law calling it the “Best Amicus Brief Ever.“

Filed under: campaign regulation, First Amendment, humor, Ohio, Supreme Court

By Walter Olson
March 3, 2014
4 Comments

4 Comments

Thanks to footnote 15, we’re about to discover whether or not the Chief Justice has a sense of humor. Or remorse.
- March 03, 2014 7:19 PM
- By great unknown
“…but it certainly isn’t as truthy as calling a mandate a tax.”

Yep, they went there.
- March 03, 2014 7:48 PM
- By John Burgess
[…] Burrus on the serious side of the case that elicited Cato’s humorous amicus brief the other day […]
- March 07, 2014 8:15 AM
- By "Ministries of truth should be left in 1984" – Overlawyered
[…] and Trevor Burrus kinder treatment than he does President William Howard Taft. [Daily Beast, earlier, the brief in Susan B. Anthony List v. Steven Driehaus, more on case from […]
- March 31, 2014 6:15 AM
- By P.J. O'Rourke on that viral Supreme Court brief – Overlawyered