E-mail:
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Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
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Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
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Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
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Gerard Magliocca gmaglioc at iupui.edu
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John Mikhail mikhail at law.georgetown.edu
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Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
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Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
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Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
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Josh Blackman and Seth Tillman argue at the Volokh Conspiracy blog that, even if Trump culpably incited the cop-killing riot in the Capitol
building, he cannot be impeached for it, because his speech is protected by the
First Amendment. They cite the extremely
protective standard of Brandenburg v. Ohio, which limits criminal punishment
for incitement.
But they neglect to mention the more pertinent area of
free speech law, which concerns the disciplining of public employees because of
their speech.Under that doctrine, there
is no protection for speech made in the course of an employee’s duties, and
even speech off the job, about matters of public concern, can be punished if
the orderly operation of government outweighs it.
The pertinent Supreme Court decisions are Garcetti v. Ceballos, Connick v. Meyers, and Pickering v. Board of Education, all
routinely covered in introductory First Amendment cases.
There is some doubt whether Trump’s reckless speech to
the angry crowd was within the scope of his duties.If it was not, it receives a higher level of
protection.The question then would be,
in a case where he was discharged from his employment (which is of course what
impeachment amounts to), whether the speech impaired the government’s interest
in administrative efficiency, to a degree that outweighs the speaker’s free
speech rights.
Whether Trump’s incitement of the crowd, and the
consequent death, destruction, and interruption of the business of Congress impaired
the government’s interest in administrative efficiency, is a question I leave
as an exercise for the reader.