SaturTabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, December 21, 2024
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5 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Nuisance lawsuits can be quite damaging and expensive for individuals. I hope Selzer can get some outside funding (go fund me and such) sufficient enough to countersue for libel, and be very aggressive about it. Let’s see the felon claim he’s too busy working for Xlon, and can’t afford the distraction of a legal proceeding he started.
We need broader and more effective laws with real punishments against SLAPP suits which is clearly what these are. We need them but probably wont get them. They are a primary tool used by the wealthy and powerful against people they dont like or wish to harm, especially journalists. The wealth no longer stick to running things behind the scenes so they arent going to allow a tool that only they can use to be taken away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Steve
The important part, though, is 3-0 for Trump on the SCOTUS. By the end of June, what the federal government can do may be quite different than it is today.
Oligarch with designs on authority buys Twitter.
What could go wrong?
The ABC lawsuit was without merit in my opinion, but at least I can see some argument for it on technical legalistic grounds. The Ann Selzer lawsuit is at a different level altogether–it would threaten the entire polling industry if it were ruled in Trump’s favor, because it says essentially you can be held liable for releasing a poll that turns out to show the wrong candidate winning. Biden could have sued Trafalgar in 2020 on those grounds. No pollster would want to release an election poll for fear of being sued later if it turned out to be wrong.