Quote:
Originally Posted by davec.0121
Actually, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution applies to U.S. citizens everywhere, so the government can't stop or prosecute you from saying things in a foreign country. The Constitution also applies to all people within the U.S., regardless of citizenship. However, it doesn't apply or have any relevance to non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S.
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At the risk of turning this thread into a law school classroom . . . the above statement is
not true.
Under the doctrine of
Shelley v. Kraemer the US Courts have no ability to enforce any law - domestic or foreign - that would infringe the free speech rights of any person regardless of whether the speech occurred inside the US or not.
For instance, there are several opinions where both state and federal courts have refused to enforce foreign defamation judgments where the defamatory statements occurred outside the US. A US court cannot issue an order that would bar speech outside the US if that speech would be legal here. Under
Shelley the courts are barred from issuing judgments that would infringe on constitutional rights just as Congress is. The courts are pretty clear that this doctrine extends to extraterritorial disputes as well.
So, if a Frenchman "offends your honor" in France you can sue him all you want in French court. You cannot, however, extend that judgment to the US or to the Frenchman's US-based assets if the speech is subject to First Amendment protection. The fact that the defendant is not a citizen and that the speech happened outside the US does not help you. The US courts cannot render judgments contrary to First Amendment protections no matter who said it or where it was said.
As I noted above, the Supreme Court has made a distinction between amendments that specifically mention "the people" or refer to a "person" as having a different scope of applicability than those that do not. The First Amendment free speech guarantees are not restricted to "the people". The free speech clause is a broader prohibition than the narrower restrictions in the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.
If you know of a case where the courts have enforced a speech restriction on a non-citizen or in a foreign context I'd be more than happy to review it and reconsider my opinion. The only one I know of is a very old case where a person was denied immigration status because he was distributing anarchist literature that called for violent revolution inside the US. That case is now over 100 years old and was restricted to the subject of whether the plaintiff could be denied entry into the US - an area where the Executive has nearly plenary power even in the face of the Bill of Rights. The issue wasn't whether he could distribute the literature - there was never an question about whether he could or could not do that - it was instead an issue of whether he could be excluded from the country for doing so.
Other than this one off-topic case I can not think of a single instance where a foreign national has been subjected to either criminal or civil suit in a US court for "improper" speech or a case that involved speech that happened outside the border. AFAIK if it's allowed inside the US it's allowed everywhere under US law no matter who says it. If you know of a case that says different I'd really like to see it. I'd be happy to change my opinion if the courts have actually ruled differently.
Cheers,
Mazo.
...just kidding WTF.
