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Comment by jryle70 | Hacker News Reader

That isn't true. The court only upholds the laws. Who make the laws?

The question was how false marketing laws would be enforced if there’s no ministry of truth. This isn’t about how the law is made but how you then decide what is true or not. And my point is that this is already happening for existing laws.

Courts don't decide truth and we shouldn't ask them too. Its bad enough that we already have laws that are vague enough that its only decided after the fact whether what you did broke them, one should be able to know what crosses the line so they can avoid it. Asking courts to be responsible for determining truth after the fact just makes that worse.

Of course they do, it’s called question of fact. How else would a lawsuit be decided?

Having doubt in a piece of evidence is not saying all other pieces of evidence are true. Truth is effectively impossible to prove as you never can know what you don't know.

So let’s say A publicly says that B cheated on his wife and B sues for slander. A then states in front of the court that it’s true, which is an absolute defense. How do you think the court is going to decide that without deciding on the fact of the cheating?

Courts can't decide that B chested, how could they? The court can only rule on what evidence is provided, what laws are on the books and how to interpret them, and whether the evidence makes a strong enough case.

It seems you and I have a fundamentally different definition of truth.

So if the court decides, based on the evidence provided by both parties, that B did in fact cheat and A isn’t convicted, that’s not a finding of fact for you? Does that not explain how a court could handle the proposed advertisement laws as well? It’s pretty much the same procedure as is already used for existing laws like my example.

Another question so I get what you’re saying: If I build a radio that emits outside allowed frequency ranges and the FCC bans me from selling it, who is determining the truth wether the radio does in fact emit outside the allowed range?

You're swapping in the words fact and truth which are different. If a court years a case and makes a ruling following proper procedure, that is legal fact. That doesn't make it true.

If court decisions were always determinations of truth then wrongful convictions would be impossible.

Edit as I meant to answer your last question. The FCC almost certainly defines how they measure radio frequencies and is defining what measured frequencies are allowed and disallowed for transmission. I will say this question seems a bit like a straw man though, the realm of fact is much much larger. If a government must determine truth it often would not be based on things that can be isolated and tested.

So how does any of this matter for the proposed law on false advertisement? The court will still find the manufacturer to have distributed false advertisement, and will convict them. You might not call it truth but I don't see how that wouldn't work, especially since slander and similar laws already exist.

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