Are Words Harmful? | Jonathan Sumption

In this interview highlight, Lord Sumption targets 'hate speech' legislation. He argues that, although speech can be hurtful (and certainly discourteous), the notion of 'offense' is "far too subjective a concept" for the law to adjudicate.
Lord Jonathan Sumption is a celebrated historian, barrister, and emeritus judge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. After teaching and researching in medieval history at Oxford University, he pursued an astonishingly successful legal career which resulted in his appointment to the Supreme Court. While practising as a lawyer, Sumption wrote celebrated works of medieval history, most notably four volumes of a planned five-volume history of the Hundred Years’ War.
Sumption has weighed into public debate over many years, most recently regarding COVID policies in the UK and the demonisation of Western history, particularly since the BLM protests and riots in 2020. His most recent books are Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics and Law in a Time of Crisis.
See John's full interview with Lord Sumption here: • Law in a Time of Crisi...
#hatespeech #law #freespeech
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Purchase Lord Sumption's Law in a Time of Crisis here: www.allenandun...

[@zumamaya2396]

My God we need more sensible people like Jonathan Sumption in society.

[@TheOrphicLyre]

Society has many of these people, however they are not well represented in the media.

[@Rainy_Day12234]

Those in power could abuse their authority to silence opponents if ‘correct language’ is legally enforced.

[@marcelmurgatroyd5272]

Justin Trudeau, Canada's pocket tyrant has already taken this step towards a Marxist dystopia and the all controlling state.

[@Wolf-zp5iw]

The Islamists outside my local Cineworld could do with hearing this, they seem to be under the delusion that they have a right to 'not be offended'.

[@radicalrodriguez5912]

so do many others. either all of us accept that offence is taken or all groups can rightly ask for views which offend them to be effectively outlawed.

[@scuffmacgillicutty7509]

We have a most despicable regime in Canada at the moment . They are sowing seeds of discontent at each and every opportunity, while simultaneously destroying the ability to offer an opposing opinion at each and every opportunity. It is painful exercise to watch.

[@Beefster09]

and with their ratcheting gun control, it won't be long before conservative canadians, unable to defend themselves, are rounded up and exterminated.

[@lalaholland5929]

Too many hate crime laws. More being enacted all the time.

[@zeldaharris6876]

Vote them out.

[@bradstokes7061]

Brilliant segment thank you

[@rogeralsop3479]

Excellent men.

[@dongaetano3687]

Great clip. Good guy (bloc?), gentleman best description of Lord Sumption. A good roll model for us all, measured, thoughtful, logical in his explanations, which are delivered in a language accessible to mostly all of us. Thanks John, love the Aussies.

[@rogerwoodhouse7945]

Utube iself should be taking note of this conversation and stop censoring contributors.

[@rondunn5667]

Sticks n' stones may break your bones but words can never harm you! Sensible in the past, sensible now.

[@douglashouston81]

Two of the few adults left in the room

[@niguel4438]

What ever happened to ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but names will ever hurt me’?

[@tonybarker1335]

To was always. But names will hurt forever.

[@Mark-hc8ek]

I read the proclamation from the president of the Virginia Board of Education reasoning her implementation of the policy that will no longer retain POCs in a grade for any reason.... she must have used the word "violence" 50 times to describe opposition to the policy.

[@TheAtheist22]

Mr Anderson, love your channel. Not always agree with your views (never when it comes to religious views) but the work you're doing supplies Oxygen to our civilisation. Thank you Sir.

[@imnotanalien7839]

Lord Sumpton gave a good common sense argument for free speech and hate speech. In the US ,many years ago, this notion of hate speech was also a topic in elementary school ….usually in first grade. It went something like this: Sticks and stones can hurt my bones….but words can never harm me. That was it… short and sweet …. and wise. People have to put the big boy pants on and mature into those wise words from my first grade teacher. There are 6B people on planet earth… they all use different words…..

[@daniellesomerfield8799]

Reasonable people don't falsely accuse you behind your back and reject confrontation and then continue with the lie as if it were the truth.

[@Samsgarden]

It's incredible the hours of time devoted to something as banal as the harmfulness of words, in response to glib, thoughtless declarations of social justice warriors, who are likely to come up with something just as banal tomorrow, requiring hours, days and weeks to refute.

[@tompommerel2136]

This is the kind of intellectual clarity that is needed in this AGE of BEING OFFENDED

[@metaspacecrownedbytime4579]

I have received speech or words i found harmful at the time. I am now a better person because of them.

[@themccarthyplan2020]

Open debate for the sake of all people's of the world ❤️🙏

[@dr.mobarakali255]

Indeed! Sometimes more than blows...

[@carolmaney2653]

Are Words Harmful? in my experience, it depends how seriously you take yourself. I find those who are particularly thin skinned are very good at giving it out BUT....!!! And.I feel blessed that I am able to laugh at myself first. Thank you and God Bless you both.

[@SubtleForces]

Anything can be interpreted as "breach of the peace" among "reasonable" people if the people asked are all woke, so it can be said that his statement do not make any logical sense since it only replaces one expression (Harmful) by another (breach of the peace) without offering a clear and objectively measurable criteria: in other words, it is itself very unreasonable.

[@benhalstead5176]

Likely to cause a breach of the peace - conduct likely to cause imminent violence, rioting, serious property damage, etc. Reasonable People - a legal term for a hypothetical ordinary person who reacts as we would expect a person of common sense and basic logic to react. These _are_ objective standards in English jurisprudence. The woke mob could not be considered 'reasonable', since logic escapes them almost entirely. And whether words are likely to cause a breach of the peace is much more socially useful to legislate, and more easily proven, than the injured feelings of those proclaiming a grievance.

[@SubtleForces]

​@@benhalstead5176 Thanks, but from a sciences perspective, while your explanations are really great in legal terms or rhetorical terms (Which I don't mean in a derogatory way as I believe there were some really great and inspiring speakers), I am still not sure how they can be made objective and therefore independent of the subjectivity of any observer, woke, average or neither. While British law may use the word "objective", I am not inclined to believe any word or anyone unless I can be convinced that a machine (program) would wholeheartedly agree and interpreted it consistently in the same way (as surrogates for any observer which is not easily fooled by emotions or rhetoric). Can you write a program which would measure be able to measure any physical process (sounds, vision or anything even outside the realm of human senses) and apply a complete set of rules to define: harmful or breach of peace or imminent violence, rioting, serious property damage or whatever term you like? I tend to agree with Goethe: names are smoke and sound. Moreoften than not, they are just a distraction from logic and observable facts. This is how this guest appears to use them. In my eyes it makes him an intellectually dishonest person unless he can come up with a clear program based on measurable physical properties (maybe he could, but I doubt it, since if he could, he would not try to distract with synonyms or wordplay but offer a definition which is entirely independent of any observers inclinations)

[@benhalstead5176]

@@SubtleForces Fair enough, but your definition of 'objective' is worryingly absolutist when applied to anything outside matters of observable fact, clearly not the one the guest is using, and frankly not one we use in any legal, or even social, sense - such as the topic at hand. The man was a judge. It should be unsurprising that he uses legal terms of art when discussing a legal issue with a former lawmaker. "Can you write a program which would measure be able to measure any physical process (sounds, vision or anything even outside the realm of human senses) and apply a complete set of rules to define:" Objective? I doubt it, in fact I think you'd wind-up creating some infinitely recursive nightmare if you tried to create a machine to give an objective decision of whether it itself was objective in its definition, which somewhat makes your definition self-defeating. Even if such a program were possible, it would be written by humans, and thus subject to their subjective opinion of what is objective - this is not so very different from the present legal case anyway, with judges constrained by precedent. An objective test, in the legal sense, is one which removes, insofar as possible, those specific elements of a given individual in favour of a hypothetical reasonable person. How this reasonable person acts is ultimately still decided by judges collectively, being so decided over a number of legal precedents which describe what knowledge the reasonable person could know, how they might think etc. It is also necessarily still up to a judge to interpret how that precedent applies in the individual case, a subjective decision, but by having a consistent definition, prior examples from case-law, and an appeals process that allows multiple judges to "check each others' work" as it were, the system generally returns somewhat consistent results absent many of the biases that a purely subjective system would produce, yet capable of taking into account elements that are not enumerated in the law, such as completely novel situations. The 'program' we have is a 'code of laws', which are not capable of purely deterministic machine implementation, since they by design include wide scope for individual judgment in each case. Our legal system (machine) incorporates a human judge to make reasonable, subjective, decisions accounting for individual facts *as a FEATURE.* It is imperfect, as are most things, but it's as close to objective as we really should desire to get.

[@ketherwhale6126]

Words Do hurt and can cause abusive harm to children. And especially if those words are wielded by adults. That is where the line should be drawn. Otherwise, it’s simply negative banter and disrespect.

[@Johnconno]

I suppose it depends on the words, their intention and the listener?

[@blokeVB]

John are you coming back to politics??

[@niguel4438]

Surely not if he has any sense

[@chrispaul4599]

Rules Based Order, not Law and not Common Law since The City and The "Dutch" Banker backed Puritan Cromwell, Calvin was Cohen, chopped off Charles I' s head and Symbolically and in practise beheaded The Family in favour of a Money Controlled State. The Bank of England followed in 1694, with William Dry Balls, also backed by Amsterdam Bankers, as well as my Clan MacKay Regiment (recently returned from the Levant fighting for Venice, double Shakespeare Themes, MacBeth and Venice, Royal Scots First Regiment of Foot) and Traitor Churchill. Succeeded by the Black Guelfs, who follow the Lord Mayor into The City, dressed for their re as Military Enforcers for the British East India Company, Mother of All Multinational Corporations, now dignified in (Maritime Commercial?) "Law" as Persons.

[@johnhart4524]

Are words harmful, words start wars.

[@OpEditorial]

Lord Jonathan Somethin 😅