[I'm working on a draft article called When Are Lies Constitutionally Protected?, and I thought I'd serialize it here, since I still have plenty of time to improve it; I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! (You can also read the whole article here; all the posts about it will go into this thread.)]
If I'm right that the question here is one of comparative effectiveness of different truth-finding institutions, then this might bear on how any particular kind of false statement should be classified. Here, let's consider (though just briefly) lies in election campaigns; whole articles, of course, can and have been written in much more detail about this question.
Lies in election campaigns are in some respects especially dangerous, because they often happen shortly before the election, when there is little time to respond.[1] At the same time,
