"Your Excellency de Cerdanya, I would agree with you under most circumstances, but while I deeply hope I am wrong I fear I may only be reading the sentencing provisions as narrowly as a judge under Geas."

Wait a moment for that to sink in. "Your Excellency de Palnes, I think damages inflicted "or a reasonable and justified fear of damages" would suffice to manage that objection?"

Sure. He isn't going to pick a fight with an Archduke over that.

The Geased judge is the entire reason the proposal is full of language about how the magistrate should use their discretion, which would otherwise be obvious, but if the Archduke really wants to pick this fight he's willing to concede the point, more or less.

"Your Highness, if you believe it necessary to explicitly direct the judge as to what ought to be considered a mitigating circumstance, the Committee is happy to amend our proposal."

He edits the last sentence to read In cases where a claim violating this law is made intentionally to a wide audience, or published in print to wide distribution, the magistrate should by default apply the maximum sentence, unless the claim is revoked immediately or other mitigating circumstances apply, in which case the magistrate is directed to apply his discretion. Mitigating circumstances include but are not limited to the statement being innocuous, and the statement not resulting in either damages or a reasonable fear of damages and reads the revision aloud. As far as he can tell the rules of procedure neither permit nor prohibit this; he doesn't expect anyone reasonable to object. 

"Your Excellency, I fear you misunderstand my proposal. This revised nature would still make convicts out of men with bad taste in beer, after all the expense of a trial that would lead them then saddled with no fines, and while no normal man would do this our judges have been commanded to attempt to impersonate axiomites. If I was to create a wording myself it would be that the first two clauses be amended to:"

1) It is a crime to publicly make, aloud or in writing, a claim about another person that causes that person damages or a reasonable and justified fear of damages, or to clearly or intentionally imply such a claim, provided that the claim is scandalous, malicious, or not to the best of the speaker's knowledge known to be true.

2) It is a crime to privately make a scandalous or malicious claim about another person that causes that person damages or a reasonable and justified fear of damages, or to clearly or intentionally imply such a claim, unless the statement is to the best of the speaker's knowledge known to be true.

"Would this serve?"

He was really not expecting the Archduke to pick a fight over the revised wording, but if he really wants to pick a fight on the floor about it he is in fact an Archduke, and Jonatan really does not want to spend another day waiting for functional slander laws.

"Your Highness, my understanding is that the Queen's prosecutors are still permitted discretion over which charges they choose to bring to trial, and may choose not to bring spurious cases. With that being said, your proposed rewording is mostly acceptable. I would however revise 'reasonable and justified fear' merely to 'reasonable fear,' if that is acceptable; I worry that with the judges Geased as they are they might find themselves forced to rule that a statement was not slanderous merely because, unbeknownst to the speaker, their audience was not paying attention, and so any fear of damages was unjustified. 'Reasonable fear,' I believe, should be sufficient to eliminate spurious claims of potential damages that any sensible man would understand to be unlikely.

I am also worried that providing a generalized exception for claims that the speaker believes to be true would be overly broad, in Westcrown as it currently stands — as written it is unclear that your proposal would prohibit Select Wain's denouncements, given the judge's ruling in her trial that this convention ought to be considered a private audience. Would it be acceptable to revise that clause to 'the best of the speaker's well-founded knowledge,' so as to avoid punishing men who have made genuine mistakes through no fault of their own, while prohibiting men from repeating slanderous rumors?" (This is the sort of phrase that's kind of meaningless, which is to say that it's hopefully sufficient to allow the magistrates to consistently rule in a sensible way.)

He's copied out the proposal on a new sheet of paper; it now reads:

1) It is a crime to publicly make, aloud or in writing, a claim about another person that causes that person damages or a reasonable fear of damages, or to clearly or intentionally imply such a claim, provided that the claim is scandalous, malicious, or not to the best of the speaker's well-founded knowledge known to be true.

2) It is a crime to privately make a scandalous or malicious claim about another person that causes that person damages or a reasonable fear of damages, or to clearly or intentionally imply such a claim, unless the statement is to the best of the speaker's well-founded knowledge known to be true.

"Indeed. Thank you, Your Excellency, that satisfies me and I believe it will be to the great good of the nation." Back to the seat!

An anonymous delegate is up!

“Pride is of Asmodeus.  And thus Evil.  And thus bad.  Humility is the path to goodness and the heavens.”

He starts to leave the podium then realizes he hasn’t actually connected this idea to the discussion.

“I don’t see what this law does that the Queen’s decrees and censorship this morning doesn’t, other than protect Pride.  Pride is Evil.  So it shouldn’t be protected, especially not from truths!”

He isn’t quite sure how to finish now.

“So explain that. And fix the law to say what it’s protecting, besides and NOT including Pride.  Or damages to Pride!  Or… or, I say vote against this law!”

Dang, he’ll leave the speeches to Korva and Enric and Oriol in the future, this is hard when you’re up there in the spot.

Wow, what an idiot.

...

An amateur mistake assuming absolutely all Pride is of Asmodeus.  Iomedae has glory as a domain, so at the very least Pride in glorious victory over Evil is probably outright Good and at the very least non-Evil.

Also the pamphlets have had some absolute insanity so he doesn’t blame the nobles for wanting to be thorough in stopping them.

"Delegate, this law does not protect pride, it protects people. To slander a man as a diabolist, or a woman as a whore, is a wrong to them; it hurts not merely their pride, but their trustworthiness, their work, and in some cases their life itself. Innocent men of all ranks were killed during the riots because of slanders spread about them, and no man should need to live in fear of that happening, regardless of his station."

Oh but it's fine to slander a woman as a diabolist. Or, presumably, a man as a whore.

Cerdanya himself hasn't but he's visibly aligned with those who have, and goes on the Hate List.

He's left the podium and he isn't coming back to answer questions or ask more after how awkward he was up there, but he thought the pamphleteers denouncing names and calling people diabolists were arrested and executed so doesn't see why this law is needed to protect people.

She struts up.

"My man Bru, he's my pander, right? Lots of you have met him, and he does quite a bit of advertising. You can't say it's not scandalous to say I'm a whore. Now, one might say the magistrates can apply their discretion, as in the fourth paragraph, but my experience has been that magistrates generally don't end up on the side of the whores, even if when we're in the right. I think truth should be an absolute defence. The new proposed wording helps- I'm not sure it helps enough."

(Xavier is ignoring the whore and hoping she stops talking and nobody associates her with him.)

Coeliaris appears not to notice Dolça.

"We all have our little embarrassments, mistakes, flaws. It's not who we are, and public embarrassments can make mountains out of molehills. Some people have unfortunate pasts, or unfortunate relations- there's a delegate with the name of Thrune, for instance- or worship, at times, gods who might not be quite proper, or have friends or... similar that they wish not be known. These things are not who we are, but they can be trumped up into, let me say, fireballs, in the wrong situation. I strongly support this proposal as originally written, and I would like to ensure that the revised proposal includes embarrassment as well as damages."

(Jonatan thinks that "no saying anything that ever embarrasses anyone" is an insane proposal but fortunately Delegate Coeliaris is not an archduke.)

Well embarrassment isn’t Asmodean but it is pathetic so it would be pathetic to have a law preventing it.

Xavier is definitely not in favor of this one.

Well, that would be the slander law of all slander laws, so he's opposed.

Shame is a useful corrective to pride. What are any of these people even thinking?

Why? He's never heard Absalom was nearly that broad. She didn't seem wildly irresponsible or unwise such that she'd have great embarrassments. And it doesn't seem like something you'd suggest without a personal stake...

Ah. That's probably it.

This is even worse than the original proposal. She gets in line, in case it’s not shot down before she gets there.

He reaches the podium and takes a deep breath. The elf already brought it up, so there's no longer any safety in silence.

"My lords. Ladies and gentlemen. Honored delegates."

He takes a pamphlet from his pocket and unfolds it, holding it up for his audience to see, though most of them will be too far away to make out any words. "The title of this pamphlet is: The Infernal Genealogy of the late appointed Archduke of the Heartlands, Alfonso Antoninus Thrune. Incited by it, on the evening of Toilday last, men broke into the house where I was dining and murdered me along with many others. For me, of course, this was only a moderate expense upon my insurers. It should serve nonetheless to prove that I am speaking against my own personal interest when I say that it should not be illegal to speak the truth in Cheliax, even publicly, even if it is scandalous."

She is so confused! Why is the Evil Thrune noble just admitting to being a Thrune and speaking out against the "no calling Evil nobles Evil" law??