Gfyuki

In the society I am building it is illegal for a government official to lie (this isn't a reaction to real world politics; I've been building this world for a while), while speaking/acting as representatives of the government/state. In other words, all government employees are constantly under oath while "on the job". This doesn't affect them in their personal lives.

Now the problem I'm having is with wording this law. I don't want to include joking/sarcasm as prosecutable offenses.

Now obviously a politician may claim that a false statement was a joke all along to try and circumvent this law. The decision of whether or not claims like this are reasonable/legitimate will be a case by case matter and left to the discretion of judges. So there's no need to make the wording of the law ridiculously verbose and precise. To quote United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart "I'll know it when I see it".

Yet still I can't quite seem to find even a semi-loose way of wording the intent of this law. For instance:

It will be a crime for civil servants to misrepresent or present false information with the deliberate intention of deceiving fellow government officials or members of the public while acting out their functions as government representatives. Such actions (whether taking the form of verbal, written or other types of communications) will constitute the grounds for treason and be subject to the full penalty of the law. But jokes are fine. Also sarcasm is okay.

I'm not being quite serious, sure, but I think that gets my point across, how do I define a joke in a legal context? What is a joke? Perhaps you're think "deliberate intention of deceiving" excludes jokes, but does it really? Isn't deliberate (temporary) deception part of the structure of many jokes? In many cases the "truth" (that is, the fact that the whole thing was a joke) is only revealed in the punchline, right? Even if the punchline is delivered seconds after the "lie", a "lie" was still told.

So how can I word this law in such a way as its intent is made clear?

There are other exceptions too of course, for example for sensitive classified information and government agents taking part in covert international operations but those are questions for another day.

In Australia, like in many other countries, it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexual preference, or any other attribute not directly related to the decision at hand.

People still do of course, partly because the problem is in proving that a particular person's attributes NOT related to their capacity to do the work is very hard to do, especially when much of what makes them suitable to the work environment is subjective; is this person a good 'fit' for the workplace and the other people in the team?

So, in the first instance, given there is a presumption of innocence in most countries (and I'm assuming yours), there's an argument that Sarcasm and jokes are a part of the language, and that it is understood that a sarcastic remark really means the opposite, and therefore no lie has taken place - if anything, treating a sarcastic remark as a falsehood is really a failure of interpretation.

In other words, your law doesn't have a problem with over-enforcement; it's going to have a problem with under-enforcement.

That said, if you do decide to tighten up the law so that sarcastic remarks are included by default and the onus is on the person articulating it, then exceptions can be written into law quite easily, and Australian anti-discrimination law actually does that.

For instance, anti-discrimination legislation in Australia explicitly forbids prosecution of people who choose actors for specific roles based on race, gender, etc. In other words, if you pick a white male to play a role of a white male, you're protected by the legislation to do so.

So to it may be that you have to declare intent to be sarcastic before actually doing it, which would kind of damage the joke or the sarcasm a bit, but you could make provision for such humour in that manner.

Of course, then you've opened up Pandora's Box, so to speak, because of the ability to actually hide the truth - let's say your politician speaks an absolute truth, but does so in a sarcastic tone.

Is your politician innocent because they spoke the truth, or guilty because they did so in a potentially misleading way?

Ironically, most politicians are already under a form of oath in their parliaments insofar as they are prohibited from misleading the parliament in any way. In my experience, attempts to prosecute on those grounds really come down to what the politician knew at the time, and they all claim they were given incorrect information at the time and didn't have reasonable access to the truth at the time of the utterance.

Which brings me to my final point - there is a MASSIVE difference between truth and fact. How do you determine that someone isn't sincere in what they say, believing it to be 'true', even if it's obviously and blatantly wrong?

In democracies, we don't elect our politicians for their capability in leadership, more's the pity. We elect them to represent the views that best fit our own. As such, trying to enforce 'truth' is a slippery slope towards a dystopian future full of thought police.

Better to let them share their opinions to the fullest, and fact check them later in my personal view.

It will be a crime for civil servants to misrepresent or present false
information with the deliberate intention of deceiving fellow
government officials or members of the public while acting out their
functions as government representatives.

This works just fine. Jokes and sarcasm are temporary. The government worker moves on and then tells the truth.

If there is someone who still thinks it's real, the worker did not intentionally deceive anyone. There are plenty of laws where the intent matters. It's already part of our legal system. Either in differentiating a greater crime from a lessor crime or in differentiating a crime from a legal act.

Given the consequences of a misinterpreted joke though, I'd think government workers would be extra cautious and always say "just kidding!" after a joke, or not tell them in the first place.

It's also already illegal for a member of the public to lie to various government officials. For example, it's against the law (as in an actual crime, not just a financial penalty) to lie on your tax returns or in an IRS audit. If you go into an audit and say, "I don't have to report the basement full of gold bars, right?" they will not be amused, but it won't get you sent to prison.

Your suggested language is fine. Just leave out the "but jokes are fine. Also sarcasm is okay" part as it's not necessary and puts too much emphasis on it. We already have laws that cover this, you're just widening the scope.

Methinks you are using a hammer to cut a piece of glass in two. Certainly, after using a hammer, the glass WILL be in at least two pieces, but perhaps not in the shape you originally intended. That is, the Law of Unintended Consequences and the Law of Indiscriminate Application of Force (non-controlled application of forces results in non-controlled consequences).

I suggest that, rather than a law, you should make it compulsory for all politicians or candidates for a public office be required to take an oath, much like one does in a court of law, to always tell the truth in any communication made in association with that office or campaign for that office. Thus, if they did purposefully tell a lie, the offense would not be in telling the lie, but in breaking their oath. Breaking their oath would be grounds for their immediate removal from office, at a minimum. As part of this oath, they would commit to always support any communication they made with well documented references to support their communication, much like companies are required to back up any claims they make in an advertisement with proof. Failure to make public this evidence would mean either a public retraction or removal from office.

The difference between breaking an oath, and breaking the law, is in who enforces the infraction? If one is accused of breaking a law, it means charges are laid, it goes before a judge, and you have the entire legal hassle of 'political immunity from prosecution', legal appeals, legal procedures, and the adversarial process of courts.

If, on the other hand, it is an oath, then an entirely different process would be followed. It is no longer a criminal offence. It would come before a tribunal (an impartial, non-partisan jury of peers, perhaps) that would hear the accusation, hear the evidence, determine the truthfulness of the statement, and make a binding decision as to weather it violated the oath or not. Sort of like the advertising council tribunals. The procedures would not be the same as used in a court of law. It would not necessarily be prosecution-defense-rebuttal-rebuttal, discovery, and the prosecution laying the case out at the beginning. More along the lines of an inquiry, where dispositions are heard, evidence presented, and a decision made.

Another difference is that being accused of breaking the law means everything has to be spelled out, clear-cut, unambiguous, and specific. Breaking an oath, on the other hand, is more along the lines of a civil, instead of a criminal, case. 'Reasonable probability' is substituted for 'beyond all reasonable doubt'.

In such a scenario, it would be up to the tribunal to decide if the communication were made as something that the public would take as a statement of fact and rely upon in making decisions. Very similar to how advertising councils and newspaper tribunals make decisions. And just as in such existing tribunals, allowances would be made for subjective 'fluff' through common law and precedent. Only claims that could be factually analysed and objectively verified would be subject to the oath. 'Largest carrier by installed base' is an advertising claim that can be supported or refuted. 'The greatest thing since sliced bread' is entirely subjective, and therefore can not be supported or refuted.

Since advertising tribunals do work to cut down on deceptive advertising, there is clear evidence that such a system could work, as long as the tribunal had teeth (removal from office and sanctions against participating in campaigning again).

As much as you wish to stay away from the current political situation in America, I posit that it does provide substantial test situations in which to evaluate the effectiveness of whatever method you use, and whatever wording you use. Pick any or several of the hundreds of examples of situations in recent American politics that you wish to address, apply your solution to the scenario, and see if it results in the intended consequences.

Could a politician wiggle out as easily as they can currently from the consequences of statements they have made? Does it cast too wide a net, and implicate politicians in situations you feel they should not be admonished for?

Trying to actually make a system that does what you wish is enormously difficult. Defining "lying" to mean exactly what you want it to mean and not anything else is virtually impossible because what makes a lie is not actually part of the statement. The lie appears as part of the interpretation on the part of the listener.

For example, consider "The sky isn't blue," uttered by an official on a clear day without a cloud in the sky. Their statement is not a lie. the atmosphere between 1 foot above their head and 100km above the head is predominantly clear gasses. The blueness is actually a structural effect caused by interactions between the sunlight and the eyeballs. Sound absurd? Actually, biologists who study butterflies make a very strong line between structural blue and blue pigments which is right along these lines. It turns out nature doesn't have very many ways to make blue pigments, but it's found a lot of ways to generate blue structural light, like that of most blue butterfly wings.

Trying to make it always apply to an individual is even harder. Doing that 100% of the time is just plain difficult.

A solution from fiction can be found in Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land. In this book, we are introduced to Anne a certified Fair Witness. Fair Witnesses are indeed what you are looking for: someone who does not lie, not in the least. In his story, when a Fair Witness is operating in official capacity, they wear a cloak that signifies their state. The sort of effects you are looking for can be seen in this interaction involving Anne as an off-duty Fair Witness. Even off-duty, her instincts show the sort of thinking that's involved with being a Fair Witness:

[Jubal Talking to Jill] "You know how Fair Witnesses behave."

"Well... no, I don't. I've never met one."

"So? Anne!"

Anne was on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out "That house on the hilltop -- can you see what color they've painted it?"

Anne looked, then answered, "It's white on this side."

Jubal went on to Jill, "You see? It doesn't even occure to Anne to infer that the other side is white, too. All the King's horses couldn't force her to commit herself... unless she went there and looked -- and even then she wouldn't assume that it stayed white after she left."

"Anne is a Fair Witness?"

"Graduate, unlimited license, admitted to testify before the High Court. Sometime ask her why she gave up public practice. But don't plan anything else that day -- the wench will recite the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which takes time...."

Anything less than this level of extremeness will always run afoul of your ideal somewhere. No surprise that Heinlein lets them go off duty by not wearing their cloak!