This feels like it was not an intended reply to my post as it seems to be dealing with entirely different subject matter , are you sure you are replying to the correct person?

If your point is that intentionality of harm is required for law to be enacted then that isn’t particularly true either. Things like manslaughter charges exist because intention isn’t always nessisary when determining criminal fault for harm. Negligence, lack of adherence to pre existing law or willful ignorance are still criminal factors… And they have their own individual criminal burdens of proof that must be met to stick a conviction in court.

It is simply a nature of law that intent is always considered and proof of it is nessisary to bring forth particular types of charges that are weighted more heavily based on proof of premeditated knowledge or intent. Lack of intent does not always mean no damages are criminaly found to be your fault that must be answered for. Law makes allowances in many cases for the potential of the purest of pure accidents.

However since the UK has hate speech law, libel law and laws against provoking violence or harassment and damages are now measurable the person in the original article can be proven to have violated a law and damages happened as a result meaning that she cannot claim pure accident. Knowingly or not she broke a pre-existing law and people and property was damaged as a result.

Just like a charge of vehicular manslaughter only really sticks if you were speeding or broke a traffic law. If you are truely blameless and followed all law it is ruled " actions leading to accidental death" which is not a punishable crime. Speeding in a school zone is usually a pretty mild punishment if one is caught doing it and no one gets hurt usually it is a pretty mild fine… But if someone dies as a result of your speeding you go to jail. Same premise here just different laws.

Agreed, but you also said :

I’m okay with this phrase except for the word “intent”. If we give someone the power to try to assess our intent, it can easily go the way of totalitarian states where they say you have a bad intent any time you criticize the government.

And I am pointing that the power to assess intent is actually a norm in the justice system. Too many people on here are very quick to catastrophize things that are actually very culturally normal and stable in systems of law. Your point is not the same one I was making, hence why I referenced your likely intended point in my post.

We have always lived with exceptions to freedom of speech. Libel, slander and obscenity law as examples. The sanctity of medical records is another.

The UK also technically does not and never has had any freedom of speech enshrined in law and the government has always been able to squash print and media publications that post things deemed a danger to security.

Russia on the other hand holds a constitutional freedom of speech and the press… But will also send you to prison for publishing “LGBTQIA propaganda”

Americans treat this misplaced concept of freedom of speech as this full access pass as a universal good that is the only thing holding us all back from totalitarian regimes. In reality however speech has both never been totally free even in America as plenty of exceptions have always existed and having those protections is way more optional in other democratic nations then they would believe. It also does not protect from abuse on it’s own.

Remember that any and all tenants of free speech aren’t nessisarily a universal good. If there are measurable harms being done to people your nation is allowed to carve out an exception. It’s on you to critically evaluate the individual exception for potential issues but not specifically on the basis of a dogmatic adherence to an idea of free speech. Totally free speech itself could actually be harmful to a society and in fact has already proven to be hence libel/slander laws.

But all criminal law already has a concept of Mens rea (guilty mind) baked in. The reasonable proving of intentions is nessisary for the severity of the sentencing in almost all cases under review and has been at least as long as anyone here has been alive. It isn’t the sole factor of creating a criminal charge because - as you stated you also need to prove harms but saying people are not punished for intent and treating that as only the tool of strictly authoritarian government is factually untrue.