On Wednesday morning, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case that likely will determine the outcome of the Stolen Valor Act. The case is styled United States v. Alvarez. Scotusblog's Lyle Denniston has written a really good preview here. Essentially, the justices have to broker a conflict between the 10th Circuit (which upheld the law) and the 9th Circuit (which didn't) over the Act's scope and constitutionality. Hopefully, the court will continue its recently ardent defense of the first amendment by definitively kicking the law to the curb.

That would be a victory for Xavier Alvarez, the subject of Wednesday's argument and the creep who falsely claimed in 2007 that he had won a Congressional Medal of Honor. But Alvarez already has paid a price for his lie. As Denniston recounts, Alvarez was "rather soon subjected to what his lawyers call a 'public shaming,' earning such epithets in the community and local newspapers as an 'idiot,' a 'jerk,' 'cretinous,' and 'ultimate slime.'" Our federal prisons are already crowded; do taxpayers need to pay to keep men like Alvarez in custody?

That's all I want to say about the case itself. But hopefully the timing of the argument won't be lost on anyone who went to the movies this past holiday weekend. I did. I went to see The Grey (Bad wolf! Baa-aaad wolf!) and one of the previews before the film was for the movie Act of Valor, an action adventure involving good guys and terrorists. The trailer proudly proclaims that "the characters in this film are portrayed by active duty U.S. Navy Seals"-- you know, like the brave ones who so brilliantly knocked off Osama bin Laden.

The movie comes out Friday -- two days after the justices meet in Alvarez. Oh, Lord, let there be a justice who cheekily asks on Wednesday: "Speaking of valor, why shouldn't the folks creatively associated with the Act of Valor film also be prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act? It's a piece of fiction, isn't it? And isn't the purpose of the statute to protect a real war hero's reputation for valor by criminalizing false claims of valor?" (Yes, yes, I know. The Stolen Valor Act only applies if you've falsely represented yourself as having received a medal -- and I didn't see any medals in the trailer.)

I'm not knocking the movie. Hollywood and the Pentagon have long collaborated on marketing projects designed to boost patriotic fervor -- and generate more recruits (that's a whole other piece that someone ought to take the time to write this week). The smaller point I'm trying to make is that some people might reasonably consider that the film's fictionalization of valorous acts diminishes the value of the true valor achieved in real combat by our military personnel (including, perhaps, the Navy Seals who were involved in this film). And, if that's true, wouldn't we all be better off if federal law didn't even pretend to try to regulate perceptions of valor?