Supreme Court-isms

People ask me what I do, and I'm never quite sure what to tell them. Of course I know the tasks and projects I work on day-to-day in my job, but I've never come up with a good title, like "banker" or "vet". Sometimes I just say I freelance for professors, sometimes I say I do what a grad student does but for money not credit, sometimes I say I'm a research assistant. Maybe "academic freelancer"?

Anyway, the point is: one of the tasks I do is read through Supreme Court cases dealing with freedom of speech. A lot of this is very boring. But occasionally, I run across some true gems expressed by the justices - and I've collected them here for you. 

For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time. - George Sutherland

We as a nation lose part of our greatness whenever we deport or punish those who merely exercise their freedoms  in an unpopular though innocuous manner. The strength of this nation is weakened more by  those who suppress the freedom of others than by those who are allowed freely to think and act as their consciences dictate. 

To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death. - Justice Holmes

Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. - William Douglas, 337 US 1

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. - Woodrow Wilson

The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge. Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes. - Felix Frankfurter

The Constitution, we cannot recall too often, is an organism, not merely a literary composition. - Felix Frankfurter

Courts, including this one, are not anointed with any extraordinary prescience. - Justice Marshall, 403 US 29

The cases cited in Roberts recognize that "freedom of  speech" means more than simply the right to talk and to write. It is possible to find some kernel of expression in almost every activity a person undertakes—for example, walking down the street or meeting one's friends at a shopping mall—but such a kernel is not sufficient to bring the activity within the protection of  the First Amendment. We think the activity of these dance-hall patrons—coming together to engage in recreational dancing—is not protected by the First Amendment. Thus this activity qualifies neither as a form of "intimate association" nor as a form of  "expressive association" as those terms were described in Roberts. - 490 US 19 (which is to say: No, your dance-hall dancing is not freedom of speech)

Whatever is added to the field of libel is taken from the field of free debate.

The identity of the oppressor is, I would think, a matter of relative indifference to the oppressed.

And my personal favorite: 

As I read the opinion of the Court, it does much fine talking about freedom of expression and much condemning of the Commission's overzealous efforts to implement the State's obscenity laws for the protection of Rhode Island's youth but, as if shearing a hog, comes up with little wool. - 37 US 58

xo,
Devo