Airing tonight on HBO, Liz Garbus’ documentary, Shouting Fire, has as its subtitle, Stories From the Edge of Free Speech. (Preview via NYT)
While I haven’t seen it, she didn’t need to explain the title. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ metaphor is so rooted in the American imagination that her two-word contraction carries the day.
Holmes:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
Makes sense. The elegant image, however, supported a bad judgment and helped Holmes ride into history lauded for good sense he did not, in this case, demonstrate.
The Supreme Court opinion in question upheld a prison sentence given the pacifist Charles T. Schenck for distributing leaflets to World War I draftees. He urged them to say, without violence, hell no, we won’t go. (Schenck v. United States, 1919). The fire of which he warned was not a delusion.
When writing Supreme Court decisions, art is good, but justice is better.
I’m sad to know about this. American history’s high points are worth cherishing, there are so many of the other kind. Abe Lincoln still did a good job.