Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?
Statement on arrests of protesters for disorderly conduct; recalled on his retirement (12 Nov 1975)
Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
Living in Los Angeles is not blameworthy per se.
I would give the broad sweep of the First Amendment full support. I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.
Government should be concerned with anti-social conduct, not with utterances.
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.
Comment to Justice Potter Stewart on the arrest of Vietnam War veterans during a peaceful protest on the steps of the Supreme Court building.
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
The Fathers of the Constitution were not unaware of the varied and extreme views of religious sects, of the violence of disagreement among them, and of the lack of any one religious creed on which all men would agree. They fashioned a charter of government which envisaged the widest possible toleration of conflicting views. Man's relation to his God was made no concern of the state. He was granted the right to worship as he pleased and to answer to no man for the verity of his religious views. The religious views espoused by respondents might seem incredible, if not preposterous, to most people. But if those doctrines are subject to trial before a jury charged with finding their truth or falsity, then the same can be done with the religious beliefs of any sect.
Full text.
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case the judge or jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
The court ruled 5-4 to allow banning the sale of obscene books.
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
The 7-1 ruling held that a streetcar company's playing of the radio was constitutional, and that the PUC could regulate same.
Freedom of thought, which includes freedom of religious belief, is basic in a society of free men. It embraces the right to maintain theories of life and of death and of the hereafter which are rank heresy to followers of the orthodox faiths. Heresy trials are foreign to our Constitution. Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
Full text.
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
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