A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.
FreedomSocietyFree speechSpeechCivil libertiesDebateSocial change
Hate speech or misinformation may require some limits.
One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is …
For there is no constitutional right for any race to be preferred... If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the re…
The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at al…