ABSTRACT
DRAWING THE LINE Let’s begin with this understanding: the right of free expression is not an absolute. There are limits to what the law will allow. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the pithy quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Writing in Schenck v. United States,1 he stated, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”2 Most Americans support limiting free expression in areas where it would endanger national security, unfairly damage the reputation of individuals, or corrupt children. The difficulty lies in deciding exactly when expression does these things and how to prohibit those expressions, while still protecting other communication. In order to engage in this line-drawing exercise, it is important to understand the reasons for protecting free expression in the first place. Knowing why we protect expression will help us understand what we protect and what we don’t.
