ABSTRACT
When Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented in Abrams v. United States1 he put forth what many legal scholars today hold to be a guiding principle of the First Amendment: “[T]hat we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”2 Many prominent legal scholars, whether conservative, libertarian or critical,
agree that at the heart of the First Amendment is the most stringent protection for political speech.3
