"Equally unavailing is the insistence that the statute is designed to prevent the circulation of scandal which tends [p722] to disturb the public peace and to provoke assaults and the commission of crime. Charges of reprehensible conduct, and in particular of official malfeasance, unquestionably create a public scandal, but the theory of the constitutional guaranty is that even a more serious public evil would be caused by authority to prevent publication. To prohibit the intent to excite those unfavorable sentiments against those who administer the Government is equivalent to a prohibition of the actual excitement of them, and to prohibit the actual excitement of them is equivalent to a prohibition of discussions having that tendency and effect, which, again, is equivalent to a protection of those who administer the Government, if they should at any time deserve the contempt or hatred of the people, against being exposed to it by free animadversions on their characters and conduct. There is nothing new in the fact that charges of reprehensible conduct may create resentment and the disposition to resort to violent means of redress, but this well understood tendency did not alter the determination to protect the press against censorship and restraint upon publication. [...] The danger of violent reactions becomes greater with effective organization of defiant groups resenting exposure, and if this consideration warranted legislative interference with the initial freedom of publication, the constitutional protection would be reduced to a mere form of words."
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Justices of the Supreme Court of the United StatesLawyers from New York (state)United States Secretaries of StateUnited States presidential candidates, 1908United States presidential candidates, 1916
Original Language: English
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', 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Evans_Hughes
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Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes (11 April 1862 โ 27 August 1948) was a Republican politician and jurist who served as Governor of New York, United States Secretary of State, Associate Justice and Chief Justice of the United States.
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