Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“ If expulsion from the country is punishment for crime when applied to a citizen, can it be that the rule which requires the government to assume the burden of proof, and which clothes the accused with the presumption of innocence can be changed by casting upon the individual the burden of showing that he is one not liable to such punishment? Can it be that the benefit of a doubt which attaches to all other accused persons is taken away from one simply because he is a Chinaman? ”

“ Every dogmatic statement of the law is prophetic of what will happen in a certain event. There is no more reason why the Constitution should not give the warning for the next year than there is for its not giving it for the next moment. We have no doubt of the authority of Congress to pass the law. ”

“ Also we must realize that the authority that makes the law is itself superior to it, and that if it consents to apply to itself the rules that it applies to others the consent is free and may be withheld. ”

“ I do not doubt for a moment that by the same reasoning that would justify punishing persuasion to murder, the United States constitutionally may punish speech that produces or is intended to produce a clear and imminent danger that it will bring about forthwith certain substantive evils that the United States constitutionally may seek to prevent. The power undoubtedly is greater in time of war than in time of peace because war opens dangers that do not exist at other times. ”

“ Is not the distinction questionable? Can anything be done for the preservation of a road that is not done for its business? If a distinction can be made, how immediate to the business must the supplies be? ”

“ If any question was made at the trial as to the loss of the right to challenge twenty jurors on each indictment, the only side of it that would be open here, would be again the question of constitutional power. That Pennsylvania could limit the challenges on each indictment to ten does not admit doubt. ”

“ Can one who judicially establishes his innocence of any offense be punished for crime by the action of a ministerial officer? Can he be punished because he has failed to show to the satisfaction of that officer that he is innocent of an offense? The Constitution declares that 'the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of invasion or rebellion, the public safety may require it.' There is no rebellion or invasion. ”

“ Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition. ”

“ To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. ”

“ It is only the present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about that warrants Congress in setting a limit to the expression of opinion where private rights are not concerned. ”

“ All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who, by accepting office, participates in its functions, is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. Courts of justice are established not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the government ”

“ It certainly is true that mere mistakes of law in the course of a trial are not to be corrected in that way. But if the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask -- that counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and that the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent this Court from securing to the petitioners their constitutional rights. ”

“ If we cannot take the blockading aquadron or the battleship Indiana in account as part of the capturing force, we cannot take them into account as motives. If the master was a timid man, who would not have dared to fight under any circumstances, there would have been the same certainty of surrender to one who knew the whole situation, but the law would have looked only to the force, and would not have gone into psychology. ”

“ Why should any one who claims the right of citizenship be denied prompt access to the courts? If it be an 'inestimable heritage,' can Congress deprive one of the right to a judicial determination of its existence, and ought the courts to unnecessarily avoid or postpone an inquiry thereof? If it be said that the conduct of these petitioners before the inspector was not such as to justify a belief in the probability of their claim of citizenship, it is sufficient answer that they assert the claim and ask a right to be heard. ”

“ But to gather the streams from waste and to draw from them energy, labor without brains, and so to save mankind from toil that it can be spared, is to supply what, next to intellect, is the very foundation of all our achievements and all our welfare. ”

“ If the United States could impress a peculiar character upon land within a state after parting with all title to it, at least the clearest expression would be necessary before such a result could be reached. ”

“ It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ”

“ And can it be that when one produces a judicial can be brushed one side unless the identity can be brushed one side unless the indentity of the individual in whose behalf the finding was made is established beyond doubt? ”

“ And as a power in government, if it exist at all, it is perennial and universal and can give what duration it pleases to its exercise, whether for two years or for more than two years. If it can be made to endure for two years, it can be made to endure for more. There is no other power that can pronounce the limit of its duration against the time expressed in it and its justification practically marks the doom of the judicial judgment on legislative action. ”

“ To compel them to guess, on peril of indictment, what the community would have given for them if the continually changing conditions were other than they are, to an uncertain extent; to divine prophetically what the reaction of only partially determinate facts would be upon the imaginations and desires of purchasers, is to exact gifts that mankind does not possess. ”

“ The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. Eloquence may set fire to reason. But whatever may be thought of the redundant discourse before us it had no chance of starting a present conflagration. If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way. ”

“ If without a word of falsehood but acting from what we have called disinterested malevolence a man by persuasion should organize and carry into effect a run upon a bank and ruin it, we cannot doubt that an action would lie. ”

“ In deciding whether a corporation is denied the equal protection of the laws when its creator establishes a more extensive venue for actions against it than are fixed for private citizens we have to consider not a geometrical equation between a corporation and a man but whether the difference does injustice to the class generally, even though it bear hard in some particular case, which is not alleged or proved here. ”

“ In this case at all events we are of opinion that there was no evidence that warrants such a judgment. It is not necessary to state the facts in detail. Those mainly relied upon are that Fonvielle, the general yardmaster, knew that Southwell, the man who was killed, on previous occasions had used threatening language to Dallas, who shot Southwell; that Fonvielle knew or ought to have known that they were likely to meet when they did; that Fonvielle was with Dallas, his subordinate, just before that moment and that Dallas said to him 'Cap. ”

“ We know that an act of legislation does not necessarily satisfy it. It may, however, be sufficient, or, to be more careful and accurate, there may be a regulation of the uses of property whose legality cannot be denied. Regulation is not a taking, and we are brought to the inquiry, what uses of property will subject it to regulation? I mean regulation in a special sense, not in the sense in which all property, whether its uses be public or private, is subject to regulation. ”

“ The judge said: 'The law presumes innocence in all criminal prosecutions. We begin with a legal presumption that the defendant, although accused, is an innocent man. Not that we take that to be an absolute rule, but it is the principle upon which prosecutions must be conducted; that the evidence must overcome the legal presumption of innocence. And in order to overcome the legal presumption, as I have already stated, the evidence must be clear and convincing, and sufficiently strong to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty,' with more to the same effect. ”

“ And it is significant that it is not restraint upon a "governing one," but restraint upon the people themselves, and in the persuasion, to use the words of one of the supporters of the Constitution, 'the natural order of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground.' Sinister interests, its conception is, may move government to exercise; one class may become dominant over another, and against the tyranny and injustice that will result, the framers of the Constitution believed precautions were as necessary as against any other abuse of power. ”

“ The Constitution standing alone without more does not create a paramount unchangeable liability to an action of tort on the part of all persons who may take part in enforcing a state law that it invalidates. ”

“ The only reason for allowing a State to look beyond its borders when it taxes the property of foreign corporations is that it may get the true value of the things within it, when they are part of an organic system of wide extent, that gives them a value above what they otherwise would possess. The purpose is not to expose the heel of the system to a mortal dart-not, in other words, to open to taxation what is not within the State. ”

“ It does not matter if they have no contract with the Exchange, directly. It does not matter that if the Telegraph Companies did not deliver to any given one the Exchange could not complain. If the normal, contemplated and followed course is a transmission as continuous and rapid as science can make it from Exchange to broker's office it does not matter what are the stages or how little they are secured by covenant or bond. ”

“ One who makes a contract never can be absolutely certain that he will be able to perform it when the time comes, and the very essence of it is that he takes the risk within the limits of his undertaking. ”

“ A presumption upon a matter of fact, when it is not merely a disguise for some other principle, means that common experience shows the fact to be so generally true that courts may notice the truth. Whatever the scope of the presumption that a man is innocent of the specific crime harged, it cannot be said that by common experience the character of most people indicted by a grand jury is good. ”

“ Without going beyond the limits of judicial knowledge, we can say at least that the plaintiffs' allegations cannot be declared offhand to be unmaintainable, and that it is not impossible that a full development of the facts will show them to be true. ”

“ But the prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. The objection in principle would forbid a jury to look at a prisoner and compare his features with a photograph in proof. Moreover, we need not consider how far a court would go in compelling a man to exhibit himself. ”

“ I cannot assent to that view, if it be meant that the legislature may impair or abridge the rights of a free press and of free speech whenever it thinks that the public welfare requires that to be done. ”

“ The Constitution, therefore, imposes a duty, it is true, but not a duty to be uncompensated. The special emphasis of the prohibition of favor as to charges makes conspicuous and indisputable the right to make and enforce them if made and enforced without 'favor to any person.' There could be no discrimination 'as to charges,' if there were no charges, no drawback or rebate from them; and the right to require security for the return of the cars is left untouched. ”

“ We are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change. ”

“ If, in the judgment of the state, the people who desire insurance upon their property are put at a disadvantage when confronted by a combination or agreement among insurance companies, I do not perceive any sound reason why, preserving the individual right of contracting, it may not forbid such combinations and agreements, and thereby enable the insured and insurer to meet on terms of equality. ”