Freedom Of Speech And Of The Press

A Court Which Yields To The Popular Will Thereby Licenses Itself To Practice Despotism, For There Can Be No Assurance That It Will Not, On Another Occasion, Indulge Its Own Will.

Gratitude Is One Of The Least Articulate Of The Emotions, Especially When It Is Deep. I Can Express With Very Limited Adequacy The Passionate Devotion To This Land That Possesses Millions Of Our People, Born, Like Myself, Under Other Skies, For The Privilege That That This County Has Bestowed In Allowing Them To Partake Of Its Fellowship.

It Is Easy To Make Light Of Insistence On Scrupulous Regard For The Safeguards Of Civil Liberties When Invoked On Behalf Of The Unworthy. It Is Too Easy. History Bears Testimony That By Such Disregard Are The Rights Of Liberty Extinguished, Heedlessly At First, Then Stealthily, And Brazenly In The End.

Convictions Following The Admission Into Evidence Of Confessions Which Are Involuntary, I.e., The Product Of Coercion, Either Physical Or Psychological, Cannot Stand. This Is So Not Because Such Confessions Are Unlikely To Be True But Because The Methods Used To Extract Them Offend An Underlying Principle In The Enforcement Of Our Criminal Law: That Ours Is An Accusatorial, And Not An Inquisitorial, System - A System In Which The State Must Establish Guilt By Evidence Independently And Freely Secured, And May Not, By Coercion, Prove Its Charges Against An Accused Out Of His Own Mouth.

It Is A Fair Summary Of History To Say That The Safeguards Of Liberty Have Been Forged In Controversies Involving Not Very Nice People.