Felix Frankfurter Quotes
It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.
Felix Frankfurter, 1882-1965, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Milk Wagon Drivers Union of Chicago, Local 753. v. Meadowmoor Dairies, Inc., 312 U.S. 287, 1941
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Striking down a law making cross burning a crime:
She was referring to the slander that was commonly used by her fellow Republican, Senator Joseph P. McCarthy in his demagoguery. She was the first member of the Senate to Condemn McCarthy for his abuse and lies. Led by her example, the other senators got over their fear of McCarthy attacking them and the Senate Censured the Demagogue.
There was a well orchestrated Congressional effort to pass a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit flag burning. There had been no recent incident of flag burning and there had been little or no flag burning for decades since the Vietnam War. Yet a small group of Congressmen had managed to get the issue onto the American national political agenda by skillful manipulation of the media and excellent PR.
In 1836 the House of Representatives adopted the so-called "Gag Rule" whereby the house could not act on all further petitions regarding slavery, even though thousands of petitions were being received. Adams was one of the few who protested the Gag Rule:. Adams even submitted petitions with which he did not agree:. Every year Adams attempted to get the Gag Rule repealed. He was even threatened with censure for his efforts, but his status as an ex-president protected him. Finally, in 1844, Adams' perennial resolution carried:
Advising candidates for the state legislature:
Twenty year prison sentences were imposed for publishing left wing Bolshevik literature. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court:
In 1974 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was investigating the wiretapping of American citizens. An FBI witness, Bernard Wells, testified that the wiretaps had demonstrated no disloyalty but they had identified some "loose talk:"
Opponents of the strict separation of church and state use this quotation to support their view. However, Story herein describes public sentiment, not what was passed and ratified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. See {614309} and {614310} for his statements from the same work that show that there was no question in his mind but that church and state are separated by the Constitution and the First Amendment.
Felix Frankfurter was an American lawyer, professor, and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Frankfurter served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1962 and was a noted advocate of judicial restraint in the judgments of the Court.
