Thomas I. Emerson Quotes
Suppression of expression conceals the real problems confronting a society and diverts public attention from the critical issues. It is likely to result in neglect of the grievances which are the actual basis of the unrest, and thus prevent their correction.
Thomas I. Emerson, Legal Scholar, Yale Law Journal 1963
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This became a critically important quotation a half century after it was made. Judge Hand articulated the majority Western and Judeo-Christian value proposition between dissent and heresy. However, for the majority of the Islamic world, the reverse represents the majority value that is held. There is a minority in the West that agrees that avoidance of heresy is paramount and a minority of the Muslim world that agrees that the protection of dissent is the more important value, but the two civilizations were at odds in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. 600 years ago, the Christian world agreed with the Muslim society and prevention of heresy was the more important value. The Reformation and the enlightenment followed by the world example of America produced a transformation and this may occur in the majority of the Islamic world in time.
The “burning” is a reference to the range of murders from the burning of heretics in the Middle Ages to the crematorium ovens of the German Concentration Camps in the Holocaust of WWII.
Thomas I. Emerson (1907–1991) was a 20th-century American attorney and professor of law. He is known as a "major architect of civil liberties law," "arguably the foremost First Amendment scholar of his generation," and "pillar of the Bill of Rights."
