William J. Brennan Jr. Quotes
[There exists a] profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.
William J. Brennan, Jr., 1906-1997, U. S. Supreme Court Justice New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 1964
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This principle was incorporated into American law by the Supreme Court 1964 decision in Sullivan v. New York Times, where this argument drove the opinion.
Vladimir Lenin
Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists. Even in England it is difficult to expose corruption because of the libel laws. In most countries, it is almost impossible which is one of the reasons corruption is so widespread. American law says that it is better to mistakenly hurt some public figures’ reputation than suppress the ability of citizens to criticize and expose corruption.
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.
William Joseph Brennan Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990. He was the seventh-longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, and known for being a leader of the Court's liberal wing.
