Opinion ID: 1611761
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: an alternative analysis

Text: ¶ 124. The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. [17] With these words, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. summed up his view that the law is not permanent, fixed, and unchangeable; rather, it evolves over time to reflect practices and events from the present and past. In an earlier article, Holmes wrote that, The secret root from which the law draws all the juices of life, is in fact considerations of what is expedient for the community. [18] ¶ 125. Holmes appears to have applied his dynamic legal philosophy in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), a case in which the Court sustained the conviction of two defendants for violations of the Espionage Act, in part for circulating printed leaflets urging young men to resist conscription. Holmes wrote for a unanimous Court: We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done....The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic ....The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right. Id. at 52 (emphasis added). ¶ 126. In conceiving his memorable aphorism of the man falsely shouting fire in a theater, Holmes was writing in the shadow of sensational events. In December 1876, 295 people perished in a fire at a Brooklyn theater. In December 1881, 850 people died in a fire at a theater in Vienna. In December 1903, 602 people died at the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago. In January 1908, 170 people were killed in a fire at the Rhoads Theater in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. [19] Three years before the Schenck decision, the Tremont Theatre in Boston, Holmes's hometown, was burned. [20] A year before the Schenck decision, fire destroyed Dane Hall at Harvard University, where Holmes went to school. [21] Fires made up several of the gravest catastrophes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were regarded with real fear. Moreover, news reports in 1917 and 1918 suggested that German terrorists and sympathizers were the source of an outbreak of serious fires in the United States after this country entered the war. [22] Holmes's theater aphorism, then, appears to be an accurate reflection of contemporary concerns. ¶ 127. Today our country is consumed by the outbreak of violence in public schools. Threats of violence in schools must be taken seriously. [23] Almost inevitably these threats produce fear among students and teachers. They inflict harm and impair the atmosphere for learning. Sometimes they create panic. [24] Panic is the word Justice Holmes used in Schenck. Panic is the reaction Mrs. [C.] described when she received Douglas's story. The potential for panic suggests an alternative analysis that the parties and the courts in this case have not explored. ¶ 128. Threats of violence against students, teachers, or administrators in schools are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572 (1942). They materially disrupt classwork, Tinker, 393 U.S. at 513, and therefore are not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Id. ¶ 129. I am influenced in these views by society's reaction to terrorism and air piracy. No person should expect to benefit from a true threat analysis if he or she jokes at an airport about hijacking an airplane or carrying bombs or weapons onto a plane. See United States v. Irving, 509 F.2d 1325, 1329 (5th Cir. 1975), in which the court said: The legislative history [of 49 U.S.C., Sec. 1472(m)(1)] makes clear that Congress was concerned with the prankster as well as with the individual acting out of malice, and has decreed that the conveyance of such false information is no joking matter. ¶ 130. Intentional bomb scares also fall outside protected speech. As the Supreme Court of Louisiana said in State of Louisiana, In the Interest of RT. : Words which by their very utterance may cause alarm, public disruption, or constitute a signal to prompt unlawful action fall within the principle of the false cry of fire in a crowded theater and are characterized as verbal acts unprotected by constitutional prohibitions against restraint of free speech....We have no trouble concluding that the state has a legitimate interest in criminalizing apparently serious, albeit false, bomb threats, notwithstanding that the crime is committed through the medium of speech. The First Amendment does not protect criminal activity, even when carried out with words. In the Interest of RT., 781 So. 2d 1239, 2001 WL 170927 at 3 n.5 (La. 2001) (citation omitted). ¶ 131. Because of the epidemic of violence in public schools, threats against students, teachers, and administrators in a school setting should not be afforded First Amendment protection. Based upon a falsely shouting fire in a theatre or panic analysis, school threats are incendiary per se. Whether these threats also violate some criminal statute depends upon the evidence in each situation.