Court Opinion

ID: 9855402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:24:18.469114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:14.394753
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
concurring.
Because the public’s First Amendment rights, as well as the defendant’s right to a public trial, are the very preconditions to our free society and to public confidence in the functioning of our government, courts must guard them with jealous attention and view with suspicion all attempted encroachments thereof. In fact, we must do our very best to hold fast to the values embodied by the First Amendment even in extreme and painful cases, because we cannot suspend it and remain all that we strive to be. The majority, by accepting nothing less than strict compliance with the requirements of R. W. Page Corp. v. Lumpkin,3 correctly “gives greater weight to the value of [these liberties] than to the danger of their misuse.”4 I fully concur.

 249 Ga. 576 (292 SE2d 815) (1982).

 McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm., 514 U. S.__(115 SC 1511, 1524, 131 LE2d 426) (1995), citing Justice Holmes’s dissent in Abrams v. United States, 250 U. S. 616, 630-631 (40 SC 17, 63 LE 1173) (1919).