Shouting fire in a crowded theater
From LawGuru Wiki
“Shouting fire in a crowded theater” is an expression used in the U.S. judicial system to express the limits upon which free speech may be expressed under the terms of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The term was coined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1919, during a United States Supreme Court case known as “Schenck v. United States”, which condemned a draft-resistance pamphlet. Justice Holmes was quoted as stating,
- "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."
The phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that abuses free speech rights or uses such rights to place others in physical danger. Examples would be publicly publishing lists of undercover police officers within the communities which they were operating or posting classified military secrets on the internet which could affect national security.
The military secrets applied to troop movements is the only situation that the Supreme Court has given approval for "prior restraint" aka censorship albeit only as dicta and not part of its holding, though lower courts like in the H-bomb case, The Progressive Magazine (Erwin Knoll), have approved of prior restraint.
The pretext of military secrets has been consistently rejected by courts -- most famously in the Pentagon Papers case when the Richard M. Nixon administration tried to stop newspapers from publishing leaked government documents.
