ight of privacy, or breach of the peace can be thought to be
inherent in the activities of every person who approaches the premises
of an employer and publicizes the facts of a labor dispute involving the
latter." The same term, again invoking the clear and present danger
formula, it reversed a conviction for the common law offense of inciting
a breach of the peace by playing, on a public street, a phonograph
record attacking a religious sect.[105]

THE POLICE POWER AND CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

Public Order

Prior to the Court's ratification of the clear and present danger test
it had held that while on the one hand, peaceful and orderly opposition
to government by legal means may not be inhibited, and that the
Constitution insures the "maintenance of the opportunity for free
political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the
will of the people and that changes may be obtained by lawful
means,"[106] yet on the other hand, the State may punish those who abuse
their freedom of speech by utterances tending to incite to crime,[107]
or to endanger the foundations of organized government or to threaten
its overthrow by unlawful means.[108] The impact of the clear and
present danger test upon these principles is well illustrated by a
holding in 1949 by a sharply divided Court, that a Chicago ordinance
which, as judicially interpreted, was held to permit punishment for
breach of the peace for speech which "stirs the public to anger, invites
disputes, (or) brings about a condition of unrest" was an undue and
unlawful restriction on the right of free speech.[109] Reversing a
conviction under the ordinance, Justice Douglas wrote: "A function of
free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may
indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of
unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even
stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It
may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling
effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of
speech, though not absolute * * * is nevertheless protected against
censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and
present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public
inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest."[110] Finding that the ordinance as
thus construed was unconstitutional, the majority did not enter in