able condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
* * * So it has come about that the domain of liberty, withdrawn by the
Fourteenth Amendment from encroachment by the states, has been enlarged
by latter-day judgments to include liberty of the mind as well as
liberty of action. The extension became, indeed, a logical imperative
when once it was recognized, as long ago it was, that liberty is
something more than exemption from physical restraint, and that even in
the field of substantive rights and duties the legislative judgment, if
oppressive and arbitrary, may be overridden by the courts."[177]
Touching on the same subject a few months later, Chief Justice Stone
suggested that: "There may be narrower scope for operation of the
presumption of constitutionality when legislation appears on its face to
be within a specific prohibition of the Constitution, such as those of
the first ten amendments, which are deemed equally specific when held to
be embraced within the Fourteenth." And again: "It is unnecessary to
consider now whether legislation which restricts those political
processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of
undesirable legislation, is to be subjected to more exacting judicial
scrutiny under the general prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment than
are most other types of legislation."[178] But the strongest assertion
of this position occurs in Justice Rutledge's opinion for a sharply
divided Court in Thomas _v._ Collins.[179] He says: "The case confronts
us again with the duty our system places on this Court to say where the
individual's freedom ends and the State's power begins. Choice on that
border, now as always delicate, is perhaps more so where the usual
presumption supporting legislation is balanced by the preferred place
given in our scheme to the great, the indispensable democratic freedoms
secured by the First Amendment. * * * That priority gives these
liberties a sanctity and a sanction not permitting dubious intrusions.
And it is the character of the right, not of the limitation, which
determines what standard governs the choice. * * * For these reasons any
attempt to restrict those liberties must be justified by clear public
interest, threatened not doubtfully or remotely, but by clear and
present danger. The rational connection between the remedy provided and
the evil to be curbed, which in other contexts might support legislation
against attack on due process grounds, w