ill not suffice. These rights
rest on firmer foundation. Accordingly, whatever occasion would restrain
orderly discussion and persuasion, at appropriate time and place, must
have clear support in public danger, actual or impending. Only the
gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for
permissible limitation. It is therefore in our tradition to allow the
widest room for discussion, the narrowest range for its restriction,
particularly when this right is exercised in conjunction with peaceable
assembly. It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to
freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single guaranty with the
rights of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for redress
of grievances. All these, though not identical, are inseparable. They
are cognate rights."[180] This was 1945. Four years later the
controlling wing of the Court, in sustaining a local ordinance, endorsed
a considerably less enthusiastic appraisal of freedom of speech and
press. Thus while alluding to "the preferred position of freedom of
speech in a society that cherishes liberty for all," Justice Reed went
on to say, that this "does not require legislators to be insensible to
claims by citizens to comfort and convenience. To enforce freedom of
speech in disregard of the rights of others would be harsh and arbitrary
in itself."[181] And Justice Frankfurter denied flatly the propriety of
the phrase "preferred position," saying: "This is a phrase that has
uncritically crept into some recent opinions of this Court. I deem it a
mischievous phrase, if it carries the thought, which it may subtly
imply, that any law touching communication is infected with presumptive
invalidity. It is not the first time in the history of constitutional
adjudication that such a doctrinaire attitude has disregarded the
admonition most to be observed in exercising the Court's reviewing power
over legislation, 'that it is a constitution we are expounding,'
M'Culloch _v._ Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 407. I say the phrase is
mischievous because it radiates a constitutional doctrine without
avowing it. Clarity and candor in these matters, so as to avoid gliding
unwittingly into error, make it appropriate to trace the history of the
phrase 'preferred position.'"[182] which Justice Frankfurter then
proceeded to do. Justice Jackson also protested: "We cannot," he said,
"give some constitutional rights a preferred position without relegating
ot