--lays hold. It is the 'party line' of the orthodox
view, of the conventional thought, of the accepted approach. A problem
can no longer be pursued with impunity to its edges. Fear stalks the
classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking;
she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A
deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to
become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often
leaves off where it should begin." Ibid. 510.

[236] 343 U.S. 250 (1952).

[237] Ibid. 258.

[238] Ibid, 259-263 _passim_. Justice Douglas, dissenting, urged the
"absolute" character of freedom of speech and deplored recent cases in
which, he asserted, the Court "has engrafted the right of regulation
onto the First Amendment by placing in the hands of the legislative
branch the right to regulate 'within reasonable length' the right of
free speech. This to me is an ominous and alarming trend." Ibid. 285.
Justices Black, Reed and Jackson also dissented. Justice Jackson's
dissenting opinion is characteristically paradoxical: "An Illinois Act,
construed by its Supreme Court to be a 'group libel' statute, has been
used to punish criminally the author and distributor of an obnoxious
leaflet attacking the Negro race. He answers that, as applied, the Act
denies a liberty secured to him by the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. What is the liberty which that clause underwrites?
The spectrum of views expressed by my seniors shows that disagreement as
to the scope and effect of this Amendment underlies this, as it has many
another, division of the Court. All agree that the Fourteenth amendment
does confine the power of the State to make printed words criminal.
Whence we are to derive metes and bounds of the state power is a subject
to the confusion of which, I regret to say, I have
contributed--comforted in the acknowledgment, however, by recalling that
this Amendment is so enigmatic and abstruse that judges more experienced
than I have had to reverse themselves as to its effect on state power.
The thesis now tendered in dissent is that the 'liberty' which the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against denial by
the States is the literal and identical 'freedom of speech or of the
press' which the First Amendment forbids only Congress to abridge. The
history of criminal libel in America convinces me that the Fourteenth
Amendment did