Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.
Interpretation
A free press is essential for a free society, serving as a tool to uphold democracy and transparency.
Felix Frankfurter emphasizes that the freedom of the press is crucial for the existence of a free society, suggesting that it is not merely about the press being free for its own sake, but rather as a vital mechanism to foster and protect democratic values. The quote serves as a reminder that the press plays a fundamental role in ensuring accountability and the dissemination of truth within society.
In practice
During a lecture on democracy, one might quote this to highlight the importance of journalistic independence.
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.
The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.
Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.
I've always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It's the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.
Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.
Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
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