[throwaway5752]

You are mischaracterizing the case and unfairly tarring the reputation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a truly great Supreme Court justice. Perhaps you would like this better:

"we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death"

Back to the other quote: it is a classic and excellent demonstration of the one of the greatest tensions in US Constitution, the balance between individual rights and societal good. It doesn't require any context.

Perhaps I should have used the blunter formulation, also from Justice Holmes:

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins"

[dobbsbob]

Oliver Holmes already has one of the worst reputations, nothing any of us write can compare with the man's own words regarding his reputation. Here's part of his decision in upholding the the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. [...] Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Of course this has nothing to do with the NSA/GCHQ/CSEC collecting IP numbers of users of privacy software. Only a police state casts a wide net and then spies on it's own citizens to determine their innocence presuming they are already guilty by seeking out this software in the first place. It's the exact guilty by association kind of nonsense every police state throughout history has done.

[throwaway5752]

He does not have one of the worst reputations. That's utterly ridiculous, you don't know a thing about the history of constitutional law if you think so.

Buck v. Bell was one of his worst moments, as well as the rest of the country's. Holmes didn't create the eugenics law in VA, and he didn't hold a gun to the head of the other 7 members of the court who voted with him, though. Eugenics is disgusting and is rightfully in the dustbin of history along with debtors prisons, lobotomization, slavery, and a number of other common practices we currently & correctly view as backwards and evil.

He stands heads and shoulders above the idiot "originalists" polluting the bench right now.

edit: You might as well say that Richard Feynman was a reclusive and socially awkward man. It is not a matter of opinion, it's just false - plainly incorrect. OWH is routinely on the top 10 most influential justices of all time. He remains one of the most widely cited in other SC decisions. But to pin him down on a couple of specific cases and overlooking his enormous influence on contemporary judicial philosophy is ignorant. Don't believe me? Just spent a minute of your time to research it and you'll see how silly it is.

edit 2: Most of what I found to make sure I hadn't lost my mind is even kinder, considering him the 2nd or 3rd most influential justices behind Marshall and closely tied with Warren.