Literature Network » Oliver Wendell Holmes

Whistleblower ruling keeps courts at bay

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 20060604
Author:George Will

In 1892, when First Amendment jurisprudence was in its infancy, Oliver Wendell Holmes, then a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, said that a policeman "may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman." Holmes had a flair for aphorisms. What he meant in the case of a policeman fired for collecting money for a political committee was that government has a right to discipline an officer for speech that, had it been made by a private citizen, would have had constitutional protection.

In subsequent cases, the U.S. ...

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