... Paul, you're probably right that most folks don't know who Learned Hand was. He was quite a brilliant legal scholar and wrote many famous legal opinions. He is considered by many historians to have been the greatest judge never appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He did not, however, even write the opinion to which Charlie was referring. It was actually written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in the case of Schenck v. United States (249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919) for you legal types ).

The exact quote, which I did not have available yesterday when I wrote my "pet peeve" post, was:

>> The most stringent protection of free speech
>> would not protect a man in falsely shouting
>> fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations, in a footnote to this statement, says:

>> The sentence about "falsely shouting fire" is
>> often misquoted by omitting the word "falsely".

----- jim o\-S