Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

This passage comes from Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s concurring opinion (joined by Justice Holmes) in the U.S. Supreme Court case Whitney v. California (1927). The case involved Anita Whitney’s conviction under California’s Criminal Syndicalism Act for her association with the Communist Labor Party. Brandeis used the concurrence to articulate a robust First Amendment theory: that democratic self-government depends on free discussion, and that suppression based on fear—especially fear of radical ideas or anticipated unrest—repeats historical patterns of persecution driven by superstition and panic. The opinion became influential even though it did not control the outcome in Whitney.

Brandeis distinguishes between rational, evidence-based prevention of imminent harm and repression driven by panic. The quote argues that fear—especially fear of “serious injury”—is an unreliable guide for limiting liberty, because fear often magnifies imagined threats and invites scapegoating. By recalling witch trials, he frames censorship and suppression as modern versions of the same impulse: punishing people to relieve collective anxiety. Speech, on this view, is not merely a private right but a civic instrument: open discussion tests claims, dispels superstition, and enables citizens to replace irrational dread with knowledge. The deeper claim is that free expression is a safeguard against the politics of fear.