Beyond the Burning Cross by Edward J. Cleary

Author:Edward J. Cleary [Cleary, Edward J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80126-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

As we all sat down I noticed that from the moment she entered the Court chamber Justice Sandra Day O’Connor appeared troubled, as though there was something about our position that puzzled or worried her. As the Chief Justice conducted the proceedings for admission to the Supreme Court bar, whenever I looked at Justice O’Connor I found that she was staring at me. After the decision, I suspected the reason why she had appeared to be so intensely concerned about this argument.

After the Chief Justice announced the case and my name, I stepped to the podium. In the usual case, counsel begins with a statement of the facts. After the practice oral argument at Georgetown, we had become convinced that the general factual outline of this case—a cross was burned in the front yard of a black family in St. Paul—was already well known and that further facts were irrelevant. The Court interrupted attorneys with questions almost immediately, so I was determined to use my initial time to dwell on the larger issue before the Court rather than on the smaller:

Each generation must reaffirm the guarantee of the First Amendment with the hard cases. The Framers understood the dangers of orthodoxy and standardized thought and chose liberty.

We are once again faced with a case that will demonstrate whether or not there is room for the freedom for the thought that we hate, whether there is room for the eternal vigilance necessary to protect the opinions that we loathe.

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