When the phrase was coined, they were almost certainly referring to the then-recent Italian Hall Disaster, in which 73 people were killed as a direct result of someone falsely shouting “fire”.
If you think that can’t happen now, substitute in your imagination some other utterance that kills 73 people in short order. Like maybe, going to a police hostage standoff and mimicking the sound of a gunshot.
As I stated elsewhere, the point of the quote is that there are limits somewhere on freedom of speech. Where to draw the line is hard, and the current First Amendment doctrine is different and more speech tolerant than Schenk.
The cost of a false shout IS low, otherwise we wouldn’t have fire drills.
The second order costs of (the state) limiting free speech when there is no direct harm is huge.
When the phrase was coined, they were almost certainly referring to the then-recent Italian Hall Disaster, in which 73 people were killed as a direct result of someone falsely shouting “fire”.
If you think that can’t happen now, substitute in your imagination some other utterance that kills 73 people in short order. Like maybe, going to a police hostage standoff and mimicking the sound of a gunshot.
As I stated elsewhere, the point of the quote is that there are limits somewhere on freedom of speech. Where to draw the line is hard, and the current First Amendment doctrine is different and more speech tolerant than Schenk.