The decision displays two qualities which are characteristic of the winning counsel since his elevation to the bench; it keeps its eye on the object instead of devoting itself to abstract conceptions, and it emphasizes the interest of society in new forms of protection against poverty, disease, and other evils. To these social interests, the property of the individual must often be partly sacrificed and in recent years we have seen the courts upholding the guarantee of bank deposits, State regulation of insurance rates, and suspension of the right of landlords to recover unreasonable rents or dispossess their tenants. All this would have been regarded as impossible fifty years ago. These extensions of governmental power over property have been accompanied by legislation severely restricting freedom of discussion of still more radical types of State control. It is argued that the right of free speech must face limitation like the right of the landlord. The true policy is exactly the opposite. Not only is it unjust for the State to carry out one form of confiscation while severely punishing the discussion of another form, but in an age of new social devices the widest liberty for the expression of opinion is essential, so that the merits and demerits of any proposed plan may be thoroughly known and comparisons made between it and alternative schemes, no matter how radical these alternatives may be. A body of law that was determined to stand still might discourage thought with no serious damage; but law which is determined to move needs the utmost possible light so that it may be sure of moving forward. No one has expressed so well the new importance of social interests, and the value of freedom of speech; no one, indeed, has expressed so nobly the task and hopes of American Law, as the man of whom it is said that among the long list of American judges, he seems “the only one who has framed for himself a system of legal ideas and general truths of life, and composed his opinions in harmony with the system already framed.” (John H. Wigmore, “Justice Holmes and the Law of Torts,” 29 Harv. L. Rev. 601.) Yet no one has been more cautious than Justice Holmes in warning us not to expect too much from law. “The law, so far as it depends on learning, is indeed, as it has been called, the government of the living by the dead. It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times. As law embodies beliefs that have triumphed in the battle of ideas and then have translated themselves into action, while there is still doubt, while opposite convictions still keep a battle front against each other, the time for law has not come; the notion destined to prevail is not yet entitled to the field.” (“Collected Legal Papers,” 138, 294.)