Shouting fire in a crowded theater
Open-knowledge reference entry
"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections. The phrase is a paraphrasing of a dictum, or non-binding statement, from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The case was later partially overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. an immediate riot).
The paraphrasing differs from Holmes's original wording in that it typically does not include the word falsely, while also adding the word crowded to describe the theatre.
The utterance of "fire!" in itself is not generally illegal within the United States: "sometimes you could yell 'fire' in a crowded theater without facing punishment. The theater may actually be on fire. Or you may reasonably believe that the theater is on fire." Furthermore, within the doctrine of First Amendment protected free speech within the United States, yelling "fire!" as speech is not itself the legally problematic event, but rather, "there are scenarios in which intentionally lying about a fire in a crowded theater and causing a stampede might lead to a disorderly conduct citation or similar charge."
Background
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, panics caused by false shouts of "fire" in crowded theaters and other venues were not uncommon.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shouting fire in a crowded theater” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.