Ollman v. Evans’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[U]nder the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. Neither the intentional lie nor the careless error materially advances society’s interest in “uninhibited, robust, and wide open” debate on public issues.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Anderson · McCabe v. Rattiner

2. “If, as I suspect and as is customary, the article appeared on the opinion-editorial page, generally known in the trade as the op-ed page, that circumstance would be very relevant to the district court's determination. Newspaper readers are likely to assume that articles appearing on the op-ed page, especially nationally syndicated editorial comments, in contrast to news articles which traditionally appear elsewhere in the newspaper, are intended to express specific opinions. It is also customary for the newspaper to limit the space available for syndicated columnists to express their editorial opinions. This requires that their views be presented in very condensed form. The primary focus of such articles is opinion and they are generally so understood. Under these circumstances, readers of the opinions of nationally syndicated columnists are less likely to be misled by the omission of some facts that persons named in such articles might consider to be necessary.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Ollman v. Evans

3. “His candid writings avow his desire to use the classroom as an instrument for preparing what he calls “the revolution.” ***!}:** Oilman’s intentions become explicit in “On Teaching Marxism and Building the Movement,” his article in the Winter 1978 issue of New Political Science. Most students, he claims, conclude his course with a “Marxist outlook.” Oilman concedes that will be seen “as an admission that the purpose of my course is to convert students to socialism.” That bothers him not at all because “a correct understanding of Marxism (as indeed of any body of scientific truths) leads automatically to its acceptance.” Non-Marxist students are defined as those “who do not yet understand Marxism.” The “classroom” is a place where the students’ “bourgeois ideology is being dismantled.” “Our prior task” before the revolution, he writes, “is to make more revolutionaries. The revolu tion will only occur when there are enough of us to make it.” 120”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ollman v. Evans