> An entire article that starts off with "BTW: Supreme Court Justice is wrong on subject" is... well... that's not how this works. The Supreme Court justice literally defines (or at least, is 1/9th of the definition) of our country's legal interpretation.
No, a majority of the current Supreme Court is what defines jurisprudence on a subject.
There are crazy (and non-crazy) minority opinions all the time that don't amount to anything. A later Supreme Court can even repudiate an earlier one.
So it's true that this could change someday, and maybe Alito would even be in the majority then, but until and unless that happens, the "fire in a crowded theater" example is still dicta from an old case that's not good law.
It's not just Reason or Libertarians saying that the old "fire in a crowded theater" trope is nonsense:
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
> An entire article that starts off with "BTW: Supreme Court Justice is wrong on subject" is... well... that's not how this works. The Supreme Court justice literally defines (or at least, is 1/9th of the definition) of our country's legal interpretation.
No, a majority of the current Supreme Court is what defines jurisprudence on a subject.
There are crazy (and non-crazy) minority opinions all the time that don't amount to anything. A later Supreme Court can even repudiate an earlier one.
So it's true that this could change someday, and maybe Alito would even be in the majority then, but until and unless that happens, the "fire in a crowded theater" example is still dicta from an old case that's not good law.