Shouting fire in a crowded theater

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"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular metaphor and frequent misquoting of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919. The misquote fails to mention falsely shouting fire to highlight that speech which is merely dangerous and false which can be distinguished from truthful but also dangerous. The quote is used as an example of speech which serves no conceivable useful purpose and is extremely and imminently dangerous so that resort to the courts or administrative procedures is not practical and expresses the permissible limitations on free speech consistent with the terms of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The Schenck case

Holmes, writing for a unanimous majority, ruled that it was illegal to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war. Holmes wrote:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Holmes wrote of falsely shouting fire, because, of course, if there were a fire in a crowded theater, one may rightly indeed shout "Fire!"; one may, depending on the law in operation, even be obliged to. Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, i.e. shouting "Fire!" when one believes there to be no fire in order to cause panic, was interpreted not to be protected by the First Amendment.

The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.

Examples

Actual examples of someone falsely shouting "Fire!":

• "A Cry of Fire in a Crowded Theater," which resulted in no panic but in conviction and imprisonment of the shouter, New York Times, September 25, 1884, p. 4.
• Italian Hall disaster, 1913, 73 dead

Criticism

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Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank, has stated^[1] that in most cases free speech issues in the U.S. depend upon whose property one is on at the time. If someone falsely shouted "fire" and created a stampede which was clearly against the wishes of a theatre owner's policy of conduct, then the theatre owner would be within his rights to prepare charges against the agitator. If, however, the theatre owner decided it would be good for business to have patrons yell "Fire! Fire!" whenever they felt like it, then he would be within his rights to do so.

In A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn contrasted Holmes' ruling with the statement that Schenck's statements were more akin to a person standing outside a burning theatre and shouting "Fire!" in order to warn people not to go inside, the idea being that Europe was the theatre, and World War I was the fire, thus warning the American population to not become involved.

In popular culture

• In Alfred Hitchcock's 1966 film Torn Curtain, the main characters are trapped by the Stasi in an East Berlin crowded theater. Professor Armstrong (Paul Newman) then shouts "Fire!" and manages to escape in the ensuing chaos.
• The film Amazing Grace and Chuck makes reference to the term when the protagonist, Chuck, in his protest of nuclear weapons, is meeting with the fictional President of the United States. The President tells Chuck that the First Amendment right to free speech is indeed a cherished freedom and cannot be revoked, but it does not grant him the right to yell fire in a crowded theatre, to which Chuck rhetorically asks "But what if there is a fire, sir?"
• In Steve Martin's stand up routine, he asks if it is alright to yell "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse, a line taken from "Steal This Book"^{[citation needed]}.
• The comedian Steven Wright remarked that he likes to "shout 'Fire!' in an empty theater".
• In the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz breaks the fourth wall by shouting "Fire!" into the auditorium in order to prove that the "misuse of free speech" exists.
• Metalcore band Every Time I Die in the song, "Champing at the Bit" from 2005's Gutter Phenomenon:

Designer impostors find us twitching in the claws of the snake.
A fin is circling around the floor.
It appears we've lost our way.
Now the tide is swelling and we've fallen asleep on the shore.

Get inside.
Get inside.

Someone's yelling fire.
Someone yelling fire.
Someone's yelling fire in the theater.
Oh, dear god, everybody stay calm.

See also

• Crying wolf

Notes

Further reading

• Cohen, Carl. "Free speech and political extremism: How nasty are we free to be?". Law and Philosophy 7 (3): 263–279. doi:10.1007/BF00152513. http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43167/1/10982_2004_Article_BF00152513.pdf.