A confession is wholly and incontestably voluntary only if a guilty person gives himself up to the law and becomes his own accuser. - Robert H. Jackson

When the Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

For a century every contest with the Supreme Court has ended in evading the basic inconsistency between popular government and judicial supremacy.