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Over time, the majority within the Court did move toward a more complete acceptance of Holmes's clear and present danger test. In 1941, in Bridges v. California, the Supreme Court offered a summary of the state of the question. In this case, the contempt citations filed against a newspaper and a labor leader critical of judicial rulings had been appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds that such criticism was protected by the First Amendment. The Court threw out the citations arguing that while disrespect for the judiciary was indeed a substantive evil, it did not warrant the imposition of restrictions on speech. "What finally emerges from the 'clear and present danger' cases," wrote Justice Hugo Black, "is a working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious, and the degree of imminence extremely high, before utterances can be punished."
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