英语词汇suicide pact的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

suicide pact; the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The phrase suicide pact, an agreement between two or more people to commit suicide together, dates back to about 1910. The sec- ond phrase is much younger. According to Linda Greenhouse, writing in the New York Times (9/22/02): “Supreme Court cog- noscenti usually attribute the phrase [the Constitution is not a suicide pact] to Justice Robert H. Jackson’s dissent in a 1949 free-speech case, Terminiello v. Chicago. The court’s majority opinion, by Justice William O. Douglas, had overturned the disorderly conduct conviction of a right-wing priest whose anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rantings at a rally had incited a riot. Chicago’s breach-of-the-peace ordinance violated the First Amendment, the court held. Where his colleagues saw free speech, Jackson, after serving as a judge at the Nuremburg war crimes trial, saw the dangers of the mob. He countered the four-page ruling with a 24-page dissent ending: “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wis- dom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a sui- cide pact.”

词汇	suicide pact
词源	suicide pact; the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The phrase suicide pact, an agreement between two or more people to commit suicide together, dates back to about 1910. The sec- ond phrase is much younger. According to Linda Greenhouse, writing in the New York Times (9/22/02): “Supreme Court cog- noscenti usually attribute the phrase [the Constitution is not a suicide pact] to Justice Robert H. Jackson’s dissent in a 1949 free-speech case, Terminiello v. Chicago. The court’s majority opinion, by Justice William O. Douglas, had overturned the disorderly conduct conviction of a right-wing priest whose anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rantings at a rally had incited a riot. Chicago’s breach-of-the-peace ordinance violated the First Amendment, the court held. Where his colleagues saw free speech, Jackson, after serving as a judge at the Nuremburg war crimes trial, saw the dangers of the mob. He countered the four-page ruling with a 24-page dissent ending: “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wis- dom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a sui- cide pact.”
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