Free Speech

When talking about "Free Speech" the discussion inevitably comes to appropriate restrictions, as immortalized by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his reference to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Of course everyone seems to forget that in his opinion in Schenck v. U.S. he was supporting a law that made it illegal to distribute fliers protesting the WWI draft.

Still, I deal with fire exiting issues a lot, and it got me to thinking that the owner of the theater really ought to be the responsible party for allowing too many occupants in the theater and not providing proper signage and egress width. If these precautions are followed then really the biggest issue would be a bunch of annoyed patrons standing out in the cold waiting to get back in after the false alarm. I think that society can surely endure inconveniences like that in the name of free speech.

On an anarchist note, you may be surprised to discover that building codes are not actually written by any public agency, but they are published by private nonprofit organizations, and local governments simply adopt them by statute. In fact, some localities don't require any code compliance at all, but in order to obtain insurance we still design to meet them anyway.