[E.O.M.S.]

What a huge debt this nation owes to its "troublemakers." From Thomas Paine to  Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack. 

These observations are prompted by the instant lawsuit, in which a putative class of some 700 or so “Occupy Wall Street” protesters contend they were unlawfully arrested while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011. More narrowly, the pending motion to dismiss the suit raises the issue of whether a reasonable observer would conclude that the police who arrested the protesters had led the protesters to believe that they could lawfully march on the Brooklyn Bridge’s vehicular roadway.

US District Court Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff
Via