Negative Space: Editorial

Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law… To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means—to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a lawbreaker—would bring terrible retribution. Against this pernicious doctrine this Court must resolutely set its face. — Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (dissenting in Olmstead v. U.S., 1928)