Way back in the wee hours of the morning of June 3, 1961, someone broke into the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, Florida. The perpetrator made off with money from the cash register and smashed the cigarette machine. A few hours later, a man well-known to local law enforcement, a drifter with a long criminal record named Clarence Gideon, was arrested.

When brought before a judge, Gideon stated that he was too poor to afford a lawyer and asked that one be appointed for him. Under the Florida laws at the time, the judge refused, as lawyers were not appointed for low-level crimes. Forced to defend himself as best he could, Gideon was convicted of the burglary and sent to the state prison for five years.

In the months that followed, Gideon picked up a pencil and wrote a letter to the Supreme Court of the United States, telling the story of what had happened to him and asking the nation’s highest court to step in. Now, the SCOTUS, as it is called, gets thousands and thousands of letters every court session from people asking the Court to intervene in their criminal or civil litigation efforts. On average, the Court agrees to hear less than one percent of those cases, and one would think that the odds against the justices picking a letter hand-written in pencil must have been staggering.

Yet, that is exactly what happened. Two years later, in 1963, the SCOTUS handed down a verdict that was both unanimous and powerful. The Court ruled that under the Sixth Amendment every accused person gets a lawyer, regardless of their ability to pay. Thus, a seemingly minor case, a simple break-in, likely by a career criminal, became a precedent-setting and vital SCOTUS decision – much like the Miranda case would also be just a few years later. You just don’t know a priori which cases will change the shape of American jurisprudence.

I thought of Mr. Gideon as I read a recent Colorado Politics story about what might seem like a fairly minor point of law, but which seems – at least to my non-lawyer brain – to potentially be quite significant. The Colorado Court of Appeals recently ruled that a Colorado Springs-based doctor can seek to publicly identify the anonymous person or persons who have been leaving him negative online feedback in the form of bad reviews of her dermatological business.

As I’ve mentioned in these columns many times, the greatest challenge that our national Constitution creates is the situation wherein fundamental rights are in seemingly constant conflict with each other. And a particularly challenging area of conflicting rights comes when we talk about free speech.

Now, as you likely know, the right to free speech is not absolute. You cannot, for example, yell fire in a crowded theater (unless – and this is important – there really is a fire). You can’t incite a riot and you can’t lie in an advertisement for, say, a new car that you claim runs on hugs.

I thought of all these ideas and cases as I read the CP story. It seems that person or persons unknown posted 32 different negative reviews on a website set up to host reviews of various medical professionals. The complaints ranged from finding the staff rude to claiming that the medical treatment received was substandard. None of these reviews were signed, meaning the doctor involved had little recourse in trying to figure out if there was any merit to the claims or if someone was just disgruntled. The doctor sued to have the posters’ identified, and the appellate court has said that effort may proceed.

So here yet again we see rights in conflict. We have a basic idea in the United States that people should be able to face their accusers. But we also value the ability of people to keep their identity hidden. Whistleblowers, for example, are often regarded favorably, even if they feel they must keep their identities hidden for their own safety. Will people leave accurate reviews of their medical service if they are forced to sign their names, and therefore worry about being sued? Will doctors be unable to protect themselves from obnoxious former patients who make up false claims of medical malpractice? These are tough issues to be sure.

There are lots of important legal details in this case, and I encourage you to read the full story at CP. I don’t profess to understand the subtle legal minutiae, but my lay person’s review of the overall issues involved makes me wonder if this case just might end up in the SCOTUS someday.

Nearly sixty years ago it was a single person writing out a letter in pencil. Today we are talking about keystrokes by anonymous individuals. But the principles seem, at least on the surface, to be similar. When fundamental rights are in conflict, what solution is the least bad?

How will the courts ultimately decide regarding your right to be unidentified on the Internet? We just don’t know. But until then, you might want to think carefully about what you post unsigned.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.