10% off all books and free delivery over £50
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 1870–1920

View All Editions (2)

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 1870–1920 Synopsis

Most American historians and legal scholars incorrectly assume that controversies and litigation about free speech began abruptly during World War I. However, there was substantial debate about free speech issues between the Civil War and World War I. Important free speech controversies, often involving the activities of sex reformers and labor unions, preceded the Espionage Act of 1917. Scores of legal cases presented free speech issues to Justices Holmes and Brandeis. A significant organization, the Free Speech League, became a principled defender of free expression two decades before the establishment of the ACLU in 1920. World War I produced a major transformation in American liberalism. Progressives who had viewed constitutional rights as barriers to needed social reforms came to appreciate the value of political dissent during its wartime repression. They subsequently misrepresented the prewar judicial hostility to free speech claims and obscured prior libertarian defenses of free speech based on commitments to individual autonomy.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780521655378
Publication date:
Author: David M University of Texas, Austin Rabban
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Format: Paperback
Pagination: 422 pages
Series: Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society
Genres: History of the Americas
Human rights, civil rights