Abrams+v.+U.S.


 * __Date of Hearing__**: August 1919- November 1919


 * __Associate Justice Bio__**: (John Clarke wrote for the majority and had the biggest impact on the case so we wrote a bio on him)
 * Associate Justice Clarke born September 18, 1857 and graduated from Western Reserve College. He was a progressive and soon after graduating college, he became partner in the law firm of Williamson and Cushing. Clarke was a Justice of Abrams vs. U.S. He usually voted against the conservative majority dominant on the Supreme Court.
 * Clarke moved to Cleveland in 1896 and worked for Williamson and Cushing. Clarke was originally a Democrat but during his time spent in Cleveland, his views were transformed by the mayor of Cleveland, Tom L. Johnson. Johnson helped restore Clarke's standing within the state party after he did not support William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election.
 * Clarke was nominated for the Justice spot by Woodrow Wilson and was known as a decisive man on the Ohio Bar. As a Supreme Court Justice, Clarke showed his understanding for legal realism in his opinions. He often voted with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Louis Brandeis, usually in dissent from the conservative majority dominant on the Court at that time, though Holmes's famous dissent from the Abrams v. U.S. decision was in response to Clarke's majority opinion.
 * __Relevant Documents to Abrams v. U.S.__**
 * The 1918 amendment to the Espionage Act know as the Sedition Act was the basis for the decision of Abrams v. U.S.
 * The Sedition Act forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language"(casebriefs.com) about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces to be viewed with contempt. If violated, the Sedition Act was punishable up to 20 years in prison. This act only applied to times of "war." Originally, the Espionage Act of 1918 forbade the interference with the war effort or with military recruitment or to aid a nation at war.
 * This case was based on two leaflets thrown from a window denouncing the war and the U.S. efforts to stop the Russian Revolution. The first leaflet was signed "revolutionists" and denounced the sending of troops to Russia. The second leaflet was written in Yiddish and denounced the war and US efforts to stop the Russian Revolution and called for a cessesion of the production of weapons to be used against Russia.

__**Summary of Abrams v. U.S.**__
 * The defendants were convicted of distributing leaflets advocating strikes during the Russian Revolution because their speech was not protected by the United States Constitution. These convictions were upheld by the clear and present danger test. This is a doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court to determine under which circumstances limits can be placed on the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech/Press). The defendants were convicted because the law says that "men must be held to have intended and to be accountable for the effects, which their acts are likely to produce." This means that the defendants are responsible for what they said and if anything happened to hinder the U.S. war effort, they would be accountable for those actions as well.
 * The defendants were Russian immigrants and self proclaimed "anarchists" who wrote anti-war propaganda about the U.S. war and wanted to cease production of weapons/ammo that would be used to fight the Russians. This propaganda was intended to be given to workers in the weapon/ammo factories.
 * **The issue:**Whether the defendants' speech was protected under the U.S. Constitution.
 * No the defendants were not protected under the First Amendment because it was seen that they wanted to hinder the progress of the U.S. war effort and to incite revolution in the country as to defeat the military plans for the U.S. in Europe.
 * **Analysis**: We believe that the defendants had as much right to print the two leaflets as the government to print the Constitution. There may have been a threat of danger, but no danger was present at the time of the leaflets being printed, and we feel that if there were significant evidence to prove that the defendants actually had plans of hindering the U.S. war effort beyond the printing of these leaflets, they should have been convicted but this does not hold true in this case. These leaflets were seen as a "clear and present danger" but in reality, we believe that this was all part of a fear that the Russians were going to secretly take over the country. The Supreme Court probably made the right decision for the era but looking back with further investigation, it might have been proven that there was no eminent threat in the printing of these two leaflets. Since then we have installed the Imminent Lawless Action Test to limit freedom of speech, which is a better system for limiting the First Amendment. This case reflected the new heightened sense of nationalism ("rally around the flag") that was present in the U.S. at the time. (Tell us what this is!)

__**Main Issue:**__ Whether these leaflets were protected under the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech).
 * It was seen that these leaflets were not protected under the Constitution because they posed a "clear and present danger" to the U.S. war effort. It was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court that these leaflets were printed to "excite, at the supreme crisis of war, disaffection, sedition, riots and as they hoped, revolution in this country for the purpose of embarrassing and if possible defeating the military plans of the Government in Europe." (casebriefs.com).


 * __Decision rendered by the Court/ The Vote:__**
 * The court ruled the defendants were guilty on the basis that the propaganda that they printed rendered a "clear and present danger" to the U.S. war effort. It was a 7-2 decision by the Supreme Court.

__**Who voted what/ why? And for how long:**__
 * Majority**
 * McReynolds, James Clark (October 12, 1914 - January 31, 1941)
 * White, Edward Douglass (December 19, 1910 - May 19, 1921)
 * Van Devanter, Willis (January 3, 1911 - June 2, 1937)
 * Day, William Rufus ( March 2, 1903 - November 13, 1922)
 * Pitney, Mahlon (March 18, 1912 - December 31, 1922)
 * McKenna, Joseph (January 26, 1898 - January 5, 1925)
 * Clarke, John Hessin (October 9, 1916 - September 18, 1922)
 * Dissenting**
 * Holmes, Oliver Wendell (December 8, 1902 - January 12, 1932)
 * Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (June 5,1916 - February 13, 1939) -These members thought the defendants needed a more protective speech standard.

I believe that the U.S. should not have the right to censor any speech because it is a constitutional right and was one of the reasons why America was created in the first place. The U.S. should have talked to the factories and their workers about the propaganda and that it was targeting the factory workers and telling them that they would be arrested if they boycotted work rather than arresting the makers of the propaganda. If the government would threaten the workers rather than the makers of the propaganda, they would not be violating constitutional rights and would also help the big businesses by keeping the workers in line and keeping the production of their products going.
 * __Ben's Opinion-__**

__**Spenser's Opinion-**__ I believe that the U.S. doesn't have a right to sentence any person who is protected under the First Amendment. NOW, if someone were to threaten to harm anything, protective measures need to be enforced and a trial should be conducted (for example, a school bomb threat). The leaflets that the defendants threw out of the window weren't imposing on anyone's right to the Pursuit of Happiness and were just opinions about Russia's war effert. These people shouldn't have even had a trial because they didn't do anything wrong. They thought their rights were protected but got sucker punched when the Supreme Court had a 7-2 decision stating otherwise.

I believe that the U.S. shouldn't have made it seem like the leaflets affected the war efforts so much. It was only an opinion of the American and Russian governments during the war and should have been protected by the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. The trial was brought straight to the Supreme Court, but it was not a crime in the first place. Somehow, the Justices though that it was illegal to state such things and voted that U.S. was right. Today, such actions wouldn't have much more action than a news report on the TV and internet.
 * __Logan's Opinion-__**


 * __What If The Case Had Gone The Other Way-__** If this case had gone the other way, it would have only been a matter of time until another case like this arose and would be decided like this one. During this time there was a very strong sense of national pride and if someone bad mouthed the U.S., there would have been a negative reaction amongst the public and the government. We do not believe that there would be a way for this case to be ruled differently than the way it was during this time period because of the war and the rampid nationalism in America at the time. Maybe now in 2012, we would realize there are alternatives to locking someone up for what they say about our country but at the time in American history, there were too many hypotheticals that could go wrong. Many feared that this anti-war and anti-U.S. propaganda would incite a revolution like in Russia or hinder the war effort. We think that if we had looked beyond the war and threat of revolution, there might have been a different ruling.
 * __Works Cited:__**
 * //Supreme Court of the United States//. 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. .
 * "Abrams v. United States." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. .
 * "Imminent Lawless Action." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. [].

6/7 - Bibliography - alphabetize this list 26/28 -- Content -- Under laws / rights affected, you mentioned the Esp. and Sedition Acts but not 1st Amendment - yet that's all you guys talked about. ??? 5/5 - Organization - looks good. Total 37/40