Anti-sedition laws

People v. Most – New York, 1902 (64 N.E. 175); State v. Tachin – New Jersey, 1919 (108 A. 318); People v. Gitlow – New York, 1922 (136 N.E. 317), affirmed, 268 U.S. 652 (1925); Commonwealth v. Widovich – Pennsylvania, 1929 (145 A. 295)

• How broad is freedom of speech in America?  The modern debate over this question began in New York City during the 1880s, when increasing labor tension in New York and elsewhere (particularly the 1886 Haymarket riots and related bombings in Chicago) led many unionists and members of the nascent Socialist movement to criticize American institutions, often in incendiary terms.  The debate flared up again during World War I, when the federal government and many states enacted anti-sedition laws in order to limit criticism of the war effort.
  

• American judges disagreed on what test should be applied to determine whether speech was legal:

• The “effects test” advocated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which says that government may restrict any speech that may lead to violent or disruptive conduct, prevailed over the

• “Content test” advocated by New York federal judge Learned Hand, who argued that it was dangerous to predict the effects of speech in advance and that only direct advocacy of violence against the government should be prohibited.

• In Most, New York’s highest court anticipated Holmes’s effects test, holding that a speaker who said he would have “gone after” authorities who prosecuted the Haymarket bombers and predicted that the day of revolution was not far off was criminally liable.  In Gitlow, New York’s Court of Appeals applied the same test, upholding the conviction of Communists who advocated revolution and mass strikes; in Pennsylvania, Widovich presented a similar situation that led to a similar result.  The New York court concluded defendants’ speech was not a “mere academic and harmless discussion”; it brushed aside the fact that there had been no mention of violence, reasoning that “some things are so commonly incident to others that they do not need to be mentioned.”  In Tachin, New Jersey’s highest court upheld the conviction of a speaker who criticized the federal government for entering World War I and urged the audience to arm itself for protection against the government.