Photo1: Espionage Act of 1917
LAD #30
Schenck v United States was a Supreme Court case concerning
enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War 1.
Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr. provided an opinion that concluded that the defendants (Charles
Schenck and Elizabeth Baer) who distributed fliers to draft-age men urging them
to resist induction into the armed services (on the grounds that it constituted
involuntary servitude which is prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment) could be
convicted of obstructing the draft, a criminal offense.
In his opinion, Holmes said
that expressions which were intended to result in a crime and posed a ‘clear
and present danger’ of succeeding, could be punished.
The opinion’s most famous
passage was: ‘The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a
man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic’.
Photo2: In later wars people could legally get out of the draft by being "conscientious objectors" meaning that their religion prevented them from fighting.
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