Freedom of Expression in the 1950s

This paper will examine the status of the First Amendment right of freedom of expression as it existed in the 1950s. Specifically, the discussion will focus upon the standard used by the United States Supreme Court to protect freedom of expression with regards to political speech from governmental intrusion and how it changed during the 1950s as a result of the international and domestic political situations. Items discussed will include the background of the political speech standards up to the 1950s, how this standard changed during the 1950s, the domestic and world events which may have influenced this change, and the return to the strict protection standard in the 1960s.

The first time the Supreme Court addressed the issue of protection of political speech was immediately after the First World War. The cases involved prosecutions for agitation against the war and the draft, brought chiefly under the Espionage Act of 1917. It was in these early cases that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes first articulated the "clear and present danger" standard for differentiating between legal advocacy and the incitement of criminal acts. The first case where Holmes applied this test was Schenck v. United States; involving the prosecution of persons who distributed pamphlets to recent draftees, urging them to not show up for service. In the majority opinion, Holmes said that the question in such cases is "whether the words used a

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that the courts could aid in preserving freedom of expression during times of crisis; by 1958, he viewed the First Amendment as a norm which was unenforceable by the judiciary. The majority opinion in Dennis was a sign of the Cold War atmosphere during the 1950s. When it was issued, it instantly became popular with the American public, even though few thought that the danger to the internal security of the United States was imminent. Many tried to point out that the conditions in the United States were not ripe for the sort of revolutions which had been experienced in Eastern Europe and Asia; most of these countries had absolutely no historical experience with democratic forms of government. The danger in the minds of Americans may have been enhanced by the incidents of foreign espionage and industrial sabotage which had occurred, but none of these incidents formed the bases for the prosecutions under the Smith Act, which comprised the First Amendment decisions during the 1950s. These dangers, which had some basis in reality during that time, were not the products of the subversive activities, or the conspiracies to advocate, for which the defendants in the Smith cases were prosecuted. If these dangers were not the ones speci
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Approximate Word count = 4991
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)