ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Espionage Act,

00:07

a common defense mechanism for former spies.

00:10

Yeah. That act.

00:12

All right, check out this excerpt.

00:13

[ mumbles ]

00:17

[ mumbling continues ]

00:20

All right, and the question:

00:22

During World War I, the Supreme Court ruled

00:25

that the Espionage Act did not violate

00:28

First Amendment rights if the speech of the convicted...

00:32

what?

00:33

And here are your potential answers.

00:34

[ mumbles ]

00:38

[ mumbling continues ]

00:41

Government suspension of civil liberties during wartime was a

00:44

common practice by the early 1900s.

00:47

But the Espionage Act

00:49

packed a particular punch with its

00:51

punishment "by death

00:53

or by imprisonment for not more than thirty years."

00:57

All right, well, let's see how the Supreme Court justified

00:59

the cost of having some speech that was no longer free.

01:03

Well, did the Supreme Court rule that the Espionage Act

01:07

didn't violate the First Amendment

01:09

if the speech of the convicted A -

01:12

involved a "willful disclosure of information"?

01:15

Well, geez, that's pretty broad, since you can willfully disclose

01:18

anything from an insignificant detail to a widely

01:21

guarded state secret. So it's not A.

01:24

Did the Supreme Court say this kind of speech wasn't

01:26

protected under the First Amendment if it C -

01:29

was deemed "inflammatory or injurious"?

01:32

Well, actually, the First Amendment excludes inflammatory

01:36

or injurious words from protection as free speech.

01:39

But that kind of talk wasn't under discussion for this case.

01:42

Did the Supreme Court justify this censure in

01:45

cases where the speech D - was considered

01:48

"false or scandalous" against the United States?

01:51

Hmm, well false and scandalous statements were made

01:54

criminal under the Alien and Sedition Acts,

01:57

which John Adams signed in 1798 during

01:59

the aftermath of the French Revolution.

02:01

So we're about 120 years too late for that one.

02:04

Which means the Supreme Court was totally on board with

02:07

the Espionage Act when the speech of the convicted

02:10

B - presented a "clear and present danger" to the United States.

02:14

In Schenk versus United States,

02:16

the case involving the Espionage Act,

02:19

the Supreme Court created a famous litmus test

02:22

that said the First Amendment did not protect speech

02:26

that created a "clear and present danger" to the United States.

02:29

So B is the correct answer.

02:31

Though its intentions were noble,

02:33

this so-called litmus test justified

02:35

the dubious arrests of many leftists

02:38

protesting the draft. So for those guys,

02:40

the clear and present danger was simply

02:43

avoiding a war they didn't wanna fight.

02:49

[ wind blows ]

Full Transcript