Freedom Of Speech And The Espionage Act Address Before The New Jersey State Bar Association June 18 1921

Author : Henry W. Taft
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331405658
Total Pages : 26 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (56 download)

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Download or read book Freedom of Speech and the Espionage Act written by Henry W. Taft and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Freedom of Speech and the Espionage Act: Address Before the New Jersey State Bar Association at Atlantic City, N. J., June 18, 1921 Among the rights connoted by the term Anglo-Saxon Civil Liberty none is more vital to our institutions than that which prohibits our national legislature from making any law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." This clause was not at first contained in the Constitution because the framers, and particularly Hamilton, thought it related to a matter regulated by common law and that the power to deal with it had not been delegated. But the demand of the State Conventions could not be resisted, and the provision became a part of the first of the ten Amendments. Many of the prohibitions of these Amendments, usually referred to as the Bill of Rights, have never been resorted to. They have stood as mute, if glorious, testimony of guaranties extorted by our race from its rulers during centuries of contest and struggle; and they have served as a potential agency warning against encroachment by the State upon the rights of the individual. Thus, seldom has any attempt by any department of our national government been made to place a limit upon the freedom of oral or written expression. The first attempt, at a time of supposed national stress, led to the passage of the Sedition Law of 1798, which, with the Alien Law, met such a storm of opposition as to lead to the disastrous defeat, indeed to the disintegration of the Federalist party. The agitation against these laws undoubtedly involved a warning against any invasion of the right of free speech. But scrutiny of the proceedings of the State Legislatures of the several States, notably the extraordinary debate in the House of Delegates of Virginia; the able and exhaustive report to the House of Delegates of Virginia written by Mr. Madison, in reply to resolutions passed by the Legislatures of other States; the Kentucky resolutions of 1798 prepared by Mr. Jefferson, and other contemporary evidence, must convince the candid student of history that the defeat and destruction of the Federalist party were due, not so much to the contention that a violation of the First Amendment was threatened, as to the view, then regarded as of far greater importance, that the States had not delegated to the Federal Government the power to legislate upon the subject at all. It was the first great political battle involving the question of implied powers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.