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| Charles Schenck by Vjwilliamson's Blog |
As I started learning about my topic I had no idea what it was about. I searched the Alabama
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| Original Draft Papers From Ancestry.com |
I learned that the crime Schenck had committed was mailing circulars in 1919 to people who had come up for the draft in newspapers. The letters were an attempt to get people to petition and to repeal the Conscription Act. The way he wanted the people to protest was by getting them not to submit to the draft. “Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act by attempting to cause insubordination in the military and to obstruct recruitment.” After reading this article I was wondering what the Conscription Act and the Espionage act were.
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| Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at aveiwfromtheright.com |
So I went back to Google and searched again. I discovered a website called How Stuff Works and found out that the Conscription Act was really just a complicated way of saying an army draft, which I found a neat newspaper article about it. Then I searched what the Espionage Act was. I found a website called The United States History that was very helpful. It was passed in 1917 and it stated that the federal government could charge people that disrupted the draft up to a 10 thousand dollar fine and 20 years in jail. This act was first challenged by the Schenck case. I also read in this article that people argued this case was violating Schenck’s freedom of speech.
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| Dipity.com |
So like I always do I went back to Google. I found a website called the American Bar website that had almost all of the major court cases. I read that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the decision for the unanimous Supreme Court. He said "The most stringent protection of free speech," he said, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic." Justice Holmes compared that circumstance to living in a nation at war. "When a nation is at war," he said, "many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." (Holmes) After reading this I learned why they decided it did not violate his right to free speech. Holmes was pretty much saying that there was a time and a place to say things, but there is also a time and a place not to say things.
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| The 1919 Supreme Court from legal-dictionary.com |
After reading this it helped me to understand how the judicial system works. Now the judges call this “the clear and present danger test.” I read that this test consist of two things, does whatever a person is saying pose a threat to the government, and then could it really happen. An example of this would be someone trying to start a rebellion. It is a test that has that has been used in multiple trials.
When I began researching my topic I had no idea was it was about. As I did some more research I discovered that it was about how Charles Schenk sent a lot letters to people that had been drafted telling them not to go into the army. I learned how the court justified why it had not been a violation of his right of free speech. I also discovered that he was found guilty but he only had to spend 6 months in jail.
