Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stone, Geoffrey R.

Titel

Judge Learned Hand and the Espionage Act of 1917: A Mystery Unraveled

Ist Teil von

• The University of Chicago law review, 2003, Vol.70 (1), p.335-358, Article 335

Ort / Verlag

Chicago: University of Chicago Law School

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In his brilliant 1917 opinion in Masses Publishing Co v Patten, Judge Learned Hand set forth a novel interpretation of the Espionage Act of 1917 that has had enormous impact on an understanding of the First Amendment. Hand reasoned that it would be unwarranted to attribute to Congress an intention to enact a law with a broadly suppressive effect on free speech, without a statement of its purpose to that end. The conventional wisdom assumed this was a ploy to enable Hand to cast his opinion in terms of statutory construction rather than constitutional compulsion. It turns out that Congress did not intend the Act to have the repressive effect attributed to it by the federal courts during World War I. This was a judicial development which sheds light on an understanding of Congress, the courts, and their respective roles in one of the most repressive periods of American history.