Not an Empty Box with Beautiful Words on It: The First Amendment in Progressive Era Scholarship

1992 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Cobb-Reiley
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Legal Literature

Although most First Amendment histories focus on the colonial period or on the suppression of expression during World War I (and the controversies that emerged from the war period), the Progressive Era from 1900 to 1914—a time rich with dissent, violence, censorship and suppression—produced the first significant body of legal literature dealing with the meaning of free speech and press in theoretical terms. This study examines that literature and suggests that early 20th-century legal scholars gave new interpretations to the constitutional free press and speech guarantees and, in fact, the era was an important turning point in the evolution of our free press and free speech values.

Race, Work, and Disability in Progressive Era United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lawrie
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Assembly Lines ◽  
Actuarial Science ◽  
World War ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Mental Testing ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Throughout U.S. history, the production of difference, whether along racial or disability lines, has been inextricably tied to the imperatives of labor economy. From the plantations of the antebellum era through the assembly lines and trenches of early-twentieth-century America, ideologies of race and disability have delineated which peoples could do which kinds of work. The ideologies and identities of race, work, and the “fit” ’ or “unfit” body informed Progressive Era labor economies. Here the processes of racializing or disabling certain bodies are charted from turn-of-the-century actuarial science, which monetized blacks as a degenerate, dying race, through the standardized physical and mental testing and rehabilitation methods developed by the U.S. army during World War I. Efforts to quantify, poke, prod, or mend black bodies reshaped contemporary understandings of labor, race, the state, and the working body.

THE NEW ERA AND THE NEW WOMAN

2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. CLEMENTS
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
New Women ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Domestic Roles

Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover, demonstrated the strengths and limitations of the expanded social de�nition of womanhood that had been won by reformers during the Progressive Era and World War I. As a leader of several business and women's social welfare organizations, she urged young women to follow her example in seeking professional education and careers as well as upholding traditional domestic roles. Protected by wealth and social status from the most burdensome aspects of domesticity, her public position emphasized the opportunities but understated problems faced by the "new women" in the 1920s and later generations.

World War I: The Turning Point

2017 ◽  
pp. 203-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Raico
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
World War

The First Amendment During the Trump Era and Beyond

2021 ◽  
pp. 185-232
Author(s):  
Carlos A. Ball
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
The Real ◽  
Repeated Use

This chapter explores the ways in which some progressives, in the years leading up to Trump’s election, had grown skeptical of expansive First Amendment protections, viewing them as impediments to the pursuit of equality objectives. Although some of that skepticism is understandable, the chapter details the multiple ways in which free speech and free press protections helped curtail some of Trump’s autocratic policies and practices. In doing so, the chapter argues that progressives, going forward, should not allow what it calls “First Amendment skepticism” to grow to the point that it undermines the amendment’s ability to shield democratic processes, dissenters, and vulnerable groups from future autocratic government officials in the Trump mold. The chapter ends with an exploration of future hate speech regulations. While it would be understandable for progressives, after Trump’s repeated use of hate speech, to call for greater regulations of such speech, the chapter urges progressives to be cautious in this area because of the real possibility that the regulations will be used by future government officials in the Trump mold to target and discriminate against both progressive viewpoints and racial and religious minorities.

scholarly journals All of Life an Experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Jared Harpt
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
World War ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
The Common ◽  
Clear And Present Danger ◽  
Do So

US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. reshaped American free speech law through his Supreme Court opinions during World War I and after. This paper explores the oft-debated questions of whether and how Holmes’s free speech views changed between his legal education (during which he was taught that the common law’s bad tendency test allowed governments to punish any speech after it was uttered) and World War I (during which he created and developed the more expansive clear and present danger test). This paper argues that Holmes developed the underlying principles of his later free speech ideas in his writings on American common law, but that he only expressed those ideas in Supreme Court opinions after several other legal thinkers prodded him to do so.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document