Gitlow v. New York
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| Gitlow v. New York | ||||||||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued April 12, 1923 Reargued November 23, 1923 Decided June 8, 1925 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||||||
| Though the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from infringing free speech, the defendant was properly convicted under New York's criminal anarchy law for advocating the violent overthrow of the government, through the dissemination of Communist pamphlets. | ||||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: William Howard Taft Associate Justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Willis Van Devanter, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Edward Terry Sanford, Harlan Fiske Stone |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||||||
| Majority by: Sanford Joined by: Taft, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, Butler, Stone Dissent by: Holmes Joined by: Brandeis |
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| Laws applied | ||||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; N.Y. Penal Law §§ 160, 161 | ||||||||||||||
Gitlow v. New York, , was a historically important case argued before the United States Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had extended the reach of certain provisions of the First Amendment — specifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press — to the governments of the individual states. The Supreme Court had previously held, in Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833), that the Constitution's Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, and that, consequently, the federal courts could not stop the enforcement of state laws that restricted the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Gitlow v. New York's partial reversal of that precedent began a trend towards nearly complete reversal; the Supreme Court now holds that almost every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to both the federal government and the states. Ironically, the Court upheld the state law challenged in Gitlow v. New York, which made it a crime to advocate the duty, need, or appropriateness of overthrowing government by force or violence. The Court's ruling on the effects of the Fourteenth Amendment was incidental to the decision, but nevertheless established an extremely significant precedent.
As justification for its decision, the Supreme Court relied on the "due process clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment. This provision — contained in Section One of the amendment — prohibits any state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Specifically, in its decision the Court stated that the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were "among the fundamental rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states." The Court has used this reasoning in other cases, such as Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), and Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), to extend the reach of the Bill of Rights. Constitutional scholars refer to this as the process as the "incorporation doctrine," meaning that the Supreme Court incorporates specific rights into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Gitlow v. New York was also important for defining the scope of the First Amendment's protection of free speech following the period of the "Red Scare," in which Communists and Socialist Party members were routinely convicted for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918. Gitlow, a Socialist, had been convicted of criminal anarchy after publishing a "Left Wing Manifesto." The Court upheld his conviction on the basis that the government may suppress or punish speech when it directly advocates the unlawful overthrow of the government.
The opinions in this case are notable for their attempt to more clearly define the "clear and present danger" test that came out of Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Both the majority and dissenting opinions applied the clear and present danger test, but with differing results. The majority opinion written by Justice Edward Terry Sanford stated that a "State may punish utterances endangering the foundations of government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means" because such speech clearly "present[s] a sufficient danger to the public peace and to the security of the State." Justice Sanford and the concurring justices believed Gitlow presented a clear and present danger simply by publishing the manifesto. According to Sanford, "a single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smouldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration."
In the dissenting opinion, Justice Holmes, the original author of the clear and present danger test, disagreed, arguing that Gitlow presented no present danger because only a small minority of people shared the views presented in the manifesto and because it directed an uprising at some "indefinite time in the future."
[edit] References
Spaeth, Harold J.; and Smith, Edward Conrad. (1991). HarperCollins college outline series: Constitution of the United States. (13th ed.). New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-467105-4
