Clear and Present Danger – Episode 36 – Thomas Healy on how Oliver Wendell Holmes changed the history of free speech in America
…the federal and local governments to restrict and punish everything from peaceful public protests, obscenity, and political speech of “bad tendency.” How the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 led to dramatic restrictions of political speech and indictments of thousands of activists protesting American participation in World War I. The remarkable development in Wendell Holmes’ conception of the First Amendment, from his opinion uph…