WWI repression of dissent pushed Progressive jurists toward stronger speech protections

Evidence

Lippmann’s orientation was shared by prominent progressives in the American judiciary, who, witnessing the rough treatment of dissenters like Debs, began to think twice about what had been done in the name of progressivism. Among the first to express himself was the famed lower-court jurist Judge Learned Hand, who’d been among the few during the war to squash an indictment under the Espionage Act. After the War, as prosecutors continued to arrest and jail socialists and anarchists for their views, the most prominent progressives on the Supreme Court, Justices Holmes and Louis Brandeis, underwent a transformation. In a series of dissents and concurrences, renowned for their eloquence, the two outlined the case for stronger speech protections in the Constitution. Justice Brandeis, as if in apology for the Court’s behavior during the war, would in 1927 write a memorable paean to the value of liberty of speech in his famous concurring opinion in Whitney v. California: Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 168

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader history of First Amendment jurisprudence and how wartime excess generated the modern free-speech doctrine. — connects to: Failure to defend free speech erodes Western freedoms irreversibly — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1693; Authoritarians support eroding speech rights rather than abolishing them outright — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3609; Punishment for controversial speech has softened dramatically across American history — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1058 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Authoritarians support eroding speech rights rather than abolishing them outright #expands (0.85) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3609
• Punishment for controversial speech has softened dramatically across American history #expands (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1058
• Elite Progressive-era philanthropy aimed primarily at social order, not sincere reform. #complicates (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 738
• Failure to defend free speech erodes Western freedoms irreversibly #responds-to (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1693
• American nationalism has suppressed foreign-coded dissent since the republic’s founding #expands (0.72)