Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the criminal arrests of several defendants under the Sedition Act of 1918, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917. The law made it a criminal offense to criticize the production of war materiel with intent to hinder the progress of American military efforts.
The defendants had been arrested in 1919 for printing and distributing anti-war leaflets in New York City. After their conviction under the Sedition Act, they appealed on free speech grounds. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions under the clear and present danger standard, which allowed the suppression of certain types of speech in the public interest.
The ruling is best known for its dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which led to a gradual liberalization of the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence.
Background
On August 23, 1918, Hyman Rosansky was arrested after throwing flyers out of a fourth-floor window of a hat factory in Lower Manhattan. Rosansky had received the flyers at an anarchist meeting the previous day. There were two separate leaflets: one in English and signed "Revolutionists" that denounced the sending of American troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War, and a second in Yiddish that favored the communist side in the Russian Revolution and denounced the American production of weapons to be used against the communists. Jacob Abrams, whose name was eventually used in the Supreme Court ruling, had printed the leaflets in his basement workshop. Relying on information provided by Rosansky, police soon arrested Abrams, Mollie Steimer, and four other activists. All including Rosansky had emigrated to the United States from Russia and supported the communists in their efforts to depose the incumbent czarist regime.
The defendants were charged under the Sedition Act of 1918 for inciting resistance to American military actions and urging curtailment of production of essential war materiel. They were also charged for conspiring with Germany, which was an opponent of both the United States and Russia at the time.
Clarke argued that the defendants' leaflets in Abrams demonstrated an intent to hinder production of war materiel, which was a clear violation of the terms of the Sedition Act and could not be characterized as simple expressions of political opinion. Clarke concluded: