Schenck v. United States

Context

In 1917, the United States found itself drawn into World War I thanks in large part to the belligerency of German submarines in the Atlantic. After the sinking of the Lusitania, which had cost the lives of 128 Americans in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson continued to impress upon Germany the need to respect American sovereignty on the seas. At first, Germany acquiesced, fearing the involvement of another international power in what was rapidly becoming one of the bloodiest wars in history, but the ability of the British navy to seal off Germany from outside aid and support began to take its effect. After three years of bloodshed and near starvation on the home front, the Germans authorized their U-boat commanders to renew their attacks against civilian passenger ships, drawing the United States into the war. Coupled with Wilson's declaration that German spies were in the United States and the British revelation of the Zimmermann telegram calling for the invasion of the United States by Mexico, America found itself drawn into the war on April 2, 1917.

At the start of the war in February 1917, the US Army had been a comparatively minuscule force of 133,000 men (compared with the nearly 3.8 million who would serve in the British armed forces during the war) with less than five hundred machine guns and no steel helmets or chemical warfare equipment. In order to gear up for war, the United States implemented the Selective Service Act in 1917, which called for the conscription of 2.8 million American men eighteen to forty-five years of age. This number, added to the nearly two million volunteers in the first months of the war, helped the American Expeditionary Force become a potentially powerful force against the Germans and Austrians in the war.

Not all Americans supported these efforts to get America into the war, particularly the left-wing Socialist Party, which viewed the war as further evidence of the capitalist elite's attempt to profit at the expense of imperialist goals, particularly because the United States had not been directly attacked by any German military forces. (The Lusitania had been a British ship.) As groups such as the International Workers of the World and the Socialist Party of America ramped up their protests against the war effort, the United States used the fear of spying to pass the Espionage Act of 1917, which included riders for those encouraging mutiny, desertion, or refusal of duty. The definition of what constituted these actions differed from state to state (as the decision was left to local federal judges and attorneys), and repercussions for engaging in these acts varied from punishment for distribution of materials promoting resistance to the draft (such as what was seen with Charles Schenck) to confiscation of movies (as with the confiscation of the film Spirit of '76 due to the negative portrayal of British soldiers in the American Revolution and the fear that it would lead to a lack of support for America's ally in the war). Even the US Postal Service became a tool for investigating possible acts of espionage, with Postmaster General Albert Burleson ordering his postmasters to monitor the mail for evidence of sedition.

It was against this backdrop that organizations calling for the end of hostilities and protests against the draft found themselves becoming the target of federal investigations and prosecution, putting the First Amendment to perhaps its greatest challenge since the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.