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In 1902 the State of New York passed the Criminal Anarchy Law after President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist the year prior. The law specifically criminalized any activism supporting a revolution against the federal government.
5 kwi 2017 · Gitlow v. New York Case Brief. Statement of the facts: New York passed a law prohibiting the written or verbal advocacy of criminal anarchy. Gitlow, who was a socialist, was arrested after distributing “The Left-Winged Manifesto” advocating for Socialism in America.
Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court holding that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had extended the First Amendment's provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press to apply to the governments of U.S. states.
New York —decided in 1925—was the first Supreme Court decision applying the First Amendment’s free speech protections to abuses by state governments. There, Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for distributing a “Left-Wing Manifesto,” which advocated socialism in America.
Benjamin Gitlow was indicted in the Supreme Court of New York, with three others, for the statutory crime of criminal anarchy. New York Penal Laws, §§ 160, 161. [Footnote 1] He was separately tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment.
Gitlow v. New York, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 8, 1925, that the First Amendment protection of free speech also applies to state governments. Learn more about the case, the issues it raised, and the Court’s ruling in this article.
1 sty 2009 · Benjamin Gitlow, a socialist leader, was convicted under New York’s criminal anarchy law for publishing 16,000 copies of the Left-Wing Manifesto, which advocated “the proletariat revolution and the Communist reconstruction of society” through strikes and “revolutionary mass action.”
