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Abuses by England’s King John cause a revolt by nobles, who compel him to recognize rights for both noblemen and ordinary Englishmen. This document, known as the Magna Carta, establishes the principle that no one, including the king or a lawmaker, is above the law, and establishes a framework for future documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
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Virginia’s House of Burgesses creates the Virginia Declaration of Rights, under Thomas Jefferson. This is the first bill of rights to be included in a state constitution in America
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Declaration of Independence is signed
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The Federalist Papers are written. They were a unique collection of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay in favor of a ratification of the Constitution.
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Virginia became the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, the first 10 ammendments of the Constitution.
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By order of President Lincoln, Gen. John A. Dix, a Union commander, suppresses the New York Journal of Commerce and the New York World and arrests the newspapers’ editors after both papers publish a forged presidential proclamation purporting to order another draft of 400,000 men. Lincoln withdraws the order to arrest the editors and the papers resume publication two days later.
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Anthony Comstock successfully lobbies Congress to pass the Comstock Law. This is the first anti-obscenety law, limiting free speech, enacted at the federal level. The law targets the “Trade in and Circulation of, obscene literature and Articles for immoral use” and outlawed sending any “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials or any information or “any article or thing” related to contraception or abortion through the mail.
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Patterson v. Colorado was the first free-press case of the Supreme Court. The defendant published articles and a cartoon which reflected badly on the conduct of the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court in handling some pending cases to which he was a party. The Supreme Court decided it does not have jurisdiction to review the “contempt” conviction of U.S. senator and Denver newspaper publisher Thomas Patterson for articles and a cartoon that criticized the state supreme court.
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The “Scopes Monkey Trial” occurs in Dayton, Tenn. School-teacher John Thomas Scopes is found guilty of violating a Tennessee law which prohibits teaching the theory of evolution in public schools.
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The Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the state court for Yetta Stromberg, who violated a state law by displaying a Communist red flag. Legal commentators cite this case as the first in which the Court recognizes that protected speech may be nonverbal, or a form of symbolic expression.
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Congress authorizes President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the Office of Censorship.
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The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the practices of requiring daily Bible readings in public schools in the companion cases Abington School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett
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The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District that Iowa public school officials violated the FirstAmendment .The Court determines that school officials may not censor student expression unless they can reasonably forecast that the expression will cause a substantial disruption of school activities. The "Tinker Test" is applied to all other free speech cases in the future
