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Jun 15, 1215
1215 magna carta
The New England king is forced to accept the bill of rights . -
1771
The State of Virginia jails 50 Baptist worshipers for preaching the Gospel contrary to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. -
1791 Dec. 15, virgina adopts the bill of rights
1791
On Dec. 15, Virginia becomes the 11th state to approve the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, thereby ratifying the Bill of Rights. -
19th Century
sees spike in civil rights cases from the small amount of 12 they had last year c -
1801 Thomas Jefferson pardon
Congress lets the Sedition Act of 1798 expire, and President Thomas Jefferson pardons all person convicted under the Act. The act had punished those who uttered or published “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings against the government. -
1836 gag rule
congress is trying to give the slaves no rights -
1868 14th amendment is ratified
no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” -
1907
1907
In Patterson v. Colorado — its first free-press case — the U.S. Supreme Court determines 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. The Court writes that “what constitutes contempt, as well as the time during which it may be committed, is a matter of local law.” -
1919
1919
In Schenck v. U.S., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Holmes sets forth his clear-and-present-danger test: “whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent.” -
1925
In Gitlow v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds under the New York criminal anarchy statute Benjamin Gitlow’s conviction for writing and distributing “The Left Wing Manifesto.” The Court concludes, however, that the free-speech clause of the First Amendment applies to the states through the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
1933 California repels
1933 California repeals its Red Flag Law, ruled unconstitutional in Stromberg. -
1959
1959
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the conviction of a college professor who refuses, on First Amendment grounds, to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In Barenblatt v. United States, the Court states that, “where First Amendment rights are asserted to bar governmental interrogation, resolution of the issue always involves a balancing by the courts of the competing private and public interests at stake in the particular circumstances shown
