Section III: Comm Law History
What was the intellectual movement that paralleled the scientific revolution from the 1600s to the 1800s, in which philosophers developed ideas such as: the social contract; the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; the separation of governmental powers; the separation of church and government; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; universal voting; and many other aspects of civil society?
Who said: “No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press.”
Why is religion the first item in the US First Amendment?
What were the two basic sides during the English civil war of 1641 – 1660?
Who said: “Who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”
Who said: “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.”
Who said: “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” [a] Francois Voltaire (1694-1778) (Actually, this a popular paraphrase of a sentiment that Voltaire often repeated but never quite said that succinctly.)
Who said: “Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation…”
Who wrote Wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and argued for a “social contract, saying that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property.
Who used truth as a defense in a famous trial for seditious libel in New York in 1735?
Who said: “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”
Who said: “Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”
Who said: ““The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Who said: “All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights” … including “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Also: “The freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments.” Did the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom of 1876 establish the US as a Christian nation?
What were the Alien & Sedition Acts?
How did Jefferson and Madison react to the Alien & Sedition Acts?
Censorship by state governments was typical before the Civil War, especially southern state censorship of information about _________ .
What amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1868, saying that all citizens enjoy equal protection of the laws and that no state law could deny the rights of any citizen.
What case sidetracked the Fourteenth Amendment? How did informal censorship take place at the state level? What was the Lochner Era?
What followed the Lochner Era?
What were Jim Crow laws?
Did the Supreme Court agree to imposed federal standards on state laws concerning the First Amendment in Patterson v Colorado, 1907?