Sample “Prose Outline”

 

Abrams v. United States and the Modern First Amendment

 

Thesis:  Although the Bill of Rights has been in the Constitution since the late eighteenth century, modern First Amendment law is a creature of the twentieth century. The first step in the development of this modern First Amendment law was  Abrams v. United States, which was decided in the period around World War I.

I.                    First Amendment Law from 1800-1900

The Bill of Rights, which includes the First Amendment, became part of the Constitution of the United States in 1791.[1] Calls for a Bill of Rights had been heard during the conventions ratifying the Constitution.[2] As a result James Madison presented a series of amendments to the Congress beginning in 19789.[3]

                But while the Amendment was part of the Constitution, it had very little impact in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.  When the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed during the administration of John Adams, the First Amendment provided little or no protection to those who faced prosecution under the Sedition Act.[4] MORE.

                Nor was the First Amendment a significant legal force during the nineteenth century. Although the decades before the Civil War were marked by prosecutions of people for speaking out and writing in favor of abolitionism, those prosecutions were typically conducted by state governments. As a result, the First Amendment, which at this point only limited the federal government, did not apply and could not offer any protection to those who were arrested for expressing their opposition to slavery.[5]

II.                  The Early Twentieth Century: Leading up to Abrams

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III.                Abrams v. United States and the Creation of Modern First Amendment Law

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CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 


[1] Charles C. Haynes, Sam Chaltain, Susan M. Glisson, First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

[2] CITE.

[3] CITE.

[4] Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 11-21.

[5] Michael Kent Curtis, Free Speech, The People’s Darling Privilege: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000).