A Clear and Present Danger

Charles Schenck wrote a pamphlet arguing that the military draft was immoral and unconstitutional. For that he was sentenced to six months in prison under the Espionage Act of 1917. In the case of Schenck v. United States (1919), a unanimous Supreme Court upheld the act against Schenck's First Amendment challenge and introduced the "clear and present danger" test into the Court's free speech jurisprudence.

Om Podcasten

The 1787 Project is the podcast version of the lectures for Professor Justin Dyer's socially-distanced class on the U.S. Constitution at the University of Missouri. Running from August 2020 - May 2021, the course is about how the U.S. Constitution of 1787 frames the way we organize our life together as a political community. Published twice a week, the episodes explore who gets to decide big questions of public policy and why, analyze the design of our national political institutions and the contested boundaries between them, and look at the structure of constitutional rights.