Description: Controversies and litigation about free speech, often involving sex reformers and labor unions, preceded the Espionage Act of 1917.
Review Quotes: "Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years fundamentally revises our understanding of the history of free speech in America between the 1870s and World War I. Rabban skillfully recovers libertarian and antilibertarian attitudes toward speech that a long tradition of twentieth-century commentary has ignored." G. Edward White, University Professor and John B. Minor Professor of Law and History, University of Virginia