ABSTRACT
In Gitlow v. New York, the US Supreme Court faced the issue of whether the free speech provision of the First Amendment to the US Constitution applied to the states. Benjamin Gitlow, a former Socialist assemblyman and a participant in the founding of the American Communist Party, was convicted of violating New York's Criminal Anarchy Act, a state version of national sedition legislation. The New York statute, enacted in 1902, made it a crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. Gitlow was sentenced to a minimum of five years in prison, but he and the others had their convictions overturned in the New York appellate courts or received pardons from Governor Alfred E. Smith. New York's law reflected the legislative judgment that such expression could be prohibited because it represented a sufficient danger of "substantive evil."
