## Facts

- New York’s Criminal Anarchy Law made it a felony to advocate, by speech or writing, the overthrow of organized government by force, violence, or unlawful means, and to print or distribute materials doing so.
- Benjamin Gitlow, a socialist political organizer, helped publish and distribute “The Left Wing Manifesto” through a paper called *The Revolutionary Age*.
- The manifesto urged revolutionary socialism through “mass action,” including strikes and class conflict, to “overthrow and destroy” parliamentary government.
- Gitlow admitted responsibility for the manifesto’s circulation and promoted its principles within party branches.
- The prosecution presented no evidence that the manifesto caused actual disorder or a specific attempt to overthrow the government.
- Gitlow was convicted in New York trial court; intermediate appellate courts and the New York Court of Appeals affirmed.
- Gitlow sought U.S. Supreme Court review, arguing the statute and his conviction violated due process by infringing freedom of speech and press.

## Issues

1. Whether freedom of speech and of the press are among the liberties protected from state impairment by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
2. Whether New York’s Criminal Anarchy Law, as applied to Gitlow’s publication and distribution of the manifesto, violated constitutional protections for speech and press.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed Gitlow’s conviction (7–2).
- For purposes of the case, the Court assumed that freedoms of speech and press are fundamental liberties protected against state infringement through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Court held that speech and press protections are not absolute and may be limited under a state’s police power.
- The Court upheld the statute as a reasonable measure against advocacy threatening the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means.
- The Court deferred to the legislature’s judgment that such advocacy presents sufficient danger to justify punishment without requiring proof of imminent harm or actual disturbance.
- Dissenting, Justices Holmes and Brandeis would have required a showing of a present, immediate danger; they viewed the manifesto as too unlikely to produce imminent unlawful action.

## Legal Principles

- Freedom of speech and of the press may be treated as fundamental liberties protected against state impairment through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (accepted as a governing assumption in resolving the case).
- Speech protections do not create immunity for advocacy that a state may reasonably find threatens public safety or the continued existence of organized government.
- A legislature may criminalize advocacy of overthrow by force, violence, or unlawful means based on a judgment that such advocacy has a sufficiently dangerous tendency; the state need not wait for actual disorder or imminent destruction.
- A statute may be sustained where construed to target advocacy of action toward unlawful overthrow, rather than abstract doctrine or academic discussion lacking incitement to concrete action.

## Conclusion

The Court accepted that free speech and press are protected against state action through the Fourteenth Amendment for purposes of decision, but still sustained New York’s criminal anarchy conviction, deferring to legislative determinations that advocacy urging unlawful overthrow may be punished without proof of imminent harm.


Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)