'''''Abrams v. United States''''' 250 U.S. 616 (1919), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court decision involving dealing with the Amendment (1918) to the Espionage Act in 1918of 1917, which made it a criminal offense to criticize the U.S. federal government. The Court ruled 7-2 that the Act did not violate civil rights under the First Amendment, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis providing the dissenting votes.
The Supreme Court's first attempts to define constitutionally protected expression came in a series of cases growing out of prosecutions under the [[1918 Sedition Act]] and other laws. Ironically, the "war to make the world safe for democracy" triggered the worst invasion of civil liberties at home since the nation's founding. The government obviously had to protect itself from subversion, but the new statutes seemed aimed as much at suppressing radical criticism of administration policy as at ferreting out spies. The federal laws, as well as some state counterparts, caught radicals, pacifists and other dissenters in an extensive web. The total number of indictments ran into the thousands; the Attorney General reported 877 convictions out of 1,956 cases commenced in 1919 and 1920.