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22 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 284 (1987)
Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law

handle is hein.journals/hcrcl22 and id is 290 raw text is: 284 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review [Vol. 22 Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law. By Donald L. Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. 355. $25.00 cloth. Despite the high profile of the first amendment guarantee of freedom of expression in modern constitutional law, it is worth remembering that free speech was a relative late bloomer among the civil liberties set forth in the Bill of Rights. Indeed, doctrine and scholarship surrounding the Constitution's most majestic guarantee' was virtually nonexistent at the turn of the century (p. 16). In the few cases involving the first amendment which the Supreme Court heard before World War I, the Court was almost uniformly hostile to these rights. The one ruling in favor of a free speech claimant came in a 1902 case holding unlawful the Postmaster General's refusal to deliver payments to a business promoting Christian Science healing aids.2 Signif- icantly, the major abridgement of free speech in the early history of the Republic, the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, was re- pealed before the issue ever reached the Supreme Court (p. 16). The federal government made no further direct attempt to limit free speech until the Espionage Act of 1917 and the even more draconian Sedition Act of 1918 (ch. 1). It was at this point, as arrests under these laws were being tested against a virtually blank doctrinal background, that Ze- chariah Chafee, Jr., began a long and distinguished career as the leading champion of free speech in the United States (p. 16). Donald Smith's biography, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Defender of Liberty and Law, provides an at times lively and unfailingly thorough portrait of Chafee. Smith3 had previously published Zechariah Chafee, Jr., and the Positive View of Press Free- dom.I He goes beyond this earlier article to present a balanced view of Chafee not only as a free speech advocate but also as a scholar of equity, a public servant and a family man. He chronicles Chafee's life (1885-1957) from a comfortable child- ' L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 12-1, at 576 (1978). 2 American School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U.S. 94 (1902). 1 Associate Professor of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, and au- thor of The New Freedom to Publish (1969). 4 5 Journalism History No. 3, 86 (1978).

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