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Reviewed by: Press and Speech under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent by Wendell Bird Sonja R. West Press and Speech under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent. By Wendell Bird. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Notes, index. $78.) Historians typically describe America’s freedoms of speech and press as late-blooming constitutional rights. Despite the First Amendment’s explicit textual protections for expression, the story goes, the framers of the Constitution and the first Supreme Court justices viewed speech and press liberties quite narrowly. Thus, according to this version of events, it was not until a more progressive Supreme Court finally embraced a broad view of expressive freedoms in the twentieth century that the rights developed into the constitutional powerhouses we know today. Legal historian Wendell Bird, however, challenges this classic narrative and claims that the founders and, in particular, the early justices were far more open to expansive speech and press rights than previously thought. He makes his case by meticulously exploring the views held by the first twelve justices to sit on the United States Supreme Court. Bird examines each justice’s thinking individually by exploring a variety of primary sources—many of which were previously uncited or unpublished—such as legal opinions, public statements and essays, and the justices’ private papers. What he discovers defies the conventional wisdom and forces us to rethink our traditional story of early speech and press rights. To build his argument, Bird takes on two widely accepted beliefs about the early Supreme Court justices’ views of speech and press rights. The first is the claim that the original justices embraced English jurist Sir William Blackstone’s restrictive view of speech and press freedoms as only prohibiting prior restraints on publishing. The second is the suggestion that they universally supported the notorious Sedition Act of 1798—a controversial law passed by the Federalist Party that criminalized seditious libel, including public opposition to government and criticism of government officials, and allowed for the prosecution of many Republican newspaper editors. The heart of Bird’s argument can be divided into two parts—before and after the passage of the Sedition Act. Prior to the Sedition Act, Bird demonstrates that, contrary to most historical accounts, none of the justices adopted Blackstone’s narrow definition of speech and press liberties. Instead, they all expressed much broader understandings of freedoms of expression. The justices’ views were tested, however, by the passage of the notorious Sedition Act in 1798. Yet even during this contentious time, Bird finds that these justices did not quietly accept the [End Page 115] Sedition Act’s infringement of speech and press rights. Rather, they struggled with the new law and split almost evenly over the question of its constitutionality. With this important book, Bird makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of early American speech and press freedoms. By opening our eyes to the first justices’ support for a comprehensive vision of expressive liberties, his work helps us more fully understand the historical meaning of these vital rights. Sonja R. West University of Georgia School of Law Copyright © 2018 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania