Clear and present danger was a doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States to determine under what circumstances limits can be placed on First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, or assembly. The test was replaced in 1969 with Brandenburg v. Ohios "imminent lawless action" test. History Before the 20th century, most restrictions on free speech issues in the United States were imposed to prevent certain types of speech. Although certain kinds of speech continue to be prohibited in advance, dangerous speech started to be punished after the fact in the early 1900s, at a time when US courts primarily relied on a doctrine known as the bad tendency test. Rooted in English common law, the test permitted speech to be outlawed if it had a tendency to harm public welfare. Antiwar protests during World War I gave rise to several important free speech cases related to sedition and inciting violence. In the 1919 case Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court held that an antiwar activist did not have a First Amendment right to advocate draft resistance. In his majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. introduced the clear and present danger test, which would become an important concept in First Amendment law However, the Schenck decision did not formally adopt the test. Holmes later wrote that he intended the clear and present danger test to refine, not replace, the bad tendency test. Although sometimes mentioned in subsequent rulings, the clear and present danger test was never endorsed by the Supreme Court as a test to be used by lower courts when evaluating the constitutionality of legislation that regulated speech. The Court continued to use the bad tendency test during the early 20th century in cases such as 1919's Abrams v. United States, which upheld the conviction of antiwar activists who passed out leaflets encouraging workers to impede the war effort. In Abrams, Holmes and Justice Brandeis dissented and encouraged the use of the clear and present test, which provided more protection for speech. In 1925's Gitlow v. New York, the Court made the First Amendment applicable against the states and upheld the conviction of Gitlow for publishing the "Left Wing Manifesto". Gitlow was decided based on the bad tendency test, but the majority decision acknowledged the validity of the clear and present danger test, yet concluded that its use was limited to Schenck-like situations where the