Hess v. Indiana: The Making of a Landmark Supreme Court Case
The May 13, 1970, arrest of Indiana University undergraduate Greg Hess seemed like it was just another police apprehension in the turbulent days of the Vietnam War protest movement.
But the arrest of Hess, for yelling an obscenity, would ultimately lead to a landmark United States Supreme Court case (414 U.S. 105), a case that would become one of the most recognized free speech decisions in America.
More than 30 years after the arrest, many of the participants of that fateful day returned to the Indiana University campus to discuss the arrest, and the legal proceedings that followed. Joining Greg Hess on the panel were the two Maurer professors who represented him, Thomas Schornhorst and Patrick Baude, Bloomington City Prosecutor Randy Bridges, and Bloomington City Court Judge Dave McCrea. A video of the panel discussion can be viewed below.
This exhibit also includes a brief history of the anti-war protest movement on the Bloomington campus and across America, several briefs from the case, photographs, and newspaper accounts of the arrest.
