Smith and Chang on Stravinsky's National Anthem

Michael L. Smith, University of Oklahoma College of Law, and Yoo Jung Chang, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, have published Stravinsky's National Anthem.

In January 1944, famed composer Igor Stravinsky was scheduled to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra in performing his controversial arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Before the performance took place, the police arrived in Stravinsky’s dressing room and informed him that his arrangement violated a Massachusetts law against altering the national anthem. Faced with the prospect of a criminal violation, and with the police already removing the offending arrangement from the music stands, Stravinsky opted to conduct the traditional version of the anthem. This Article takes a deep dive into Stravinsky’s distinctive anthem arrangement, surveying its development, performance, and reception. Along the way, we dig into Massachusetts’s anthem restriction—a 1917 law that remains on the books to this day. In doing so, we address the parallels between the law’s wartime development and its wartime enforcement against Stravinsky. We argue that Stravinsky’s run-in with the police was unwarranted, both because Stravinsky’s arrangement did not violate the statute, and because the statute itself ran afoul of the First Amendment. Our historical investigation and analysis shed light on modern issues, including the phenomenon of patriotic outrage, the role of moral panic in the development and enforcement of the law, and the dangers of leaving unconstitutional zombie laws on the books.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Hoffheimer on Home of the Brave, Land of the Free: The Star-Spangled Banner's Contested History

Michael H. Hoffheimer, University of Mississippi School of Law, is publishing Home of the Brave, Land of the Free: The Star-Spangled Banner's Contested History in volume 2 of the Nebraska Journal of Advancing Justice (Spring 2026).

This Essay reviews the history of the composition, revision, and reception of The Star-Spangled Banner, It documents how generations of Americans have contested multiple aspects of the song that would become the national anthem from its musical sources to its title, meaning, and standards of performance. Controversies over the song's symbolic value peaked during the struggle to abolish slavery, the movement for civil rights, and protests by athletes taking the knee in response to continuing repression and abuse of African Americans. Drawing on abolitionist literature, the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, songs by Lead Belly, and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Essay shows that the phrase "land of the free" provoked emotional reactions that veered from dismissing the words as hypocritical to embracing them as aspirational.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.