In August, 1934 Whit volunteered to head the appeal of Angelo Herndon, who had been sentenced to 18 to 20 years on the Georgia chain gang for "possessing radical literature," a violation of an insurrection law fashioned during reconstruction.

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After the first argument, on April 12, 1935, the Supreme Court dismissed Herndon's appeal by a vote of 6 to 3 (Justice Brandeis, Cardozo, and Stone dissenting).

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Based on subsequent rulings in several courts, Whit argued the case again on February 8, 1937.  This time, by a vote of 5 to 4, the Court threw out Herndon's conviction, declaring that the Georgia insurrection statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it unduly interfered with freedom of speed and assembly and furnished no reasonable standard of guilt

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J. Walter Crew, who argued the government's case observed that the Supreme Court ruled "in favor of Herndon, or rather in favor of Whitney North Seymour, 

who made a fine and powerful address...on freedom of speech and its implications."

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    --from the family calendar 2001