The trial attracted national attention[1][2] because one of the defendants was Dr. Benjamin Spock, the well-known pediatrician and author of the best-selling The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr., chaplain of Yale University; Mitchell Goodman, novelist and teacher; and Marcus Raskin, a lawyer who served briefly on the U.S. National Security Council under Kennedy and co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies.

[3] While a doctoral student in English at Harvard University, Ferber grew increasingly involved in the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and came to feel he should no longer cooperate with the Selective Service System.

In fall 1967 he helped organize and publicize a ceremony at the Arlington Street Church, Boston, where draft-age men were to turn in their draft cards and pledge to refuse induction and go to prison.

In 1931, the Schenck ruling was quoted and reiterated in Near v. Minnesota, where Justice Charles Hughes affirmed that the government could suppress speech in order to prevent "obstruction to its recruiting service."

After serving as an assistant professor at Yale (1975-1982), he joined the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy as a staff member, writing articles and lobbying Congress on disarmament and arms control.