Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were acts of Congress passed during the administration of President John Adams; his signature made them into law on July 14, 1798. They were designed to protect the United States from aliens alleged to be dangerous and to muffle internal dissent.
Component laws
There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts":
- The Alien Enemies Act authorized the president to imprison (or deport) any alien from an enemy nation (one the United States was fighting).
- The Alien Friends Act authorized the president to deport any alien considered dangerous, in both war and peacetime.
- The Naturalization Act extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens, from five years to 14.
- The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials.
History
With many Federalists advocating war against a major power, France, Federalists in Congress, in 1798, passed the laws which they asserted would protect national security in the United States and which sought to silence internal opposition. They were similar to laws passed at about the same time in the United Kingdom and Canada in response to the threat of subversion by agents of the radical French government. Jeffersonians, however, recognized that the laws were to be used as a tool of the ruling Federalist party to extend and retain their power, silencing any opposition. Because most immigrants became Democratic-Republicans, the Naturalization Act's longer residency requirement meant that fewer of them could become citizens and vote against the Federalists. Under the Alien and Alien Enemies Acts, the president could deport any "dangerous" or "enemy" alien — a law that is still in effect in 2006.
Under the Sedition Act, anyone "opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States" could be imprisoned for up to two years. It was also illegal to "write, print, utter, or publish" anything critical of the president or Congress. It was notable that the Act did not prohibit criticism of the Vice-President. Jefferson held the office of Vice-President at the time the Act was passed so the law left him open to attack.
There has been considerable debate over the meaning and interpretation of the Sedition Act. It is clear that American jurisprudence on the freedom of speech at some point broke from earlier British thinking, which held to notions that speech was an act that could be "seditious" regardless of its truth or veracity, and that free speech could be limited based on governmental priorities. For example, the Republicans and a number of moderate Federalists successfully added language to the Sedition Act that by its terms required "a false, scandalous and malicious writing", pointing to the trial of John Peter Zenger that established that colonial courts might treat truth as a defense to libel. However, many Federalist judges did not interpret the law consistently with this reading, and there is an ongoing historical debate, highly relevant in particular to originalist interpretations of the First amendment and to the question of whether the Alien & Sedition Act was unconstitutional, as to when and the extent to which the break with British precedent occurred.
Jeffersonians denounced the Sedition Act as a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech. The First Amendment clearly states that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." Although the Federalists hoped the Act would muffle the opposition, many Democratic-Republicans still "wrote, printed, uttered and published" their criticisms of the Federalists. Indeed, they strongly criticised the act itself, and used it as an election issue. The act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.
At the time, the redress for unconstitutional legislation was unclear, and the Alien and Sedition Acts were not appealed to the Supreme Court for review. Instead, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both sought to unseat the Federalists, essentially appealing to the people for the redress of the constitutional violation, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in protest, calling on the states to nullify the federal legislation as unconstitutional. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions reflect the Compact Theory, which states that the United States are made up of a voluntary union of States that agree to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states do not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Therefore, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements, including the Constitution, and nullify such violations or even withdraw from the Union. Variations of this theory were also argued at the Hartford Convention at the time of the War of 1812 and by the southern states at the time of the Civil War.
Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists; while the Federalists prepared lists of aliens for deportation, and many aliens fled the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, Adams never signed a deportation order. Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors but also Congressman Matthew Lyon, were arrested, but it appears only eleven were tried (one died while awaiting trial) and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges. Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and over the ensuing years Congress repeatedly apologized for or voted recompense to victims of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Although the United States Supreme Court never ruled on the validity of any of the Alien and Sedition acts, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in particular in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be unconstitutional today. For example in the seminal Free Speech case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Court declared, "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964).
Full titles
- An Act to Establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization (Naturalization Act), June 181798 ch. 54, 1 Stat.566
- An Act Concerning Aliens, June 251798 ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570
- An Act Respecting Alien Enemies, July 61798 ch. 66, 1 Stat. 577
- An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States (Sedition Act), July 141798 ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596
See also
- Alien Act of 1705 in England
- Alien Registration Act of 1989
- Sedition Act of 1861
- Sedition Act of 1918
- USA Patriot Act of 2001
References
- Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (1995), the standard scholarly history of 1790s.
- Miller, John Chester. Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (1951)
- Rehnquist, William H. Grand Inquests: The historic Impeachments of Justice Samual Chase and President Andrew Johnson (1994); Chase was impeached and acquitted for his conduct of a trial under the Sedition act.
- Rosenfeld, Richard N. American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns: The Suppressed History of Our Nation's Beginnings and the Heroic Newspaper That Tried to Report It (1997)
- Smith, James Morton. Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (1967).
- Stone, Geoffrey R.Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism (2004).
- Alan Taylor, "The Alien and Sedition Acts" in Julian E. Zelizer, ed. The American Congress (2004) pp 63-76
- Wright, Barry. "Migration, Radicalism, and State Security: Legislative Initiatives in the Canadas and the United States c.1794–1804" in Studies in American Political Development, Volume 16, Issue 01, April 2002, pp 48-60