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 "dangerous" aliens.

Component laws

There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts":

1. The Alien Enemies Act authorized the president to imprison (or deport) any alien from an enemy nation (one the United States was fighting).
2. The Alien Friends Act authorized the president to deport any alien considered dangerous, in both war and peacetime.
3. The Naturalization Act extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens, nearly tripling it from five years to 14.
4. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials.

History

With war looming against a major power, France, Federalists in Congress, in 1798, passed the laws to protect national security in the United States. They were similar to, but not as stringent as 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. While it appears harsh to current Americans, the act was actually much more lenient than the traditional British law of seditious libel. For instance:

• The act required the defamatory words to be false, and it permitted the defendant to plead truth as a defense, unlike traditional seditious libel law, in which truth actually made the offense greater with the principle "the greater the truth, the greater the libel." In other words, as long as someone uttered or published the truth, he could not be convicted under the Sedition Act.

• The act required the defendant to know of the defamatory words' falsity. In other words, someone who uttered a falsehood believing it to be the truth could not be convicted.

• The act allowed the use of a jury to determine both the facts and the law in the case, unlike traditional seditious libel.

Despite these modifications, however, 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. Although the Federalists hoped the Act would muffle the opposition, 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 1800.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed the Acts, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in protest, calling on the states to, in effect, veto federal legislation.

Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists; President Adams himself never supported the laws or used them. No aliens were actually deported, and only ten people were ever convicted of sedition.

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 was unconstitutional. 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, 2 Stat.566
• An Act Concerning Aliens, June 251798 ch. 58, 2 Stat. 570
• An Act Respecting Alien Enemies, July 61798 ch. 66, 2 Stat. 577
• An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States (Sedition Act), July 141798 ch. 74, 2 Stat. 596

See also

• Alien Act of 1705 in England
• Alien Registration Act of 1989
• Sedition Act of 1861
• Sedition Act of 1918
• 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

External links

• Alien and Sedition Acts and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Full text of Alien and Sedition Acts