Alien and Sedition Acts

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The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by the United States Congress in 1798 and signed by John Adams that, among other things, expanded the president's privileges over foreigners and made the publication of "false, scandalous, or malicious writings" a criminal offense against public officials. The laws were viewed by Democratic Republican Party politicians and, in later years, historians as contrary to the aims and ideas of the Constitution. They were a major issue in the 1798 congressional and 1800 presidential elections . The Alien Enemies Act is the only one of the statutes still in effect and occasionally applied during wartime. The other laws expired or were repealed by Congress after President Thomas Jefferson's inauguration in 1801. Two other similar laws were later passed, the Anarchist Exclusion Acts .

background

In the last few years of the 18th century, distrust of immigrants from France and Ireland rose in the United States, who feared further seditious activities because of the French Revolution and the rebellions in Ireland. In 1798, the United States' refusal to repay its War of Independence debts to France and the harsh American crackdown on French privateers led to a quasi-war that was fought on the oceans.

Domestically, too, tensions grew: Puritan clergymen such as Jedidiah Morse and Timothy Dwight spread the conspiracy theory that the Illuminati , a short-lived German secret society that had been dissolved in 1785, would secretly continue to exist and had already triggered the French Revolution . This thesis, which was developed in the works of the French ex-Jesuit Augustin Barruel and the Scottish naturalist John Robison , they now applied to the Democratic-Republican Party and in particular to its founder Thomas Jefferson, who suspiciously stayed in Paris from 1785 to 1789 . These are agents of the Illuminati who have set themselves the goal of not only abolishing the moderate-conservative government of the Federalist Party under President John Adams , but also abolishing all of Christianity in the USA. In the heated mood - historian Jeffrey L. Pasley speaks of a downright “Illuminati panic” - Congress voted in favor of the four laws.

Components

The Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four separate laws:

  1. The Naturalization Act extended the length of stay for foreigners before they could apply for citizenship from five to 14 years. The law was passed on June 18, 1798 and repealed in 1802.
  2. The Alien Friends Act allowed the president to order the deportation of any foreigner he deemed dangerous to the peace and security of the United States. The law was passed on June 25, 1798 with a two-year period of validity.
  3. The Alien Enemies Act allows the President to order the arrest and deportation of any alien who was a citizen of a country with which the United States was at war. The law was passed on July 6, 1798 and remains in force to this day as part of the United States Code (50 USC 21-24).
  4. The Sedition Act made the publication of "false, scandalous or malicious writing" against the state or its officials a criminal offense. The law was passed on July 14, 1798 and expired on March 3, 1801.

Unconstitutionality

Although Jefferson viewed the laws as a restriction on the freedom of expression guaranteed by the first amendment , the focus of his criticism was on the violation of the 10th amendment , which states:

"Powers, which the Constitution does not give to the United States or take away from the states, are reserved to the states or the people."

When the Acts were passed in 1798, the First Amendment and the rights enshrined in it were not yet applicable to the states. Instead, Jefferson argued that the federal government's laws exceeded their constitutional powers and exercised powers withheld from states. This opinion was shared only by the parliaments in Virginia and Kentucky ; the others passed resolutions declaring the laws constitutional and denying the other two states the right to disregard the law.

The possibility of reviewing federal laws for conformity with the constitution was only made available in 1803 in the judgment of the Marbury v. Madison anchored in American legal practice. In 1798 all the chief judges had spoken out in support of the laws on various occasions. In fact, the laws were not tried before the Supreme Court .

25 people were arrested under the law, including many journalists but also a member of Congress. Eleven of the detainees were tried and ten convicted of rioting. In subsequent years, Congress repeatedly apologized to the victims of the law and paid damages.

Since the Sedition Act 1801 automatically lost its validity, there was no possibility of a constitutional review of the law by the Supreme Court. However, the court has indicated in later judgments that the law was presumably unconstitutional. In the landmark ruling on the New York Times v. Sullivan stated the judges, “ 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 US 254, 276 (1964) )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vernon Stauffer: New England and the Bavarian Illuminati . Columbia University Press, New York 1918, pp. 229-320; Jeffrey L. Pasley: Illuminati . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, pp. 337 ff.
  2. ^ Resolutions of the states .
  3. ↑ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 100 ISBN 0-06-083865-5
  4. ↑ German: "Although the Sedition Act was never reviewed by this court, the attack on its validity in the court of contemporary history was successful."