Alien and Sedition Acts: Difference between revisions
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==Constitutionality== |
==Constitutionality== |
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While Jefferson did denounce the Sedition Act |
While Jefferson did denounce the Sedition Act was bogus and a violation of the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] of the [[United States Bill of Rights]], which protected the right of [[free speech]], his main argument on the unconstitutionality of the act was that it violated the [[Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Tenth Amendment]]: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In 1798 when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, First Amendment rights did not restrict the states, as they now do. Jefferson more strongly argued the Federal Government had overstepped its bounds in the Alien and Sedition Acts by attempting to exercise undelegated powers. Apart from Virginia and Kentucky the other state legislatures, all of them Federalist, rejected Jefferson's position by resolutions that either supported the acts, or denied that Virginia and Kentucky could denounce it. Happy ending.<ref>[http://www.constitution.org/rf/vr_04.htm Copies of the responding resolutions].</ref> |
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The judicial redress for bad legislation under the doctrine of [[judicial review]] was not established until ''[[Marbury v. Madison]]'' in 1803; the Supreme Court in 1798, particularly Mr. Justice [[Samuel Chase]], was openly hostile to the Federalists' opponents. The Alien and Sedition Acts were not appealed to the Supreme Court for review, although individual Supreme Court Justices, sitting in [[circuit court|circuit]], heard many of the cases prosecuting opponents of the Federalists. |
The judicial redress for bad legislation under the doctrine of [[judicial review]] was not established until ''[[Marbury v. Madison]]'' in 1803; the Supreme Court in 1798, particularly Mr. Justice [[Samuel Chase]], was openly hostile to the Federalists' opponents. The Alien and Sedition Acts were not appealed to the Supreme Court for review, although individual Supreme Court Justices, sitting in [[circuit court|circuit]], heard many of the cases prosecuting opponents of the Federalists. |
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Revision as of 21:24, 21 February 2008
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The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the United States Congress—which was waging an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War—and signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, attacked them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800. One act — the Alien Enemies Act — is still in force in 2008, and has frequently been enforced in wartime. The others expired or were repealed by 1802. Thomas Jefferson held them all to be unconstitutional and void, then pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them.
Constitutionality
While Jefferson did denounce the Sedition Act was bogus and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech, his main argument on the unconstitutionality of the act was that it violated the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In 1798 when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, First Amendment rights did not restrict the states, as they now do. Jefferson more strongly argued the Federal Government had overstepped its bounds in the Alien and Sedition Acts by attempting to exercise undelegated powers. Apart from Virginia and Kentucky the other state legislatures, all of them Federalist, rejected Jefferson's position by resolutions that either supported the acts, or denied that Virginia and Kentucky could denounce it. Happy ending.[1]
The judicial redress for bad legislation under the doctrine of judicial review was not established until Marbury v. Madison in 1803; the Supreme Court in 1798, particularly Mr. Justice Samuel Chase, was openly hostile to the Federalists' opponents. The Alien and Sedition Acts were not appealed to the Supreme Court for review, although individual Supreme Court Justices, sitting in circuit, heard many of the cases prosecuting opponents of the Federalists.
In order to address the constitutionality of the measures, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to unseat the Federalists, appealing to the people to remedy the constitutional violation, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on the states to nullify the federal legislation. 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, under the Compact Theory, 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 just before the American Civil War.
The Sedition Act was set to expire in 1801, coinciding with the end of the Adams administration. While this prevented its constitutionality from being directly decided by the Supreme Court, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be ruled unconstitutional if ever tested in court. 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).
The Alien and Sedition Act was a set of laws that allowed the president of the time period to expel foreign citizens suspected of treason. The law made it illegal to oppose any measure of false or hostile words against the government. The law also applied to the government's policies.
Elections of 1800
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 criticized the act itself, and used it as one of the largest election issues. It also had enormous implications on the Federalist party after that point, and ended up being a major contributing factor of its demise. The act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.
Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists; while they 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. Of them, 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 following years, Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those that were convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
Full cites
- An Act to Establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization (Naturalization Act of 1798), 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 1940
- Sedition Act of 1918
- Logan Act
Bibliography
- Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (1995), the standard scholarly history of the 1790s.
- Miller, John Chester. Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (1951)
- Rehnquist, William H. Grand Inquests: The historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel 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), clippings from a Republican newspaper
- 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 Canada's and the United States c. 1794–1804" in Studies in American Political Development, Volume 16, Issue 1, April 2002, pp. 48–60
Primary sources
- Randolph, J.W. The Virginia Report of 1799–1800, Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, the Debate and Proceedings thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia, and several other documents illustrative of the report and resolutions,.