Latest news with #SeditionActof1798
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The US government's round-up of student protesters is genuinely shocking
The defining feature of American democracy, you could be forgiven for having thought, is that you can say what you think without having to fear that you will be arrested, locked up or deported for it. The United States isn't unique in its commitment to this idea, but this country has taken it unusually seriously. No law has been repudiated as decisively by the US supreme court as the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish false or scandalous criticism of government officials. American newspapers, unlike their counterparts in most other nations, can print governmental secrets without fear that the security services will ransack their newsrooms. The first amendment has been understood to protect a very broad range of political speech, including, importantly, by immigrants. As a consequence of all of this, there are – or there were, until very recently – many things one could say in New York that one couldn't say in Istanbul or Mumbai, or even in Berlin or London. The Trump administration's roundup of students who protested Israel's bombardment of Gaza marks an astonishing, radical break with what one might justifiably think of as the central American idea. Immigration agents force a PhD student into an unmarked van in Somerville, Massachusetts, arrest a recent grad in front of his eight-months-pregnant wife in the lobby of a Columbia University-owned building in New York City, seize a Georgetown University postdoc from his home in Washington DC – all, it seems, for their lawful political speech. These are the kinds of scenes we expect to see in the world's most repressive regimes; it's genuinely shocking to see them unfolding here. Thus far the arrests haven't generated widespread outrage in the United States, perhaps because the students are foreign, or because pro-Palestinian protesters have been vilified by both major political parties, many universities and much of the media. But an administration that imprisons and expels foreign students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy is unlikely to stop with foreign students or, for that matter, with pro-Palestinian advocacy. Trump's student roundup has already progressed from visa holders to legal permanent residents, and administration officials have said they intend to come after naturalized citizens as well. And the argument the administration is advancing to justify the cancellation of students' visas – that the students' advocacy undermines US foreign policy – could as easily be made with respect to those who advocate in support of any other cause the Trump administration happens to disfavor. The arrests of pro-Palestinian students have already caused immense damage to this democracy. It's difficult to convey how profoundly these arrests have transformed American universities in just a few weeks. In a legal complaint filed earlier this week, professors describe a 'climate of fear and repression' on university campuses across the United States, with international faculty and students stepping back from groups that engage in political advocacy, forgoing opportunities to publish their work, scrubbing their webpages of references that immigration authorities might find provocative, and no longer engaging with political topics on social media or even in private texts. (The case was filed by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association; the Knight First Amendment Institute, which I direct, is counsel.) Many international students and faculty are genuinely terrified that masked government agents might show up on their doorsteps at any moment. All of this is likely to get worse. The arrests of student protesters are just one manifestation of the Trump administration's broader campaign against democratic institutions and freedoms. As students are being disappeared into Ice's detention centers, Trump is speedrunning the rest of the authoritarian playbook – threatening the media, extorting universities, imposing sanctions on lawyers whom the president perceives to be his political enemies, and intimidating judges. If he continues on this path without encountering more resistance than he's encountered thus far, full-fledged authoritarianism is just around the corner. And yet it may be the arrests of protesters that pose the gravest threat to our fast-fading democracy. Protest has been the engine of social change in this country for many decades, and it is difficult to envision any way for Americans to reclaim their democracy now that doesn't involve millions of people taking to the streets. The arrests of student dissidents are a warning to anyone who might be tempted to try it. If we can do this to them, we can do it to you too, and we will. The students are being persecuted for exercising a right that all of us need now more than ever. Come to their defense for this reason, if for no other. Jameel Jaffer is the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former deputy legal director of the ACLU
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alien and Sedition Acts were reviled in their time
(Photo credit: iStock via Getty Images Plus) This commentary originally appeared in The Conversation. When John Adams became the second president of the United States in 1797, he inherited from George Washington a new experiment in government and a bit of a mess. The country's two political parties – the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans – were increasingly hostile to one another, and the young nation was sinking deeper into a foreign policy crisis with its onetime ally France. Adams' Federalist Party wanted to fight; the Democratic-Republicans did not. As the situation with France, caused by the seizure of American merchant ships, deteriorated, Adams had to prepare his country for war. In an attempt to silence the Federalists' political opponents, he signed the Sedition Act of 1798. The new law attempted to crack down on critical writings about government officials, and it was aimed at Democratic-Republican newspaper editors in particular. Signing the Sedition Act was a reputation-ruining decision. This one act painted Adams as a man who put national security and his reputation above freedom of speech and the press. Yet the real story behind the Sedition Act, which I know from my work as a John Adams and American Revolution scholar, reveals a more complicated calculus. At a time when the current presidential administration is tightening control of the media and even invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which Adams signed into law alongside the Sedition Act – it is important to understand this first attempt to control what kind of news the American people received. The Sedition Act made it illegal to 'write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious' statements, particularly those that might 'stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States.' It was one of four laws Congress passed in 1798 in an attempt to solve a perceived threat from the French and their supporters in the U.S. The other three acts affected immigrants, increasing residency requirements for citizenship from five to 14 years and giving the president broad authority to detain or deport 'aliens' deemed dangerous. Collectively, this legislation is known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Democratic-Republicans opposed the whole package as unconstitutional, but it was the Sedition Act that tainted Adams' reputation. I can't let Adams off the hook for restricting freedom of the press, even temporarily – the Sedition Act expired in 1801 – but context is important. While drafting the Bill of Rights two decades prior, James Madison and his congressional colleagues could not agree on the exact language for the First Amendment, which guarantees the rights to free speech and a free press. Between 1791, when it was adopted, and Adams' signing of the laws in 1798, no court case had put those rights to the test and hashed out its meaning. In 1798, the question was: Should there be restrictions on these rights, or should the press have free rein to print whatever it wanted? Neither Congress nor Adams knew exactly how to interpret the First Amendment. The Supreme Court would not take up freedom of speech and the press until decades later, in 1821. My research and that of other scholars suggest that Adams was never an advocate of the Sedition Act. He neither asked for the legislation, nor did he lobby for it. 'I regret not the repeal of the Alien or Sedition Law, which were never favorites with me,' he told his son in later life. He never indicated why he made the poor decision to sign the law. But he was acting in a time of crisis, and I suspect he felt he had no choice. The U.S. was preparing for war. The newly built USS Constitution was ready to set sail for the Caribbean to protect American merchant ships from French privateers. The Sedition Act wouldn't be the last time a fearful U.S. Congress preparing for war would try to silence opposition. In 1918, during World War I, Congress passed – and President Woodrow Wilson signed – a new Sedition Act that imposed harsh penalties for speech abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military. Because the Sedition Act was used to silence critical media, historians and free press advocates tend to take a dim view of it. Scholars have described the Alien and Sedition Acts as 'reprehensible,' and many quote Thomas Jefferson, who feared they could mean the end of the republic. 'I consider these laws as merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution,' wrote Jefferson, who succeeded Adams in 1801. 'If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office during life [and] reserving to another occasion the transfer of succession to his heirs,' Jefferson concluded. Ultimately, 10 people were convicted under the law, most of them Democratic-Republican newspaper editors. They were tried by Federalist judges who made no secret of their political alliances. Chief among them was Samuel Chase, who presided over the trial of scandalmongering journalist James T. Callender. Callender was convicted of sedition and jailed in the spring of 1800. During this and other trials, Chase abandoned all pretense of impartiality, openly siding with federal prosecutors. 'A republican government can only be destroyed in two ways,' Chase said during the 1800 sedition trial of writer Thomas Cooper, sounding more like a prosecutor than a judge. 'The introduction of luxury, or the licentiousness of the press.' Yet Chase was George Washington's appointee. Adams could scarcely interfere with judicial independence, which was already a well-enshrined principle by the late 18th century. The parameters of free speech, however, were still nebulous and untested. Indeed, 'seditious libel' – speech that might undermine respect for the government or public officials – had long been outlawed under the English Common Law system, which the U.S. inherited. Unlike British laws around free speech, the Sedition Act allowed truth as a defense. 'It shall be lawful for the defendant,' the law read, 'to give in evidence in his defence, the truth of the matter contained in publication.' In other words, critical press about public officials remained permissible in the U.S., so long as it was accurate. Seen in that light, the Federalists claimed the Sedition Act actually improved upon British Common Law. Ultimately, Adams saved the U.S. from what would have been a disastrous war by pursuing peace negotiations with France. The Federalists were furious that Adams, in 1799, had sent a peace mission to France without consulting his party. But he chose peace with France rather than subject the American people to another war. By doing this, he put country above party and sacrificed personal popularity for the common good. Adams' other achievements as president include creating the Naval Department and establishing the Library of Congress. And he made tremendous contributions to the independence of the U.S. as a Founding Father. He served in both Continental Congresses, got loans from the Dutch for the war effort and helped to shape the framework of government for the states. The Alien and Sedition Acts were mistakes that Adams lived to regret. Reviving any of them today would be, in my opinion, a worse one. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
