Sedition and Domestic Terrorism - The Early English Experience, The American Colonial Experience, Adoption Of The First Amendment, The Sedition Act
libel seditious treason criminal
The crime of sedition consists in any attempt short of treason to excite hostility against the sovereign. Most commonly, the crime takes the form of expression, and in such form it is known as seditious libel. Because the substantive contours of seditious libel have shifted over time, there is no simple definition of the doctrine. In its most expansive form, however, seditious libel may be said to embrace any criticism—true or false—of the form, constitution, policies, laws, officers, symbols, or conduct of government. Prosecutions for seditious libel have routinely been used on both sides of the Atlantic to suppress opposition to the dominant political order.
GEOFFREY R. STONE
DAN M. KAHAN
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Seditious libel first entered Anglo-American jurisprudence in a statute enacted by Parliament in 1275. This statute outlawed the telling or publishing of "any false news or tales whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the king and his people or the great men of the realm." Violations were punished by the King's council sitting in the "starred chamber" (Slander and Sedit…
Although it is popularly believed that colonial writers were engaged in a continual struggle with royal judges over the right to criticize the government, actually there were no more than half a dozen common law trials for seditious libel in colonial America. The most famous of those trials was that of John Peter Zenger in New York in 1735 (Alexander). Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Jour…
Scholars have long puzzled over the actual intentions of the framers of the First Amendment's guarantee that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." According to one theory, the framers intended to enact Blackstone's statement that under the common law "the liberty of the press . . . consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications and not…
The first serious challenge to freedom of political expression in the newly formed nation came with the Sedition Act of 1798, ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596. The United States was on the verge of war with France, and many of the ideas generated by the French Revolution aroused fear and hostility in segments of the American population. At the same time, a bitter political and philosophical debate raged betwee…
Between the close of the Sedition Act controversy and enactment of the Espionage Act of 1917 (ch. 30, title 1, ? 3, 40 Stat. 217) during World War I, there were three significant developments in the history of sedition. Suppression of abolitionist expression in the South. After 1830, the Southern states embarked upon a pervasive campaign to suppress the expression of antislavery opinion. Fears of …
Two months after America's entry into World War I, Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917. The act made it a crime, among other things, willfully to make false statements with the intent to interfere with the war effort; willfully to cause or attempt to cause dissension in the armed services; or willfully to obstruct the recruitment or enlistment services of the United States. Violations were …
In the years immediately after World War I there was widespread concern that such radical political doctrines as anarchism and Communism could lead to social, economic, and political upheaval. The federal government used the immigration laws, as amended in 1918, to deport aliens holding radical political views, and this fear of alien ideas initiated the Palmer Raids of 1920, in which some four …
In the late 1920s and the 1930s, there were relatively few governmental efforts to suppress seditious utterances. Moreover, the Supreme Court in this era reversed several convictions for seditious expression, although these decisions did not significantly alter prior doctrine (DeJonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937); Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242 (1937); Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380 (1927)). In 1…
Since the 1960s, the Supreme Court has sharply defined and limited the constitutionally permissible contours of seditious libel. With respect to false statements critical of the government, the Court has announced that "under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries bu…
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