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A law enacted on May 16, 1918, during World War I, to restrict public opinion of the U.S. war effort. An amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917, it prohibited spoken and written attacks on the U.S. government or the Constitution and led to numerous arrests. It was repealed in 1921.
Socialist opposition leader Eugene V. Debs was arrested under the law.See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
Two national sedition acts had been passed in the United States by the end of the twentieth century. The first, passed by the Federalist-dominated Congress of 1798, aimed to halt Republican attacks on the government and to ferret out pro-French sympathizers in case of war with France. Two complementary alien acts allowed the government to deport French and pro-French foreigners who were generally supporters of the Democratic-Republican Party. The second sedition act, passed during World War I, targeted subversives, such as pacifists or "Bolsheviks," who interfered with the war effort.
The Sedition Act of 1798 reestablished the English common law on seditious libel, with some important changes. The new law accepted the idea of jury determination of sedition and also allowed truth to be considered in defense. But the Sedition Act did not clearly differentiate between malicious libel and political opinionation. The conviction of several newspaper editors and a Republican congressman confirmed fears that the law was being used to settle political scores. The act expired in 1801, before its constitutionality could be tested, and during President Thomas Jefferson's tenure in office, all persons convicted under the act were pardoned. In 1964 the Supreme Court flatly declared it inconsistent with the First Amendment in New York Times v. Sullivan.
The Sedition Act of 1918 made it a felony to interfere in the war effort; to insult the government, the Constitution, or the armed forces; or "by word or act [to] oppose the cause of the United States." This act departed from the 1798 measure in its emphasis on criticism of the government and its symbols. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis opposed the Sedition Act of 1918 in their dissenting opinions in Abrams v. United States (1919). The Sedition Act hastened the spread of wartime xenophobic hysteria, climaxing in the red scare and the Palmer Raids. The scare had run its course by the early 1920s, and the Sedition Act was repealed in 1921. Similar acts passed by the states resulted in litigation reaching the Supreme Court. The most notable decision in this area was Gitlow v. New York (1925), in which the Court began extending the strictures of the First Amendment to the states.
Although the Alien Registration Act of 1940, better known as the Smith Act, is not called a sedition act, it had that as a major purpose. Rather than forbidding criticism of government officers, the Smith Act prohibited advocacy of forceful overthrow of the government and made it a crime to belong to an organization subsequently found to advocate forceful removal of the government. Rarely used during World War II, in the late 1940s the Smith Act became the main legal weapon in the government's battle against communists. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court blunted the Smith Act by raising the evidentiary standard for prosecutions brought under it. And in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) the Court dismantled the theoretical underpinning of seditious libel when it ruled that even the most extremist political speech, apart from political action, was protected under the First Amendment.
Bibliography
De Conde, Alexander. The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801. New York: Scribners, 1966.
Levy, Leonard W. Legacy of Suppression. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960.
———. Emergence of a Free Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Miller, John C. Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951.
Steele, Richard W. Free Speech in the Good War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
The Sedition Act is in Chapter 290 of the Statutes of Singapore. It was last revised in 1985.
In September 2005, the Sedition Act was first used on individuals when three men, including a
teenager, were charged for making seditious and inflammatory racist comments on the
Subsection 3 of the Act describes the types of publication that have seditious tendency and these includes publication that "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes". Singapore takes social cohesion and racial harmony in the country seriously because of its history of racial riots in the 1960s. More recent events of racial violence in neighboring Indonesia in the late 1990s and early 2000s also serve as reminders of potential inter-racial conflicts in the region.
In September 2005, the Sedition Act was first used on individuals when two men were charged for making seditious and inflammatory racist comments on the
On July 14, The Straits Times published a letter from a Muslim woman asking if cab companies allowed uncaged pets to be transported in taxis, after she saw a dog standing on a taxi seat next to its owner. She said that "dogs may drool on the seats or dirty them with their paws". Her concerns had a religious basis as according to Ustaz Ali Haji Mohamed, chairman of Khadijah mosque, who pointed out that: "There are various Islamic schools of thought which differ in views. But most Muslims in Singapore are from the Syafie school of thought. This means they are not allowed to touch dogs which are wet, which would include a dog's saliva. This is a religious requirement.".
Two days later, on an online forum for Singaporean dog lovers www.doggiesite.com, Lim posted anti-Muslim remarks that allegedly "had a seditious tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of the population in Singapore", according the charges. He pleaded guilty and served one day in jail and a fine of $5,000. [1]
The other man, Koh, is accused of making similar racist remarks filled with vulgarities and insulting to Malays and their religion. He also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one month imprisonment.
In passing the sentences to Koh and Lim on October 7, 2005, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said the two had crossed the red line by wantonly breaching the basic ground rules. He said passing a deterrent sentence was necessary so that such offending acts are tackled early and contained, adding that callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects had the potential to cause social disorder, regardless of which medium or forum they are expressed.
On September 16, a third person, a 17 year old youth, was also charged with the Sedition Act for making racist remarks on his blog site. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 24 months supervised probation that includes counseling sessions and community service in the Malay community. [1]
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong later commented that such remarks will not be
tolerated, even if posted on the
In June 2006, it was reported that a 21-year-old blogger going by the moniker of "Char" was under police investigation for posting cartoons of Jesus Christ on the Internet. [2] He was later let off with a stern warning from the police. [3]
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