Thomas Jefferson: The Patriot Act of the 18th Century

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The expiration of the acts did not end challenges to the First Amendment or the tendency on the part of some Presidents to behave like monarchs, sometimes with the cooperation of Congress. The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited "false statements" that might "impede military success." During World War II, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to use sedition charges to suppress black newspapers, claiming they undermined the war effort with reports of racial dissension and demands for civil rights. It took Chief Justice Earl Warren's Supreme Court on March 9, 1964, in The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, to finally declare unconstitutional the Sedition Act of the Adams Administration. Though the act had expired under Jefferson's Administration, the court's action buried that particular threat to free speech once and for all--or so people hoped. Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan held that L.B. Sullivan, an Alabama official, had not been libeled in a New York Times ad that had been paid for by civil rights proponents. Brennan supported his arguments by citing Jefferson.

Reed, who writes frequently on dissent, is the author of Another Day at the Front