Am I guilty of sedition?
I do not believe this administration and Congress has done a good job for the people of the United States. Is that statement an act of sedition? It could be according to a web site I just found. Some background: Montana's governor has just pardoned several individuals from their guilty verdict, charged with sedition during World War I. They protested that food rationing was a joke, were hauled off to jail and served prison time. I have protested how our government is running the United States today. If we apply the same standards today as Montana's government did at that time, then I'm not the only one who could be found guilty of sedition... let's look at Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, the Dixie Chicks, Alex Baldwin, the list goes on and on. Today we call it freedom of speech. Tomorrow it may be called sedition like it was less than 100 years ago. Here's the definition:
What is sedition? Sedition is the illegal promotion of resistance against the government, usually in speech or writing. What is illegal depends on the government and its regard for freedom of speech. The crime of sedition is alive and actively prosecuted in many countries today. In the United States, sedition as a crime has been enforced at several points in its history, notably during the presidency of John Adams under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, during and after World War I, and under a 1940 federal law, the Smith Act, criminalizing membership in the Communist Party. When the U.S. Supreme Court first addressed the question of the constitutionality of sedition laws after World War I, the majority used what was then the traditional standard for judging “seditious” speech—whether it had a tendency, even a remote tendency—to stir people to resistance or rebellion against the government. Later, however, justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis began to develop a more expansive notion that would give more breathing room to political dissent. One of the most stirring writings in American law in defense of free speech is the opinion by Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California in 1927. Holmes’ and Brandeis’ theory did not prevail in their lifetimes. In 1964, in New York Times v. Sullivan, a majority of the the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that punishment for sedition was contrary to the First Amendment, And in 1969, in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the high court set forth the current standard for punishing seditious speech. A person cannot be criminally punished for urging the use of force or for urging that laws be broken “except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite...such actions." In other words, mere words, unless intended to immediately provoke lawless action, and likely to do so, cannot be punished by the state. Had such a standard been in effect in 1918, no sedition law would have been enacted.
What is sedition? Sedition is the illegal promotion of resistance against the government, usually in speech or writing. What is illegal depends on the government and its regard for freedom of speech. The crime of sedition is alive and actively prosecuted in many countries today. In the United States, sedition as a crime has been enforced at several points in its history, notably during the presidency of John Adams under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, during and after World War I, and under a 1940 federal law, the Smith Act, criminalizing membership in the Communist Party. When the U.S. Supreme Court first addressed the question of the constitutionality of sedition laws after World War I, the majority used what was then the traditional standard for judging “seditious” speech—whether it had a tendency, even a remote tendency—to stir people to resistance or rebellion against the government. Later, however, justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis began to develop a more expansive notion that would give more breathing room to political dissent. One of the most stirring writings in American law in defense of free speech is the opinion by Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California in 1927. Holmes’ and Brandeis’ theory did not prevail in their lifetimes. In 1964, in New York Times v. Sullivan, a majority of the the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that punishment for sedition was contrary to the First Amendment, And in 1969, in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the high court set forth the current standard for punishing seditious speech. A person cannot be criminally punished for urging the use of force or for urging that laws be broken “except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite...such actions." In other words, mere words, unless intended to immediately provoke lawless action, and likely to do so, cannot be punished by the state. Had such a standard been in effect in 1918, no sedition law would have been enacted.
posted by Kathy T. at 9:54 AM
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