ESPIONAGE ACT

ESPIONAGE ACT, 1917. Shortly after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the House Committee on the Judiciary conducted public hearings regarding proposals to limit debate on administration policies. The government of President Woodrow Wilson had already sought to silence critics through proclamations restricting the movement of enemy aliens, the establishment of a loyalty-security program, and the setting up of the Committee on Public Information for censorship purposes. Nevertheless, Department of Justice attorneys desired additional means to restrict individual conduct and quash "political agitation" during wartime. Heated debate over the proposed Espionage Act occurred in Congress during the spring of 1917. Opposition arose regarding possible prior restraint, the affording of sweeping legislative powers to the executive branch, and the treatment of critical perspectives as "seditious" or "treasonable." At the same time few expressed concerns over the part of the bill that authorized the U.S. Post Office Department to refuse to deliver radical labor or socialist publications.

On 15 June 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act. A provision to grant the government broad powers to censor newspapers was omitted, but the legislation remained sweeping nevertheless. Title I provided a $10, 000 fine and imprisonment for up to twenty years for those who "willfully" delivered "false reports or false statements" intended to impede U.S. military operations, engender disloyalty within U.S. military ranks, or obstruct recruitment or enlistment into the U.S. military. Title XII, which allowed for a $5, 000 fine and a five-year prison term, authorized the postmaster general to refuse to deliver any material "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States." On 16 May 1918 Congress amended the Espionage Act through the passage of the Sedition Act; that measure targeted those who did "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive" language concerning the American government, flag, Constitution, or military. The federal government prosecuted over two thousand cases involving purported violations of the Espionage or Sedition Acts, with more than a thousand convictions obtained. Among the most celebrated individuals indicted under the Espionage Act was Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs; and the postmaster general declared The Masses, a leading publication of the World War I–era American Left, "nonmailable."

In 1919 the United States Supreme Court upheld convictions in a series of cases involving the Espionage and Sedition Acts. In the process Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis D. Brandeis began to insist that "clear and present danger" must exist to allow for a restriction of First Amendment rights. In 1921 the Sedition Act was rescinded, while the Espionage Act was amended once more with heightened penalties in 1940 after World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. The Espionage Act remained in force in the early 2000s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Goldstein, Robert Justin. Political Repression in Modern America: 1870 to the Present. New York: Schenkman, 1978.

Murphy, Paul L. World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States. New York: Norton, 1979.

Rabban, David M. Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Robert C.Cottrell

See alsoSedition Acts .