Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 (1917-1918)

Summary

Throughout American history, free speech has often been tested during times of war.  During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson pushed for new laws that criminalized core First Amendment speech.  Congress passed the Espionage Act shortly after the U.S. entered the war. The Act made it a crime to convey information intended to interfere with the war effort.  Later, the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties for a wide range of dissenting speech, including speech abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution, and the military.  These laws were directed at socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists.  The Wilson Administration argued that these Acts were essential to the war effort and prosecuted thousands of anti-war activists under their various provisions.  While modern scholars view these Acts as violating core free speech protections, the Supreme Court at the time upheld these convictions.  The Supreme Court reversed course in future decades, increasingly protecting free speech over time—building on a series of famous opinions by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Louis Brandeis in the 1910s and 1920s.  By the 1960s, the Supreme Court advanced a broad vision of free speech protections.

Selected by

The National Constitution Center

Document Excerpt

Espionage Act of 1917

Section III: Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever when the United States is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. . . .

Sedition Act of 1918

Section III: Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both . . . .