The Alien and Sedition Acts

About the Book

New York Times bestselling author and civil rights lawyer Qian Julie Wang introduces the highly controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, which have been used to justify the curtailing of basic freedoms from the Revolutionary Era through the present day.

In the summer of 1798, backed by President John Adams, the United States Congress passed a series of laws that would come to be known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, testing the limits of a Constitution barely a decade old. Passed in anticipation of an impending war with France, the three alien laws—the Naturalization Act, the Alien Friends Act, and the Alien Enemies Act—extended the waiting period for naturalization from five years to fourteen and authorized the detention and expulsion of noncitizens, while the Sedition Act placed a federal ban on the publication of any antigovernment writings.

Objections were passionate and swift. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, penned by Vice President Thomas Jefferson, warned that the “friendless alien has been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow.” Yet while three out of the four laws were soon repealed or allowed to expire, the Alien Enemies Act is still in effect today. Though it has been invoked sparingly, it was the basis for Japanese American internment during World War II—and for President Donald Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador during the first one hundred days of his second term.

The questions raised by the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the eighteenth century—about immigration, the rights of the people in a time of war, the power of the government to define matters of national security, freedom of speech, freedom of the press—are still very much matters for concern and debate today. In her introduction to these founding documents, New York Times bestselling author and civil rights litigator Qian Julie Wang offers a vital perspective on the origins and long legal history of these ideas in the United States.
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The Alien and Sedition Acts

Introduction by Qian Julie Wang

I. Opening

If the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the shining pillars built of the brightest hopes of our great American project, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 form the dank, dark cellar that houses all the fears, anxieties, and prejudices that have weighed our nation down since its inception. The acts wasted no time in testing our ten-year-old Constitution, placing upon it the weight of a polarized young nation grappling for power and peace.

The acts comprised four separate laws: the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act, the Sedition Act, and the Alien Enemies Act. Although the first three were either quickly repealed or allowed to expire, the fourth remains alive and well to this day. Indeed, the Alien Enemies Act continues to birth some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history, from the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the Trump administration’s present-day detention and deportation of scores of individuals based on ethnicity and political beliefs.

It is easy to read the story of the Alien and Sedition Acts and fall into despair, for in so many ways the acts—the sentiment that birthed them and the ways they have been used since—stand against the foundational American principles of due process, free speech, and checks and balances. But that story also speaks to our power and agency, as a people, to resist, and to bend the long arc of history toward justice. We cannot forget that the book of America is still being written. And we become the scribes by virtue of our unrelenting belief in America and her ability to live up to our grandest ideals. Ultimately, the story of the Alien and Sedition Acts is a call to arms for each of us: to stand guard at the gates of justice; to speak truth in the face of attempts to stamp out dissent; and, above all, to protect the most vulnerable among us, for their safety is the bedrock upon which democracy rests.

About the Author

Qian Julie Wang
Qian Julie Wang is a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College. She is managing partner of Gottlieb & Wang LLP, an educational civil rights law firm, and her writing has appeared in major publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Salty and Peppers. More by Qian Julie Wang
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