Existing comment:
The Alien and Sedition Acts:
The First Amendment was less than a decade old when press freedom was tested in the United States with the passage of 1798 of four laws known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Act, made it a crime to publish "any false, scandalous and malicious writing." About two dozen people, most of them newspaper printers, editors and writers, were arrested under that law. The Sedition Act, which had been favored by President John Adams and opposed by Thomas Jefferson, expired the day before Jefferson took office as president in 1801. |