Adams, Sedition, Commerce

[dynia at loyno.edu]

Much of this debate is nicely summarized in Smith's
FREEDOM'S FETTERS. There were some efforts by the
Federalists to rely on the commerce power for  the alien
legislation, but even some of their fellows found such a
basis problematic. Sandy is correct that ultimately they
relied on "inherent power". The Republicans with respect to
the Sedition Act from practically day one saw it as a  First
Amendment issue--several days after the original version of
what became the Sedition Act was introduced in Congress a
Republican paper, Aurora, printed the text of the bill below
a reprint of the full text of the First Amendment, 
apparently feeling that no additonal commentary was
necessary.

Phil Dynia
Political Science Department
Loyola Univertsity New Orleans

----- Original Message Follows -----
From: Sanford Levinson <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>
To: mgraber at gvpt.umd.edu, conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu,
LawCourts-L at usc.edu, whoooo26505 at yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Adams, Sedition, Commerce
Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 15:53:18 -0600

> There is a fascinating debate on the constitutional basis
> of the alien act, which a number of Jeffersonians indeed
> argued was beyond any enumerated power.  The response, by
> the Federalists, was that it was an "inherent power"
> attached to sovereignty, an argument accepted almost 100
> years later in the Chinese Exclusio Cases. In our casebook
> , we present both the congressional argument and Field's
> opinion in The Chinese Exclusion Cases as evidence for the
> proposition that it is simply untrue that ours is only a
> "limited government of assigned powers," that the
> partisans of the Alien Act didn't bother with finding an
> assigned power.  The Enemy Alien Act was different, since
> everybody conceded that was covered by the war power.  I
> don't think that anyone at the time would have found a
> "commerce clause" argument to be plausible.
>  
> sandy
> 
> ________________________________