Daniel G. Donalson. The Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I: Using Wartime Loyalty Laws for Revenge and Profit.

Abstract

The notion that the draconian sedition laws of World War I were used by individuals to exact revenge or extract profit at the expense of unfortunate victims is a commonsense conclusion. Plenty of other punitive laws in American history, dating back to at least the Alien and Sedition Acts and forward to at least the Patriot Act, have provided the same pretext for those bent on personal gain of one sort or another. It is a truism that criminal and civil law are routinely abused in multiple ways for personal reasons. U.S. laws and procedures have this possibility “baked into” them, to use a modern idiom. That is why safeguards exist, whether it is the threat of prosecution for perjury or the elaborate rules of testimonial evidence. Still, when the justice system is stressed to the breaking point, or passions are aroused, not even these safeguards are enough. Daniel G. Donalson's thesis is not that personal perversion of these laws for the sake of retribution was unique, but rather that the widespread practice of abuse (encouraged by the laws themselves), the legal machinery charged with enforcing it, the Wilson administration's zeal to stifle dissent, and the insidious climate of fear and hysteria combined to spawn “ a serious threat not only to individual freedom but Constitutional liberties for all Americans” (p. 26).