Press and Speech under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent

Abstract

In Press and Speech under Assault Wendell Bird boldly revises a common narrative about the status of American press and speech freedoms during the 1798 Sedition Act crisis. He argues that the first Supreme Court justices and the Federalist party held more diverse and broader understandings of First Amendment speech protections than scholars have acknowledged. Bird also uncovers unexplored seditious libel prosecutions and state-sponsored opposition to the legislation, indicating that America's initial encounter with interpreting the First Amendment was more dire and complex than previously understood. Bird's argument is strongest when he thoroughly surveys the development of English law to persuasively conclude that the doctrine of “no prior restraint” did not accurately reflect England's free press and speech doctrine in the eighteenth century. Instead, Sir William Blackstone and William Murray, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, created and incorporated this narrow meaning of free press and speech doctrine into English law beginning in 1769. Bird also demonstrates that even if “no prior restraint” is discounted as dubious doctrine, English jurists had long sought to criminalize seditious or defamatory words as harmful and threatening to government.