The Alien and Sedition Acts

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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