Essay On The Sedition Act

Across the United States there is an insurmountable amount of discord amongst the states and their Governors and their positions on whether to open their doors to Syrian refugees. The United States is already a country that was conquered by immigrants (the Spanish, the French and the English), one would assume that there would be at least some level of empathy for suffering citizens of a country where they are under constant political and religious persecution. However this is not the case in 30 out of 50 states in the US, each Governor of the aforementioned states having their own reasoning as to why; politics having its almost unavoidable tendency of being controlled by popularity, politicians most of the time can do nothing more than to …show more content…
The obvious trouble with this is the subjectivity that this act could have been used with; if the President so felt he could have easily deported anyone on causes that might have been conjured up. Bruce A. Ragsdale writes in his publication, “The Sedition Act Trials” “In practice, the Sedition Act’s supposed liberalizations in the law of seditious libel provided little support for the defendants prosecuted under the act. Most judges followed traditional rules that made defense difficult or impossible, and the judge's instructions to the jurors weighed heavily in favor of conviction” (Ragsdale 15). Knowing this, the Sedition Act should not apply to refugees from the Middle East as they have no intent to defame nor harm the Americans as much as they want to save their own lives. The casualties in Syria can only be expected to increase considering all of the nations that are involved in war in it. The “Sedition Act” would be a great tool to have a legal method of “protecting” American citizens from terrorists but would be far too subject to the fear that its enforcers have of the potential