Alien and Sedition Acts: Laws, Prosecutions, and Legacy

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four federal laws passed by Congress in 1798 and signed by President John Adams that tightened the path to citizenship, gave the president sweeping power to detain and deport non-citizens, and made it a crime to publish harsh criticism of the federal government. Three of the four laws expired or were repealed by 1802. The fourth, the Alien Enemies Act, is still on the books as 50 U.S.C. § 21 and was invoked as recently as March 2025.

Why Congress Passed Them in 1798

The immediate backdrop was the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval conflict with France. American envoys sent to Paris were met with demands for bribes before negotiations could even begin. When news of that episode, later known as the XYZ Affair, reached home, public anger surged and the Federalist Party, which controlled both Congress and the presidency, pushed through new military spending along with laws aimed at immigrants and domestic critics.

Politics ran alongside the security argument. Recent immigrants, especially those from Ireland and France, tended to support Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. Making naturalization slower and criminalizing certain kinds of political speech served a partisan purpose as well as a stated national-security one, and that dual purpose is visible in the text of each law.

The Four Laws

The Naturalization Act

Before 1798, an immigrant could apply for citizenship after five years of residency. The Naturalization Act stretched that waiting period to fourteen years and required applicants to file a declaration of intent at least five years before their final application.¹ It also set up the country’s first federal registration system for non-citizens: local clerks and port officials were told to record each immigrant’s birthplace, age, nationality, allegiance, occupation, and intended residence.²

Congress repealed the law in 1802 and restored the five-year residency requirement, which remains the baseline for naturalization today.¹

The Alien Friends Act

The Alien Friends Act let the president, acting alone, order any non-citizen out of the country if he judged that person “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” There was no trial, no hearing, and no requirement to file formal charges.³ Ignoring a deportation order carried up to three years in prison and permanent disqualification from ever becoming a citizen. Returning after deportation without presidential permission was punishable by imprisonment for as long as the president considered necessary, with no fixed maximum.

Adams never used the law to deport anyone, though some French nationals left the country voluntarily rather than risk it. The act expired after two years by its own terms and was not renewed.

The Alien Enemies Act

The Alien Enemies Act ran on a narrower trigger. It could only be activated during a declared war or when a foreign nation perpetrated, attempted, or threatened an invasion of U.S. territory. Once the president issued a proclamation, the government could detain and remove citizens of the hostile nation who were fourteen or older and had not been naturalized.⁴ The original text applied only to males; a 1918 amendment removed that limit.

Unlike the other three acts, this one had no expiration date. Presidents have invoked it during World War I and World War II, and it remains federal law. Its current use is covered below.

The Sedition Act

The Sedition Act made political speech itself a federal crime. Section 1 punished conspiracies to oppose federal measures, obstruct federal law, or intimidate a federal officeholder, with fines up to $5,000 and imprisonment from six months to five years.³ Section 2 reached speech and publication directly: false, scandalous, and malicious statements against the federal government, Congress, or the president carried fines up to $2,000 and up to two years in prison.⁵ The statute specifically covered anything meant to bring those officials “into contempt or disrepute” or to stir public hostility toward them.

One omission in the list of protected officials showed the partisan logic. The Vice President was left off. In 1798 that office belonged to Thomas Jefferson, leader of the opposition, so Federalist editors could attack him freely while his allies risked prosecution for attacking Adams or Congress.⁵

Section 3 allowed defendants to argue that the statements they published were true, and it let juries decide both the law and the facts.³ On paper that was more protective than English common law, which did not recognize truth as a defense to seditious libel. In practice, Federalist judges made the defense hard to use.

Who Was Prosecuted

Federal prosecutors brought charges against at least twenty-six people under the Sedition Act between 1798 and 1801. The targets were newspaper editors, printers, and at least one sitting member of Congress, and all were aligned with the Democratic-Republicans. No Federalist publication was prosecuted.⁶

Matthew Lyon, a Republican congressman from Vermont, was indicted while running for reelection after mocking Adams as pompous and bumbling. At trial, Justice William Paterson told the jury it could not consider whether the Sedition Act was constitutional and could only decide whether Lyon had made the statements and whether he had proved them true. Lyon got four months in prison and a $1,000 fine, and won reelection from his cell.⁷

Thomas Cooper, a lawyer and newspaper editor in Pennsylvania, was convicted in April 1800 for a broadside attacking Adams.⁸ James Callender, a political writer in Virginia, received nine months and a $200 fine for his book The Prospect Before Us. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase presided over Callender’s trial with such open hostility to the defense that the case later became one of the grounds for his impeachment.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

The sharpest constitutional response came from two state legislatures. In late 1798, Kentucky and Virginia each passed formal resolutions declaring the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional. Jefferson secretly drafted the Kentucky Resolution and James Madison the Virginia Resolution. Both kept their authorship hidden, since public opposition to federal law carried real legal risk under the Sedition Act.

Both resolutions argued that the federal government was a creation of a compact between sovereign states and held only the powers the Constitution specifically delegated to it, and that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment. They differed on the remedy. Kentucky, in Jefferson’s language, called nullification of unauthorized federal acts “the rightful remedy.” Virginia, more cautiously, said states had a right and duty to “interpose” against dangerous exercises of ungranted power. No other state endorsed either resolution at the time, but the arguments about state sovereignty and nullification would be pulled back into use for decades, most consequentially before the Civil War.

Expiration, Pardons, and the Verdict of History

The Sedition Act contained a built-in sunset. It expired on March 3, 1801, the last day of Adams’s term.⁵ The date was not coincidence. The law was written so that Federalists could use it while in power but could not have it used against them if they lost. The Alien Friends Act likewise expired after its initial two-year term.

The political effect ran the opposite direction from what Federalists intended. The prosecutions built sympathy for the defendants and hardened the view that the party in power was trying to crush legitimate dissent. Jefferson won the election of 1800 and his party took Congress.³ Once in office, Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under the Sedition Act. Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802 and returned the residency requirement to five years.¹

The Supreme Court never ruled on the Sedition Act while it was in force; it expired before any case reached the justices. In 1964, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Justice William Brennan wrote that the court of history had settled the question: “the Act, because of the restraint it imposed upon criticism of government and public officials, was inconsistent with the First Amendment.” That is now the consensus view among legal scholars and the Court itself.

The Alien Enemies Act Today

Only one piece of the 1798 package is still living law. The Alien Enemies Act, codified at 50 U.S.C. § 21, lets the president order the detention and removal of non-naturalized nationals aged fourteen or older from a country that is at war with the United States or that has perpetrated, attempted, or threatened an invasion.⁴ Presidents used it to intern German nationals during World War I and Japanese, German, and Italian nationals during World War II.

In March 2025, President Trump invoked the act against members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization, on the theory that the group was “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion.” The proclamation directed action against Venezuelan nationals aged fourteen and older who were members of the group and had not been naturalized or admitted as lawful permanent residents.⁹ It was the first time the act had been used against a non-state group rather than the nationals of a hostile country.

The Supreme Court took up the challenge in Trump v. J.G.G., decided in April 2025. The Court held that challenges to removal under the Alien Enemies Act must be brought through habeas corpus petitions in the district where the person is confined, and that Fifth Amendment due process applies: a person facing detention and removal under the act is entitled to notice and a reasonable opportunity to seek judicial review before being sent out of the country.⁹ It was the first time the Court had squarely addressed due process rights under the 227-year-old statute.

1
Constitution Annotated. ArtI.S8.C4.1.2.3 Early U.S. Naturalization Laws
2
U.S. Law and Race Initiative OER. Naturalization Act of 1798
3
National Archives. Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC 21 – Restraint, Regulation, and Removal
5
GovInfo. 1 Stat. 596 – An Act in Addition to the Act, Entitled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States
6
Federal Judicial Center. The Sedition Act Trials
7
Federal Judicial Center. The Sedition Act Trials
8
National Archives. United States v. Thomas Cooper
9
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. J. G. G. (2025)