Encyclopedia of Sociology

CENSORSHIP AND THE REGULATION OF EXPRESSION

in which some national security restrictions are
necessary. However, a strong proclivity exists to
abuse these laws to protect policies or govern-
ments that are losing, or have lost, their base of
popular support.

The prototypical conception of censorship is
firmly rooted in governmental restrictions on
speech that is critical of government, yet poses
significant threats to security. The law of seditious
libel was imported to the United States from Eng-
land, where, during the eighteenth century, it
served as a principal vehicle through which gov-
ernments attempted to stave off criticism and to
control public opinion. The power of seditious
libel laws lay largely in their breadth—advocacy of
an ‘‘ill opinion’’ of government was considered
actionable—and from the selectivity with which
they could be enforced. During most of the eight-
eenth century, these cases were decided by judges
rather than juries, and the truth of a charge was
not a defense until the nineteenth century.

The climate in which the Constitution’s press
clause was drafted was one in which a central
threat to viewpoint diversity was posed by govern-
ments who could use their monopolies on legiti-
mized force to control the marketplace of ideas.
The most noted illustration of this in colonial
America was the case of John Peter Zenger, whose
newspaper, the New York Weekly was launched in
1734 as the only voice of opposition to the widely
reviled colonial Governor, William Cosby. When
the newspaper’s opening salvo attacked Cosby’s
arbitrary exercise of power, Zenger was promptly
charged with seditious libel. After spending eight
months in jail, Zenger was acquitted by a jury
(reluctantly allowed in this case), who ignored the
judge’s instructions that the truth of a charge was
irrelevant. Although many thought the First Amend-
ment would change such abuse, Congress soon
passed the Sedition Act, which was used by Presi-
dent John Adams, a Federalist, to silence criticism
launched by Republican supporters of Thomas
Jefferson.

The Sedition Act was allowed to lapse when
Jefferson took the Presidency and would not re-
turn until World War I. However, in the years
during which the Constitution did not apply to the
states, statutory attacks on specific viewpoints could
be fierce at the state level. Louisiana’s pre-Civil

War statute prosecuting speech that sowed ‘‘dis-

content among the free population or insubordi-

nation among the slaves’’ provides just one exam-

ple of how law could be enlisted in the service of

majoritarian predjudices. When the federal gov-

ernment returned to the sedition business with

passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the

country was characterized by a climate of isolation-

ism and a receptive ear to the tenets of Socialists,

who opposed the entry of the United States into

World War I. The Sedition Act rendered it illegal

to speak against the draft or to advocate strikes

that might hinder wartime production. It resulted

in more than 800 convictions, including that of

Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs. Prose-

cutions for political speech continued after World

War II, when provisions of the 1940 Smith Act

were used as the legal arm of an extensive and

popularly backed campaign to suppress Commu-

nist viewpoints in the press, the workplace, and the

entertainment media.

A significant judicial outcome of cases stem-

ming from the enforcement of these acts was the

evolution of the criteria used to determine wheth-

er political speech warrants conviction. Whereas it

had previously sufficed that expression result in

only a ‘‘bad tendency’’ to cause harm, these cases

eventually produced today’s criterion of ‘‘imma-

nent lawlessness.’’ Had the expressive restrictions

of the first part of the century been in place during

the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War,

much of what was said and written during these

periods would have resulted in federally sanc-

tioned jail sentences.

National security interests have also been in-

voked to justify secrecy classification systems, the

labeling of foreign ‘‘propaganda,’’ and the use of

contract law by agencies including the Central

Intelligence Agency and the Voice of America to

require prepublication clearance of communica-

tions by both current and former employees.

WARTIME RESTRICTIONS

Compulsory systems of prepublication clearance

during wartime were first used during the Civil

War and, with the notable exception of Vietnam,

have continued to be used in all major military

conflicts. The exception of Vietnam was prompted