SEDITION:
Relying on the materials I provided, fashion an essay of 1,000 words (4 double-spaced pages) which answers the following questions: “How do you protest? What effect does protesting have on the government? In addressing this question you may wish to:
1. Define Sedition.
2. Describe the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it illegal to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States.”
3. Point out that historically, sedition has been centrally a matter of speech.
4. Comment on each of these tests devised by the Supreme court: Notice that all of these tests are couched in terms of the potential harms that free speech may cause.
a. The Shaffer bad tendency test.
b. The Schenck clear and present danger test.
c. The Abrams test.
d. The Dennis gravity of the evil test.
e. The Brandenburg imminent lawless action test.
5. Comment on the following statement: “For those who rushed the Capitol on January 6 th 2021, they might argue that what they were doing was protesting, which is protected under the First Amendment.”
6. Describe the mechanisms for legitimate criticism of the government? Do they involve sabotaging the operations of government when those operations have been arrived at by lawful means?
