Repressive Jurisprudence in the Early American Republic: The First Amendment and the Legacy of English Law

by Phillip I. Blumberg

Overview

This volume seeks to explain how American society, which had been capable of noble aspirations such as those in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was capable of adopting one of the most widely deplored statutes of our history, the Sedition Act of 1798. It examines how the political ideals of the American Revolution were undermined by the adoption of repressive doctrines of the English monarchial system - the criminalization of criticism against the king, the Parliament, the judiciary, and Christianity. Freedom of speech was dramatically confined, and this law remained unchallenged until well into the twentieth century. This book will be of keen interest to all concerned with the early Republic, freedom of speech, and evolution of American constitutional jurisprudence. Because it addresses the much-criticized Sedition Act of 1798, one of the most dramatic illustrations of this repressive jurisprudence, the book will also be of interest to Americans concerned about preserving free speech in wartime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780511851377
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	646 KB

About the Author

Phillip Blumberg is Dean and Professor Emeritus at University of Connecticut School of Law. After two decades of law practice on Wall Street and leadership as the CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed financial corporation, he turned to legal scholarship. He is the country's leading authority on corporate groups and the author of path-breaking books including The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law and the five-volume treatise Blumberg on Corporate Groups (2nd edition). Six years ago, he became interested in early American jurisprudence; this volume is the result.

Table of Contents

1. Political and jurisprudential worlds in conflict in the new Republic; 2. Politics in the new Republic; 3. Seditious and criminal libel in the colonies, the states, and the early Republic during the Washington administration; 4. Federalist partisan use of seditious libel - statutory and common; 5. Seditious and criminal libel during the Jefferson and Madison administrations 1800–16; 6. Partisan prosecutions for seditious and criminal libel in the state courts: federalists against republicans, republicans against federalists, and republicans against dissident republicans in struggles for party control; 7. Established jurisprudential doctrines (other than seditious and criminal libel) available in the new Republic for suppression of anti-establishment speech; 8. Still other nineteenth-century doctrines for suppression of anti-establishment speech: the law of blasphemy and the slave-state anti-abolition statutes; 9. Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

'Blumberg's great contribution is to put the repressive, politically motivated Sedition Act prosecutions (and related state and common law prosecutions) in the context of a larger set of repressive doctrines and attitudes and to show how they often functioned synergistically to repress political critics.' Michael Kent Curtis, Journal of American History

From the Publisher