Espionage Act of 1917

Espionage Act of 1917

Long title	An Act to punish acts of interference with the foreign relations, and the foreign commerce of the United States, to punish espionage, and better to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for other purposes.
Enacted by	the 65th United States Congress
Effective	June 15, 1917
Citations
Public law	Pub. L. 65–24
Statutes at Large	40 Stat. 217
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 291 by Edwin Y. Webb (D–NC) on April 2, 1917 Passed the House on May 4, 1917 (261–109) Passed the Senate on May 14, 1917 (80–8) Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on June 15, 1917
United States Supreme Court cases
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919) Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919) Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919) Berger v. United States, 255 U.S. 22 (1921)

The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code (War & National Defense) but is now found under Title 18 (Crime & Criminal Procedure): 18 U.S.C. ch. 37 (18 U.S.C. § 792 et seq.).

It was intended to prohibit interference with military operations or recruitment, to prevent insubordination in the military, and to prevent the support of enemies of the United States during wartime. In 1919, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled through Schenck v. United States that the act did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under its provisions. The constitutionality of the law, its relationship to free speech, and the meaning of its language have been contested in court ever since.

Among those charged with offenses under the Act were: Austrian-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger; labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford (whose conviction was overturned on appeal),^[1] communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor whistleblower Edward Snowden. Although the most controversial amendments, called the Sedition Act of 1918, were repealed on December 13, 1920, the original Espionage Act was left intact.^[2] Between 1921 and 1923, Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge released all those convicted under the Sedition and Espionage Acts.^[3]