Word: punished
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After discussing the very doubtful constitutionality of the law under which Debs was convicted. Professor Chafee continues: "Whatever be decided as to constitutionality, the Espionage Act prosecutions break with a great tradition in English and American law. Only once before has the United States tried to punish political crimes, and the Sedition Act of 1789"--there was a national emergency then, you remember--"with its maximum of two years' imprisonment wrecked the Federalist Party...
Probably there will be no contention made but that the Government ought to prevent injury to itself by prohibiting and punishing words which result in anarchy or crime. Whether the Government should go further and say that it will prohibit and punish the utterance of words which may possibly so result is another question, and it is the question which Harvard and Washington are going to debate...
...after careful investigation he cannot find any part of the program of this party which advocates violence or the forcible overthrow of government. Many aliens, he further points out, are members of the party without knowing it. It seems hardly in accordance with any principle of free government to punish such ignorance with deportation...
...public sentiment, and moral suasion. We can no more establish by law ideal relations between capital and labor than between husband and wife or between parent and child. All we can do by law is to keep the peace, protect private property, personal liberty and freedom of contract; and punish pal- pable breaches of obligations which freemen have 'voluntarily assumed...
...prohibition--which the affirmative desire--without infriging upon the rights guaranteed by the Constitutions. The Judiciary could not distinguish between criticism and propaganda; and legislation would be able to suppres all evils. Freedom of speech would be violated by putting the measure into effect, and it is wrong to punish a man for an opinion whichhas not resulted in a definite crime or overt...