Smith Act

Smith Act

Other short titles	Civilian and Military Organizations License Act
Long title	An Act to prohibit certain subversive activities; to amend certain provisions of law with respect to the admission and deportation of aliens; to require the fingerprinting and registration of aliens; and for other purposes.
Acronyms (colloquial)	ARA
Nicknames	Alien Registration Act, 1940
Enacted by	the 76th United States Congress
Effective	June 28, 1940
Citations
Public law	76-670
Statutes at Large	54 Stat. 670, Chapter 439
Codification
Titles amended	8 U.S.C.: Aliens and Nationality
U.S.C. sections created	8 U.S.C. ch. 10 § 451
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 5138 by Howard W. Smith (D–VA) on June 29, 1939 Committee consideration by House Judiciary, Senate Judiciary Passed the House on July 29, 1939 (Passed) Passed the Senate on June 15, 1940 (Passed) Reported by the joint conference committee on June 17, 1940; agreed to by the House on June 22, 1940 (382-4) and by the Senate on June 22, 1940 (Agreed) Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 28, 1940
United States Supreme Court cases
Bridges v. Wixon, Dennis v. United States, Yates v. United States, Watkins v. United States, Scales v. United States

The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act), 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, 54 Stat. 670, 18 U.S.C. § 2385 is a United States federal statute enacted June 29, 1940, that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government.

Approximately 215 people were indicted under the legislation, including alleged communists, anarchists, and fascists. Prosecutions under the Smith Act continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 reversed a number of convictions under the Act as unconstitutional. The statute has been amended several times.

The U.S. government has attempted on several occasions to regulate speech in wartime, beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. During and following World War I, a series of statutes addressed a complex of concerns that included enemy espionage and disruption, anti-war activism, and the radical ideologies of anarchism and Bolshevism, all identified with immigrant communities. Congressional investigations of 'extremist' organizations in 1935 resulted in calls for the renewal of those statutes. The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 addressed a particular concern, but not the general problem. As U.S. involvement in the European war seemed ever more likely, the possibility of betrayal from within gained currency. The Spanish Civil War had given this possibility a name, a fifth column, and the popular press in the U.S. blamed internal subversion (especially by Communists opposed to the war against Hitler after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) for the fall of France to the Nazis in just six weeks in May and June 1940. Patriotic organizations and the popular press raised alarms and provided examples. In July 1940, Time magazine called fifth column talk a "national phenomenon".

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