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James Bell's 1798 prosecution for verbally criticizing government while in his own tavern has been considered a missing Alien and Sedition Acts case. This article challenges that contention. Using previously undiscovered primary sources, it answers integral questions such as: (1) Why was Bell the subject of government prosecution? (2) What prompted Bell to utter his “treasonable expressions”? (3) Was Bell's case a Sedition Act prosecution? (4) What was the outcome of this case? His prosecution is set against the backdrop of his role in the Stony Ridge Convention, which some regard as the genesis of the Bill of Rights.

This article presents case studies of pardons in the presidencies of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. In doing so, the article moves away from the idea in existing scholarship that pardons of the past were largely noble acts of statecraft, untouched by ideological, partisan, or personal political motivations. Instead, it develops an account of how and why these pardons should be understood as both enabling presidents to achieve certain political objectives and, simultaneously, operating in an inherited environment in which presidents used existing resources to legitimate their pardons. In so doing, presidents refashioned those inherited resources and, thereby, created new resources for future presidents. The picture that emerges is of pardons as both sources of political innovation and political constraint.

Gerald Neuman discusses in historical and contemporary terms the repeated efforts of U.S. insiders to claim the Constitution as their exclusive property and to deny constitutional rights to aliens and immigrants--and even citizens if they are outside the nation's borders. Tracing such efforts from the debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to present-day controversies about illegal aliens and their children, the author argues that no human being subject to the governance of the United States should be a \"stranger to the Constitution.\" Thus, whenever the government asserts its power to impose obligations on individuals, it brings them within the constitutional system and should afford them constitutional rights. In Neuman's view, this mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive approach to extending constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S. citizens and to those aliens on whom the United States seeks to impose legal responsibilities. Examining both mutuality and more flexible theories, Neuman defends some constitutional constraints on immigration and deportation policies and argues that the political rights of aliens need not exclude suffrage. Finally, in regard to whether children born in the United States to illegally present alien parents should be U.S. citizens, he concludes that the Constitution's traditional shield against the emergence of a hereditary caste of \"illegals\" should be vigilantly preserved.

This article explores competing interpretations of American federalism and immigration authority during the 18th century. I argue that the 1787 Constitution did not clearly place the authority to manage migration with the national government. In fact, the Constitution did not discuss entry and exit policy, including the power of deportation. The debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts illustrate the diversity of opinions about the proper balance of authority between the national and subnational governments with regard to migration policy. Debates over the potential expansion of national power were particularly heated in the antebellum period because migration policy and slave policy were inextricably linked. In the end, whatever guidance the Constitution provided on migration policy was tainted by the document’s endorsement of slavery.

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have been the most consequential of any president this century. He is leading a revolutionary project that aspires to remake the economy, the bureaucracy, culture and even the idea of America itself. The question for the next 1,361 days is: will he succeed?

Building on the foundational importance of its predecessor (Politics at the Periphery, 1993), Challengers to Duopoly offers an up-to-date overview of the important history of America's third parties and the challenge they represent to the hegemony of the major parties. J. David Gillespie introduces readers to minor partisan actors of three types: short-lived national parties, continuing doctrinal and issue parties, and the significant others at the state and local levels. Woven into these accounts are profiles of some of the individuals who have taken the initiative to found and lead these parties. Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Jesse Ventura, and other recent and contemporary electoral insurgents are featured, along with the most significant current national and state parties challenging the primacy of the two major parties. Gillespie maintains that despite the infirmities they often bear, third parties do matter, and they have mattered throughout American public life. Many of our nation's most important policies and institutional innovations—including abolition, woman suffrage, government transparency, child labor laws, and national healthcare—were third-party ideas before either major party embraced them. Additionally, third parties were the first to break every single gender, race, and sexual orientation bar on nomination for the highest offices in the land. As Gillespie illustrates in this engaging narrative, with the deck so stacked against them, it is impressive that third-party candidates ever win at all. That they sometimes do is a testament to the power of democratic ideals and the growing disdain of the voting public with politics as usual.

Does America need permission to bomb another country? Allies used to insist presidents seek UN approval before military action. However as David Rennie, our geopolitics editor, argues, they are increasingly tolerating Donald Trump’s Lone-Ranger, vigilante methods.

True Faith and Allegianceis a provocative account of nationalism and the politics of turning immigrants into citizens and Americans. Noah Pickus offers an alternative to the wild swings between emotionally fraught positions on immigration and citizenship of the past two decades. Drawing on political theory, history, and law, he argues for a renewed civic nationalism that melds principles and peoplehood. This tradition of civic nationalism held sway at America's founding and in the Progressive Era. Pickus explores how, from James Madison to Teddy Roosevelt, its proponents sought to combine reason and reverence and to balance inclusion and exclusion. He takes us through controversies over citizenship for blacks and the rights of aliens at the nation's founding, examines the interplay of ideas and institutions in the Americanization movement in the 1910s and 1920s, and charts how both left and right promoted a policy of neglect toward immigrants and toward citizenship in the second half of the twentieth century. True Faith and Allegianceshows that contemporary debates over a range of immigration and citizenship policies cannot be resolved by appeals to fixed notions of creed or culture, but require a supple civic nationalism that bridges the gap between immigrants' needs and American principles and practices. It is critical reading for scholars, policy makers, and all who care about immigrants and about America.

From George Washington's decision to buy time for the new nation by signing the less-than-ideal Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1795 to George W. Bush's order of a military intervention in Iraq in 2003, the matter of who is president of the United States is of the utmost importance. In this book, Fred Greenstein examines the leadership styles of the earliest presidents, men who served at a time when it was by no means certain that the American experiment in free government would succeed.

Spain refused Clark’s offer because they already had a Kentucky liaison, and in working with General James Wilkinson, they got a spy in the bargain. Wilkinson (Agent 13 to the Spanish), rose in military ranks through the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson administrations, although each president knew of his treason. After arriving in Kentucky with gubernatorial aspirations, Wilkinson provided Spain with suggested names of prominent Kentuckians who might accept bribes in exchange for supporting a Spanish affiliation over that of the United States. Clark’s name was not among them. With the help of his radical brother-in-law, Clark instead became a French general in command of a western army recruited to overthrow Spanish claims to Louisiana in favor of France. His French affiliation led in part to the declaration of the Neutrality Act and eventually to John Adams’s call for his arrest in Philadelphia. Clark concluded 1798 in St. Louis, estranged from the nation he helped create.