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SMITH ACT PROSECUTIONS IN PHILADELPHIA: DEFENDED BY MEMBERS OF THE FOUNDING GENERATION OF COLLEGE FELLOWS THE INK HAD BARELY DRIED ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT WHEN THE U.S. BEGAN ENACTING RESTRICTIONS ON FREE SPEECH DURING TIMES OF WAR, BEGINNING WITH THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS OF 1798. DURING AND FOLLOWING WORLD WAR I, A SERIES OF LAWS RESTRICT- ED OR CRIMINALIZED ENEMY ESPIONAGE AND DISRUPTION, ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM, AND IDEOLOGIES SUCH AS ANARCHISM AND BOLSHEVISM, ALL IDENTIFIED WITH IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES. IN THE LOOMING SHADOW OF WORLD WAR II, THE ALIEN REGISTRATION ACT, POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE SMITH ACT, WAS ENACTED ON JUNE 28, 1940, REQUIRING ALL NON-CITIZEN ADULT RESIDENTS TO REGISTER WITH THE FEDER- AL GOVERNMENT AND CREATING CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR ADVOCATING THE OVERTHROW OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT BY FORCE OR VIOLENCE. The government used the Smith Act to target members of the U.S. Communist Party throughout the United States. In 1949 eleven Party leaders were convicted in New York of violating the Act. Ten defendants received sentences of five years and $10,000 fines. An eleventh defendant, Robert G. Thompson, who had been awarded the Distin- guished Service Cross (the military’s second highest honor, second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor) for heroism in the Second World War, was sentenced to only three years in consideration of his military record. The five defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and given prison sentences. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions in a 6–2 decision in Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951). Following that decision, the DOJ prosecuted dozens of cases. By 1956, another 131 com- munists had been indicted, nine of them in Philadelphia. When nine regional Party officers were charged in Philadel- phia in 1953 with advocating the violent overthrow of the government in violation of the Smith Act, they could not find a lawyer to represent them. Officials of the Commu- nist Party of America were then the most reviled people in America. So three Fellows of the founding generation of the College, Bernard G. Segal (who would become President of the College in 1964), and Thomas D. McBride and his partner Michael von Moschzisker, then the principal crim- inal defense lawyers in Philadelphia, aided by volunteers from most of the institutional law firms in the city, stepped in to mount a defense. The story would be notable if for no other reason than that these thoroughly “establishment” lawyers took on such clients; however, unlike the defenses made in similar cases in other cities, McBride and his team 73 JOURNAL