Noah Feldman, Columnist

Sedition Laws Are the Last Resort of Weak Governments

Attorney General Bill Barr’s latest partisan comments do yet more damage to the Department of Justice.

September 18, 2020 at 12:30 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Not standing up for free speech.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images

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Attorney General William Barr can’t seem to get out of the headlines. Maybe he doesn’t want to.

Just this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Barr suggested to federal prosecutors that they consider charging protesters with sedition — an archaic criminal charge that hasn’t been regularly used by federal authorities since the McCarthy era. Barr also reportedly mused about finding a way to prosecute Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for establishing a police-free protest zone in her city. Then, in a speech at Hillsdale College, Barr defended his penchant for overruling prosecutors, comparing them to children in a Montessori school.