ABSTRACT
Pennsylvania v. Nelson, 350 US 497, was a civil liberties case that also had legal significance for constitutional questions involving federalism, including whether the states retained power to regulate matters that already were governed by federal law. Steve Nelson was a Communist Party officer in western Pennsylvania who had been found guilty of violating Pennsylvania's antisedition law. That law criminalized speech, or membership in an organization that advocated the overthrow of the federal government or of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it therefore criminalized much the same behavior covered by the federal Smith Act. Pennsylvania v. Nelson was arguably one of the most pivotal cases to cause the states to abandon criminal actions against the Communist Party and its members. When the Court issued its decision in Nelson, forty-two states and the then-territories of Alaska and Hawaii had state laws prohibiting sedition, criminal anarchy, or syndicalism, all aimed primarily at preventing the overthrow of the federal government.
