The Amendments Series: The First Amendment – Part 1

Keeping the backdrop of the previous articles in mind, we can now look at the other eight amendments, starting with the First Amendment.

Remember, if our government is actually following the Constitution and staying within their enumerate powers, Congress couldn’t ever write a law that would in anyway violate the rights listed in the First Amendment. And their job is not to protect the rights in the First Amendment so much as to never violate those rights themselves.

Alas, there are a couple different topics that come to mind when the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is mentioned.

Freedom of the press.

Freedom to assemble or protest.

Freedom of religion.

The First Amendment is one of those commonly used and often abused “rights” that Americans love to reference and throw around. Currently, it’s being used as a shield to protect illegal behavior (riots). But, sometimes Americans love to question its use and argue that there shouldn’t be as much free “speech” or that some speech should be limited or prevented (i.e. “hate speech”).

There’s a lot to unpack from the First Amendment. So, in order to avoid boring you or writing a mini-book, I’m going to break my discussion of the amendment up into three articles. This week I’ll focus on what freedom of “speech” actually means and the challenges associated with that. I’ll next introduce you to the religious reason Madison wanted to include the First Amendment and then I’ll touch a bit more on the challenges of a free press and free speech.

For now, let’s just assess the basics of the First Amendment and what “speech” actually means.

The Amendment: What It Says

So, there should have never been an issue with the government passing laws that violated the rights specified in the First Amendment even if the First Amendment never existed.

That being said, the Federalists decided to compromise with the Anti-Federalist and include the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is the first of ten specific powers that Congress canNOT make laws about.

And just to make things clear. While the Bill of Rights originally only confined Congress, in the landmark case of Gitlow v. New York, the Court decided that freedom of speech and of the press were now among the “fundamental personal rights” protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from infringements by state action. So, now our First Amendment “rights” are not only protected from federal government overreach but also state and local government over reach.

In other words, no government at any level, can violate your speech, religion or freedom to petition and assemble. That’s it though…anyone and everyone else can violate those “rights” all they want…technically.

Freedom of the Speech

Freedom of speech is an excellent example of the difficulty the Supreme Court has in making definitive decisions on the meaning of the Constitution. (Again, never really the job of the Supreme Court in the first place, but I digress)

So, we really shouldn’t have the following topics to debate since it’s not even with Congress’s right to make laws even nearing speech or anything like it (per the enumerated powers in the Constitution); however, since our government violates the Constitution all the time and focuses on the First Amendment so much, the questions of meaning has emerged.

• Libel: writing that falsely injures another person.
• Obscenity: not really clear at this point other than hardcore porn.
• Symbolic speech: an act that conveys a political message like burning your draft card.
• Youthful speech: certain kinds of “speech” done by corporations, kids in school, interest groups and the like.

The Courts have defined and redefined these four unprotected forms of speech, but no completely definitive definition has ever been agreed upon. And this is where the complications arise. The government and the Courts are now playing in a grey area of arbitrary power. The Constitution clearly says no law and the Court is now saying some law, but how much depends on the kind of speech being abridged. Thus, the game of semantics is now a-foot as the Court works to arbitrarily define what speech is and therefore define what speech is protected from government law and what speech is not protected from government law.

So far, and for the most part, the Court tends to err on the side of free speech and fewer laws. For instance, in 1969 and in 1977, the Court ruled that KKK and Nazi marches were protected under the First Amendment. The Court stated that the First Amendment protects speech that abstractly advocates violence unless that speech will incite or produce “imminent lawless action”.

This interpretation of the First Amendment flies in the face of all of the complaining today about “hate speech”, which is a good thing. But again, interpretations are the problem. Who’s to say in a year, their interpretation changes?

(Random aside: at this point in our culture, it almost doesn’t matter if the government takes the power to define “hate speech” because society does a good enough job of destroying anyone who says something society considers wrong or racist or prejudice—even if its as simple as someone saying that he does not support anyone disrespecting the U.S. flag)

So, read through this list of some of the most prominent and influential Supreme Court cases regarding free speech. For more details, I high recommend James Q. Wilson’s American government textbook. I am using that a reference for the information below but also for some other detailed information in this article.

Major cases:

• Schenck v. United States (1919): Speech may be punished if it creates a clear and present danger of illegal acts.
• Chaplinksy v, New Hampshire (1942): “Fighting words” are not protected by the First Amendment.
• New York Times v. Sullivan (1964): To libel a public figure, there must be “actual malice”.
• Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): Public school students may wear armbands to class protesting America’s war in Vietnam when such display does not disrupt class.
• Miller v. California (1973): Obscenity is defined as appealing to prurient (prurient: marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire) interests of an average person.
• Texas v. Johnson (1989): There may not be a law to ban flag burning.

I haven’t even touched on the freedom of the press yet and won’t in this article.

Conclusion

The First Amendment protects some of our most fundamental and precious American rights: speech, religion, press and assembly. Protecting these rights is not nearly as straight forward or simple as it may first appear. Protecting them starts first with American citizens. Americans must practically treasure free speech as much as they claim to treasure it. We must be willing to tolerate and allow others to speak their minds. If we do, the courts won’t have any cases to figure out.

Here’s a fact pulled from Wilson’s textbook: In the abstract Americans support free speech, majority rule and the right to circulate petitions, however, in concrete cases, many Americans are not very tolerate of groups they dislike.

The students did have some self-reflection because a minute earlier they’d been agreeing that America is and should have free speech. The problem is, with all of these Court cases muddling definitions, with social pampering, an increased cancel culture and the like, Americans actually think there is an option to say that some group doesn’t have a right to assemble or the right to free speech.

No. The Amendment is clear: no law. That’s it.

Doesn’t matter what we think, feel or whine. It’s the law and anything else is arbitrary power.

This quote from Wilson’s textbook summarizes the point I’m making beautifully: “The ‘majority tolerance’ for many causes should not blind us to the fact that most of us have some group or cause from which we are willing to withhold political liberties—even though we endorse those liberties in the abstract.”

The Liberty Belle

James Q. Wilson/John J. DiIulio, Jr./Meena Bose/Matthew S. Levendusky. American Government: Institutions and Policies Enhanced. 16th Edition.