Freedom of Speech

Jesse Owens
Constitutional law
Prof. James Kent
7/14/2013

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Many portions of the Bill of Rights have origins going back to the Magna Charta or descend from time-honored English traditions. This is not so with the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly was pioneered on American soil. Our colonial forefathers had the vision to realize that without these rights, no rights would be secure.
In the First amendment they placed these cherished freedoms beyond the federal governments’ control. With the adoption of the fourteenth Amendment which provides, among other things that no state shall deprive any person of liberty without due process of law, the first amendment became binding on state governments as well.
When citizens can openly criticize their government, changes come about through orderly political process. When grievances exist, they must be aired, if not through the channels of public debate, then by riots in the street. The First Amendment functions as a safety valve through which the pressures and frustrations of a heterogeneous society can be vented and defused.
This is what the framers of the Constitution intended when creating the First Amendment. They wanted to create a society where citizens could bring about change through criticizing their government rather than through riots and revolution. To the Framers of the constitution freedom of speech meant freedom from government control over the content of public discourse. When they wrote “congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech their concern was with protecting the free exchange of ideas.
I believe that the Framers of the constitution would have foreseen possible limitations on protected speech. After all how could they not? When people are allowed to say whatever they want when they want it is difficult to maintain a peaceful and orderly society.
A small number of speech topics have been written out of the First Amendment. They include: (1) obscenity and child pornography, (2) fighting words, (3) threats, and (4) incitement to immediate unlawful action. Two other categories of speech-vulgar speech and commercial speech-receive only limited protection. Withdrawal of protection from the excluded categories has been justified on the grounds that they “are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as steps toward discovery of truth that any benefit derived from them is outweighed by societies interest in order an morality”.

First amendment Retrieved from: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment Kanovitz, J. (2010). constitutional law. (twelfth ed.). New Providence, NJ.: Matthew Bender & company, Inc.