Freedom of Speech in the US
Freedom of speech in the US refers to the constitutional right to express opinions and ideas without government interference or censorship. This fundamental right is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and encompasses a wide range of expressive activities, including speech, press, assembly, and petition. However, certain limitations exist, such as speech that incites violence or poses a clear and present danger.
4 Key excerpts on "Freedom of Speech in the US"
eBook - ePubCyber Law and Ethics
Regulation of the Connected World
- Mark Grabowski, Eric P. Robinson(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Freedom of Speech in an Online World One of the reasons we have the First Amendment is to protect speech that offends us. If it didn’t offend, why would we need it? — Professor Ronald Collins Freedom of speech is recognized as a fundamental human right by the United Nations, and around the world. Virtually every national government recognizes, at least formally, the value of free speech, even if the reality is that speech is routinely monitored and suppressed. (For example, article 67 of North Korea’s constitution provides that “Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, demonstration and association,” 1 even though the nation is an authoritarian country that is consistently rated as among the most severe restrictors of speech.) While many countries restrict speech, both online and offline, and ban certain websites, Americans enjoy a great deal of freedom when it comes to online speech thanks to the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. 1 Elkins, Zachary, et al, The Content of Authoritarian Constitutions, in Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes 141–64 (T. Ginsburg and A. Simpser eds., 2014). Online Speech in America The Bill of Rights includes the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and of the press. The amendment also protects freedom of religion, the right to assemble and the right to petition the government about grievances. It was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791. Back then, communication was much different, and our Founding Fathers likely had not conceived of anything like the Internet. The only forms of mass communication were books, pamphlets and newspapers. Other forms of media, such as the telegraph, telephone, movies, radio and TV, were more than a century away from becoming a reality. Each of these innovations has led some to call for limits on the use of the new technology...
eBook - ePubThe Constitution of the United States
A Primer for the People
- David P. Currie(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...7 Freedom of Speech and of the Press THE FIRST AMENDMENT provides that “Congress shall make no law. .. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Since at least the 1930s the states have been under a similar restriction, for according to the Supreme Court freedom of expression is an element of the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against state deprivation without due process of law. 1 “Those who won our independence,” wrote the great Justice Louis Brandeis in 1927, “believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. . .. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. . .. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law[;]. .. they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.” 2 This does not mean that one may say whatever one pleases whenever, wherever, and however one chooses. The amendment’s explicit language (“Congress shall make no law”) does make clear that freedom of speech or of the press may never be abridged. What is protected against abridgment, however, is not speech itself but the freedom of speech; the problem is to determine the extent of that freedom. Freedom to speak was certainly not absolute at the time the Constitution was adopted. Defamation, among other things, was traditionally prohibited...
eBook - ePubOpen Minds
Academic freedom and freedom of speech of Australia
- Carolyn Evans, Adrienne Stone(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- La Trobe University Press(Publisher)
...FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ITS LIMITS F reedom of speech is a universally protected right in the constitutions of the world’s democracies and a central tenet of political liberalism. 1 An enormous literature on the justifications for freedom of speech has settled on three principal lines of justification: freedom of speech is essential to the search for ‘truth’ (the argument from truth), it is necessary for or constitutive of a dignified and autonomous life (the argument from autonomy), and it is a necessary condition for democratic self-government (the argument from democracy). 2 At the level of political rhetoric, freedom of speech is easy to support. Almost everyone agrees on its importance, and it is often publicly defended, in universities and elsewhere, in rousing terms. Nonetheless, there remain deep and intractable controversies about how freedom of speech is best realised. For the most part, the debate about freedom of speech in universities focuses on the extent to which otherwise legal speech can or should be restricted. There is a temptation to view any restrictions or burdens placed on public expression as violations of freedom of speech. In public debate, we often hears declarations like ‘either free speech is for everyone or no one’, ‘free speech cannot just be for ideas we like’ or the Voltaire-inspired ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. 3 Free speech absolutism is fuelled by many grand statements of principle. The US Supreme Court is responsible for much of the most inspiring writing about freedom of speech. Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo said, ‘Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.’ 4 And Justice Robert H...
eBook - ePubConstitutional Democracy
Essays In Comparative Politics
- Fred Eidlin(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Examination of trends in the protection of freedom of speech by the U.S. Supreme Court in the past decade seems to suggest that the current willingness of the judiciary to force U.S. society to run that risk may be far greater than is either necessary or desirable. Freedom of Speech and the Protection of Economic Power One of the great milestones in the development of the constitutional law of free speech in the United States was the decision of the Supreme Court in Gitlow v. New York 1 in 1925, when, in the course of deciding whether the state of New York could constitutionally punish advocacy of revolution (a question it answered affirmatively), the Court held for the first time that the guarantee of free speech in the First Amendment to the federal constitution applied to the states as well as to the federal government. 2 In so doing it specifically repudiated the contrary position it had asserted only three years before in Prudential Insurance Co. v. Cheek, 3 where it categorically declared that nothing in the federal constitution "imposes upon the states any restrictions about freedom of speech." 4 This shift of posi tion from Cheek to Gitlow has generally been looked upon as a liberal move, and so, in fact, it turned out to be-but only after the composition of the Court later changed. As the outcome of the Gitlow case itself clearly demonstrates, the Court majority in 1925 had little interest in providing constitutional protection against the suppression of unpopular ideas. Why then did they abandon the position that had been enunciated in Cheek? The probable answer is that the holding in Gitlow was intended to have a conservative, not a liberal, thrust. There were three dissenters (without opinion) to the decision in Cheek: Chief Justice Taft and Justices VanDevanter and McReynolds-by any measure the most conservative members of the 1922 Court...
