Free Speach

JustinWilliams61 Unit 2 Assignment: Free Speech

Justin Lee Williams

Kaplan University

LS-305

“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.” These are the words of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Our forefathers, and the framers of our Constitution, had not long before writing this fought against a government that restricted such freedom to maintain control over the people. While progress is a certainty, the path of progress is fluid and ever changing, the writers of the Constitution knew this and allowed for it in the very language they used. “Congress shall make no law…,” though this prevented direct legislature, the forefathers had the foresight not to prevent open and changing interpretation of the amendment through the judicial system. It was through this ability that the courts are able to decide what is protected and what did not receive the same protection. For each type of speech, printed, spoken, or symbolic, there is a line that should not be crossed, and when it is the protection from the First Amendment is reduced. This paper will address and define, commercial speech, obscenity/child pornography, and incitement of illegal action, these types of speech do not receive the First Amendment’s full protection.

Our leaders wanted something more, for people to have their opinions and ability to express them. It is the within this free-speech that we find new ideas, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said in his 1920 opinion of Abrahams v. United States, “(T)he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market…) The freedom of speech was not simply for religious or scientific...