State of the First Amendment Under President Trump Scores a C+

Every quarter the Newseum Institute produces a “report card” on how the current administration is faring on the five freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. 15 First Amendment experts — academics, […]

Madison-Jefferson Letters on Advisability of a Bill of Rights, 1787-1789

Although he later became the primary author of the Bill of Rights, Madison expressed serious doubts about the wisdom of amendments securing rights. Among other reasons, Madison believed that state bills of rights were little more than “parchment barriers” that were often ignored by “overbearing majorities in every State.”

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

In his essay, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argues that government has no right to limit the freedom of thought. He reasons that even a dissenting opinion held by a single individual has great value to society because it may turn out to be true.

Federal Farmer Number 16, 1788

An anonymous writer from the 18th century makes the case for a federal law protecting the press from official censorship–"Newspapers may sometimes be the vehicles of abuse, and of many things not true; but these are but small inconveniences, in my mind, among many advantages.”

Brandeis Concurring With Holmes in Whitney v. California, 1927

Justice Louis Brandeis concurrence articulated the American idea of freedom of speech many decades before the Supreme Court began expanding the rights of expression under the First Amendment. Some of his ideas have become critical justifications for safeguarding freedom of speech even under the most challenging conditions.

Holmes Dissenting in Abrams v. United States, 1919

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes built his support for freedom speech atop the sturdy foundation of the marketplace of ideas, supported long before by John Milton (Areopagitica) and John Stuart Mill (On Liberty). Holmes argued that “the theory of our Constitution” is that “the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas.”

James Madison’s Report to the Virginia House of Delegates, 1800

James Madison, author of the First Amendment, wrote what is surely the most powerful defense of freedom of the press in America. He did it in protest against the Sedition Act of 1798, enacted just seven years after ratification of the First Amendment.

Lata Nott Podcast: Free Speech and the Internet

The Newseum Institute’s First Amendment expert, Lata Nott, originally published this podcast on the Newseum blog, and has given First Amendment Watch permission to reprint. In this episode of The First […]