free speech -- essays research papers

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION--SPEECH AND PRESS Adoption and the Common obligationfulness Background Madisons version of the speech and recommend clauses, introduced in the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, provided The people shall non be deprived or abridged of their right field to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments and the emancipation of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of improperness, shall be inviolable.1 The special committee rewrote the language to some extent, adding other provisions from Madisons draft, to sterilize it read The freedom of speech and of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to play and consult for their common good, and to apply to the Government for redress of grievances, shall not be infringed.2 In this form it went to the Senate, which rewrote it to read That Congress shall make no legality abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to adjoin and consult for their comm on good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.3 Subsequently, the worship clauses and these clauses were combined by the Senate.4 The final language was agreed upon in conference. deliberate in the House is unenlightening with regard to the meaning the Members ascribed to the speech and press clause and there is no record of debate in the Senate.5 In the course of debate, Madison warned against the dangers which would arise from discussing and proposing abstract propositions, of which the judgment may not be convinced. I venture to say, that if we confine ourselves to an enumeration of simple, acknowledged principles, the substantiation will meet with but little difficulty.6 That the simple, acknowledged principles embodied in the First Amendment have occasioned controversy with divulge end both in the courts and out should alert one to the difficulties latent in such spare language. in so far as there is likely to have been a consensus, it was no query th e common law view as expressed by Blackstone. The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free stir but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press but if he publishes what is im... ... of the First Amendment preclude the notion that its occasion was to give unqualified immunity to every expression that touched on matters within the range of political interest. . . . The law is perfectly well settled, this cost said over fifty years ago, that the first ten amendments to the Constitution, usually known as the Bill of Rights, were not intended to lay peck any novel principles of government, but simply to embody certain guaranties and immunities which we had hereditary from our English ancestors, and which had from time immemoria l been subject to certain well-recognized exceptions arising from the necessities of the case. In incorporating these principles into the fundamental frequency law there was no intention of disregarding the exceptions, which continued to be recognized as if they had been formally expressed. That this represents the authentic view of the Bill of Rights and the tincture in which it must be construed has been recognized again and again in cases that have come here within the last fifty years. Dennis v. united States, 341 U.S. 494, 521-522, 524 (1951) (concurring opinion). The internal quotation is from Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281 (1897).