The First Amendment of the constitution of the United States:

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.

Simply put:  Our First Amendment, and the first right outlined in our Bill of Rights (same thing) prevents the government from creating laws that establish/require a preference of  religion or limiting a citizen’s right to practice any religion.

It also prevents the government from enacting any law that limits our freedom of speech or the freedom of the press to write whatever they want, and it prevents the government from  inacting any law that prevents us from assembling for any reason or to petition the government (protest) for any reason.

In other words, as with all of the amendments and the intent of the Bill of Rights, it is a preventive event, not an enabling event.  This is often confused.  The Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments define what the government can and cannot do, not what citizens can or must do.  We do not have to speak out or protest or write stuff, but we can if we want.  The government, on the other hand, cannot pass any law that prevents us from doing these things.

 

We have plenty of examples of countries that do limit these rights.  China, North Korea, Iran etc. all use the government to suppress the population from speaking, writing, worshiping or
gathering. 

 

This amendment is where the concept of ‘separation of church and state’ come from.  Nowhere in the Bill of Rights will you find that phrase, it was written by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists Association in which he wrote "...I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State” to assure them that the Constitution would reach the state level.  The statement ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in our constitution anywhere.

 

It does not seem to dictate that the government cannot have a Christmas tree in an office somewhere, just that it can’t pass a law that requires a Christmas tree.  This has been  challenged and reinterpreted over the years to the point of complete lunacy.

 

So, we have the right to establish and practice any or no religion, we have the right to say or write what we want and we have the right to get together and talk about whatever and whomever we want.  Easy!

 

Or not…  The nuances in this one are very far reaching.  For example, does the first  amendment give a citizen the right to tell a foreign country a secret?  Does it give the right to a citizen to print an offensive and completely made-up story about his neighbor in the paper?  If not, can the government pass a law stating that you can’t do these things?  If it does, isn’t that prevented by this amendment?

This is why we have the Supreme Court, of course.  Their job is to interpret and decide what the original intent of any particular amendment was in an attempt to clear things up.  In the early 1900’s the Supreme Court established a test called ‘clear and present danger’ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court, explained that "the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent"

 

Clear?  It seems that the first amendment is not absolute, and it really shouldn’t be.  The basic test seems to be that the government cannot prevent you from doing these things unless it is shown to infringe on someone else’s rights.  Case law is full of interpretations and challenges
to the first amendment, and the Supreme Court, as is their job, has ruled numerous times to define and refine the meaning and scope of the constitution. 

The Constitution

In my first mutterings here I am going to try to clarify what the constitution is and what it isn't.  These days we talk and argue a lot about the 'constitution' and what it is supposed to do, but I have noticed that a lot of really smart people, perhaps including me, aren't really aware of what it is and what it says.  There was a great video clip recently of a US Senator at a town hall meeting.  He was asked some question about the constitution and he clearly stated that 'it guarantees you the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

Um, no it doesn't.  Nowhere in the US Constitution are you guaranteed anything, much less life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Now, the Declaration of Independence, a completely different document entirely, does state that we as a country believe in these inalienable rights, but that was really just a simple letter to the King letting him know we were moving out on our own.

Our 'constitutional rights' are often cited, and often cited wrong.  What the constitution was designed to do is often misunderstood and muddled by the press.  The Supreme Court's role in all of this is lost on most people these days.

Why any of this matters is also lost on people these days.

This is NOT intended to be a civics lesson or anything else.  In fact, I am probably doing it more for myself than for any reader of this, because I am not as aware of the actual amendments and what they mean as I should be.  By starting this blog off with an attempted clarification of the Bill of Rights and the subsequent amendments to our constitution I am making myself smarter.  By writing it down I will better remember it.  If someone else reads it, that would be cool as well, but not critical to my motivations.

I am getting a lot of this information from the internet.  The internet didn't exist when I was in high school, which didn't really matter because I didn't go to class very much anyways.  So here I am 40 years later reading and interpreting a lot of this for the first time in an attempt to better frame the debate.  I will try to stay out of the weeds and not over do it, if you are really wanting the depth go to Wikipedia or wherever your favorite spot is out there and read more.

The actual body of the constitution frames our form of government and extablishes the powers of the three primary branches of our government: the House of Representatives, the Senate and the President.  This stuff is so well thought out that we are unable to really come up with any improvements, and it all still works.  We have a collection of 50 states, each with the power to govern themselves, and an overarching set of controls that all 50 states have agreed to follow and that have presidence over the state.

This set of controls over the republic of states is the Bill of Rights.  The first 10 amendments, our rights as citizens, were in the original constitution.  The subsequent 17 additional amendments have been added over the years to give more basic rights that really needed to be spelled out.  Most are good, some are so-so and a couple no longer really apply to us today but are still there just in case.

I am not going to go over the actual structure of the government as defined in the constitution, it is clear and doesn't cause much debate because it works so well.  The amendments are where the fun is.


And so, let's look at the amendments themselves.