The point of the First Amendment is to protect expression people hate – Nazi protesters in Skokie, anti-war protesters burning the American flag, KKK hooligans in an Ohio farmfield, Christian fundamentalists protesting the burial of American soldiers. Tolerance for the speech we despise is the lesson of 232 years of the First Amendment. Yet the
It has been four years this week since Julian Assange was imprisoned in London’s Belmarsh Prison, held in a legal battle over his extradition to the US on espionage charges for publishing classified military information. Although the Trump Administration brought the charges against the Australian-born Assange, the Biden Administration has indicated it plans to pursue
The Bill of Rights has helped create what is arguably the freest enduring society in history. It wasn’t always that way. The original Constitution didn’t have a Bill of Rights. Once the Bill of Rights was added, it didn’t apply for a century to state governments. As recently as 90 years ago, no one had
Today’s conservative Roberts Court is a bastion of First Amendment freedom as was the liberal Warren Court half a century ago. But the winners are different. Establishment insiders win today whereas outsiders won most often during the Warren years. On its 200th birthday in 1991, the First Amendment had developed into a powerful shield against
From afar, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s attempt to prosecute a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter looks like the folly of a vindictive politician who doesn’t understand computers or the First Amendment. But it is more serious than that. A governor trying to prosecute a journalist for reporting publicly available information poses a serious threat to press
