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 redress of grievances

Wells, Christina E.

English

The First Amendment looks easy. After all, its proscriptions are expressed in fewer than forty-five words. It further embodies a concept elegant in its simplicity:  Everyone has the right to say what they believe and to believe what they want.  Yet even a superficial glance at modern Supreme Court jurisprudence reveals that, from its inception, the First Amendment was never easy. DEspite the Amendment\u27s express mandate that Congress  make no law,  the Court has never inerpreted it as an absolute. Instead, the court has embarked upon a delicate and sometimes treacherous balancing act attemping to determine when free speech or religious exercise rights trump state interests and when they do not. So difficult is the Court\u27s First Amendment doctrine that one scholar has quite fittingly describted it as  a vast Sargasso Sea of drifting and entangled values, theories, rules, exceptions, [and] predilections . . . requir[ing] determined interpretive effort to derive a useful set of constitutional principles

University of Missouri School of Law

Introduction: The Difficult First Amendment

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https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1401&amp;context=facpubs

Introduction: The Difficult First Amendment

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University of Missouri School of Law

bepress Legal Repository

bepress Legal Repository

University of Missouri School of Law