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by chrisandchris 1019 days ago
As a non-US, I sometimes get the feeling that for everything that a citizen / company does not like, he / it can just cite the first ammendment. It feels like half of a "get out of jail card" in monopoly. I do not know all the content of the first ammendment, but there must be a lot of text in.
3 comments
sickofparadox 1019 days ago
It's short but dense: 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.

Because of all those 'or's it outlines quite a wide swath of protected activities. Because of the 14th amendment, it directly applies to not only the federal government, but also state governments.

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solardev 1019 days ago
It's actually really short...

> 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.

That's it. But it's caused centuries of back and forth arguments and mountains of case law and supreme court opinions.

The US has a sort of Stockholm syndrome relationship with our Constitution... it's really hard to interpret or change and basically it's read however a given generation of politicized judges wants it to be. A decade or two later that will change, somewhat, and then be reversed again. Public will has little impact on it, and the supremes have no accountability. It's a mess.

We worship it as sacred but it creates a lot of problems in modern society the the ancients didn't foresee. It's an entirely undemocratic piece of paper holding the country and its future hostage, IMO.

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mrguyorama 1018 days ago
>The US has a sort of Stockholm syndrome relationship with our Constitution

It's worth emphasizing this point; The Supreme Court evaluating laws for "constitutionality" is itself a motivated interpretation of the constitution!

Any Supreme Court that claims to be "strict" or "Literalist" is inherently not!

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Facemelters 1018 days ago
it's quite short, but it's a fundamental right
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