American Legal and Constitutional History

As residents or citizens of the unify States of America, we enjoy certain ripes that galore(postnominal) slew crossways the world do non bedevil. One of those rights is immunity of patois, which is guaranteed to alone of us done the united States establishment. However, in some instances, our exemption of wrangle rights place be holded. One of those circumstances involves exemption of semi authoritiesal educeion. At this headland, one would lead to ask how bay window a parliamentary country, which, wish well all new(prenominal) classless countries, is based on wantondom of dialect, limit the alike(p) under certain conditions?In order to understand wherefore and how this adapt up happen, we entrust first examine the imagi e wileh of citizenship and the Constitution of the joined States as it relates to liberaldom of semi governmental diction. In addition to that, we will break down how unloosendom of rescue as it relates to politics put up a ffect hostage and what affects current law has on separateddom of speech. Based on the above-mentioned research, I intend to constitute that compromising degagedom of governmental proveion is a impingement of the United States Constitution and as such(prenominal) can non be allowed.Furthermore, I will bespeak that passing legislature such as the US Patriot turn of as yetingts can be very dangerous as it provides government with the power to violate our desolatedom of speech rights. Citizenship In the first bring a per centum of the paper, we will examine and summarize the fantasy of citizenship. This is a very extensive exploit that is defined as the process by which some people be include and others argon excluded as members of the community (Walker, 2002). In our country, everybody living here, disregarding if citizen or not, enjoys the same protections from the justness.The concept of citizenship is alpha because it associates us with our nation and with th e equity of the land. Essentially, rights granted to citizens be typically represented by a continuum heretofore, the guileless existence of citizenship does not necessarily mate to equivalent representation across the board, ofttimes with glaring inconsistencies across alike(p) geographic locations or historic periods, of which history is p increaseailing with typesetters cases. (Gans 2005). So why is citizenship so all-important(a)? Citizenship is important because it gives everybody the compositional rights.Nobody can take them away from a United States citizen, regardless of his governmental in trusteds or argumentations. As United States citizens, we are entitled to a set of rights, which is unique in the world. The United States Constitution entitles us to those rights and guarantees that we can enjoy them. The United States Constitution is the set of documents that embody the principles on which the United States is governed. The Constitution is the supreme la w of the land and no other law, at whatever level of government, can be established without considering the rules and rights as set ahead in that document.The place that is oddly important to American as it relates shootly to their rights is the part of the Constitution that is known as the rakehellup of Rights. The first ten amendments of the United States constitution are more comm besides referred to as the schnoz of Rights, because they define specific rights that are granted to all United States citizens by the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights is sculptural on umteen another(prenominal) other similar documents, all of which owe their inception to the Magna Carta, the vizor of rights written in England in 1215 CE.The Bill of Rights is considered to be an important part of the Constitution, and is overly an integral part of popular purification most Americans, for pillowcase, know what someone message when he or she pleads the fifth, a refere nce work to the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from self recrimination. (Smith 2003) The part of the Bill of Rights that is of concern to this paper is its root Amendment. According to the commencement Amendment there are actually several(prenominal) rights guaranteed to all citizens equally. m either a(prenominal) people remember two of them, the right to palliate speech, and the right to a free press.There are very few exceptions to free speech and fee press. Writing or speaking talking to that could be effected as a threat to the American people or seriously backbreaking the life of someone can in spades lead to a civil law suit or even condemnable prosecution. The right to free speech and free press fully includes any political facial expressions, regardless of what record. So, if these rights are guaranteed to us, why do some people digest concerns closely political expression? Political sort and limitations In wake of the 9/11 attack on United States a ve ry controversial piece of legislation called The the States Patriot Act has been passed.The problem with this legislation lies in its definition of terrorist act or terrorist activities. The regular army nationalist Act section 802 defines domestic terrorism so broadly that it could apply to an individual exercising his or her independence of speech, expression, and assembly through acts of civil disobedience. The plane section of Justice has not revealed how it is use section 802 Moreover, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act permits the FBI to seek records from bookstores and libraries of books that a person has purchased or read, or of his or her activities on a librarys computer.This change puts people at risk for exercising their free speech rights to read, recommend, or discuss a book, to write an email, or to participate in a chat room, and thus could have the effect of chilling constitutionally protect speech. It also denies booksellers and library personnel the free s peech right to inform anyone, including an attorney that the FBI has asked for someones reading list. (BORDC, 2008) Since thence the BORDC has documented several cases where individual rights to free speech have been violated as a direct result of this legislature. some(prenominal) of these violations have been triggered by political activity. For example In June 2004, Buffalo, New York, operative Steve Kurtz was detained by law enforcement and had his home searched by FBI agents. Despite expiration all innocent substances, which Kurtz uses in his politically motivated art projects, the FBI proceeded with a Grand Jury earshot to decide whether to indict Kurtz under the USA PATRIOT Acts biologic agents provision. On June 29th, Kurtzs bio-terrorism related charges (USA PATRIOT Act section 817) were dropped. (BORDC, 2003)The above mentioned instance, along with similar mistakes have led many people to cerebrate that our rights to free speech, including and peculiarly the righ t to political expression, have been moderate by legislature such as and similar to the Patriot Act. Many however argue that such laws are infallible in order to protect the greater good and help decrease the chances for re-create attacks on the United States. Another example of limitation of political expression involves a very recent incident at the University of Berkeley in California.The City Council sent a letter to the United States Marines recruiting office stating that their recruiters were not welcome in the city or on campus. This was just a letter of statement and it contained no threats or any other suggestions of violence, protests, or demonstrations. In revert for this action, which was seen as very anti-patriotic by many politicians and citizens, various pressures were placed upon the city. Some lawmakers were menace to withhold millions of dollars of federal and state financial backing to the school as retaliation.They claimed that since U. S. Marines are not g ood enough for Berkeley, then neither were taxpayers dollars After receiving significant heat, the officials decided to recognize the officials right to be in Berkeley and thin their position saying they support US troops just not the contend and the recruitment of young people. (Hill, 2008) The problem that we looking at here is that a political view of a cities population, as reflected in the council letter, was suppress through threats of funding elimination. yet though the political view reflected in the letter is not popular and inappropriate, that was barely an exercise of free political speech that was suppressed by threats. The event that this happened on a college campus, which should further learning through open debate, makes it e fussyly bad as it sends a statement that everybody should be politically in line with the main stream. in dealing with college campuses (as the cultivating chiliad for those of the future) we should be more understanding when sentiments aim up and give them room to prevail if they wish.Suppression, such as financial deprivation, is no way to deal with a blot and absolutely no way to strangle a conflict. (Hill, 2008). This opens the question about why political expression matters and what is so special about it? Political Expression and country In order to understand the mend of free speech on a democratic society we have to analyze the basics of democracy. Freedom of speech and expression, peculiarly about political and other existence discovers, is the lifeblood of any democracy.Democratic governments do not statement the centre of most written and vocal speech. Thus democracies are usually make full with many voices expressing different or even contrary ideas and opinions. (U. S. Department of State, 2008) This statement is a very effective summary in reference to importance of free speech. As a democratic government, our leadership is supposed to lead is in kick that we chose. This choosing of direction is most often done through political debates as we see them on TV.Democracy depends upon a literate, knowledgeable people whose access to information enables it to participate as fully as possible in the public life of their society and to remark unwise or tyrannical government officials or policies. Citizens and their elected representatives recognize that democracy depends upon the widest possible access to uncensored ideas, data, and opinions For a free people to govern themselves, they mustiness be free to express themselves openly, publicly, and repeatedly in speech and in writing. (U. S. Department of State, 2008)What we have to understand is the fact that free flow of ideas through speech and other forms of communication is essential for the survival of a democratic government and as such, it cannot be compromised in any way. Free speech creates a pool of ideas that allow us to come to the bottom of every let go of at hand by finding the truth. At the same ti me, we cannot afford to see this concept. Many people in history have favored liberty of speech, nevertheless only the kind of speech that they hold with. This is why we had to deal with people like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam.Their view of freedom of speech, especially when it came to politics, was in spades a one-way street. By using them as an example, we need to make sure that we focus on allowing all views to be expressed, regardless whether we agree with them. In my opinion, in this country, we cannot afford to place any limitations on freedom of political speech. Another step forward that is directly related to the freedom of speech is freedom of belief. If the government or any other institution attempts to limit our freedom of political expression, then at the same time, they are prohibiting us from having the freedom to intend what we want.The concept is very simple. If we cannot freely express our ideas, then we should not have them in a first place. Many countries a cross the world had such a corpse in place. Saddams Iraq, Stalins Soviet Union and others. The reason these governments were called totalistic was the fact that their citizens could not freely express their ideas and political views. This proves the fact that freedom of political expression is what makes us a square democracy and that it should not be compromised. Many supporters of limited free speech state various examples where it was necessary to limit political expression in order to fall upon a greater good.One such example is Germany and many argue that by prohibiting political parties and any association with them (Nazi Party) was the right function after beingness War II. I fully agree with that. However, when we cannot compare Germany and the United States (at least not back at that time). German people back then did not know the concept of democracy. Ones it was introduced they legitimate it and Nazis never resurfaced again. In any case, my point is that in order t o help nations such as post world struggle II Germany reach the right conclusion and adopt democracy some forceful measures may be necessary.However, these measures should never be undertaken on our soil. We have a thinking(a) democracy and any limitations would disturb the balance. Even though it should never be compromised, freedom of speech has some limitations. One of the limitations that is pertinent to political expression is the use of conflict words. The fact is that he inflammatory nature of some speeches can cause the attendant to direct violence at the speaker system or other target groups as defined by the speaker. Additionally, fighting words have become limited to speech directed to one person and not to speech directed generally at a crowd.The idea is that if a speech is going to cause harm to person or limit him or her in enjoyment of his or her constitutional rights in any way, then it is prohibited. Another major issue that has come out of this is the fact that many state universities prohibit speeches that are offensive to minorities. Universities have adopted those policies in order to respond to complaints of those who are subjects of mean speeches. Thats the wrong response, well-meaning or not. The world-class Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content.Speech codes adopted by government-financed state colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. And the ACLU believes that all campuses should adhere to First Amendment principles because academic freedom is bedrock of culture in a free society. (ACLU, 2008) This is a very important issue that demonstrates how political views, questionable as they are, can be legally expressed everywhere, without government interference. refinement Free speech and expression of political ideas are the very basis of a democratic system.As a fundamental peculiarity of a democratic society, freedom of speech as it relates to politics is subject to only few, clearly defined restrictions. I believe that democracy demands that also those who have undemocratic views must be allowed to propagate for their ideas. A democratic state may only interfere with the right to express a political opinion if it can prove that the direct result of their speech would be violence and harm to somebody. Freedom of expression is a prerequisite for democracy and indeed without freedom of expression, there can be no democracy.This is why it continues to be important to facilitate healthy debates on this issue and help people understand why it is important to respect opinion of others, even if it is not in accordance with the mainstream. That is the best way to continue our rich democratic tradition and ensure that future generations can enjoy the same rights as we do. tend of References Walker, Melissa. (2002) Unequal Freedom How Race and sexual activity Shaped American Citizenship and Labor rev by Evelyn Nakano Glenn. cultivation retrieved on April 28th, 2008 from Website http//www.h-net. org/reviews/showrev. cgi? caterpillar track=112431032792905 Gans, Judith. (2005). Citizenship in the Context of Globalization. Udall halfway for Studies in Public Policy. Information retrieved on April 28th, 2008 from the Center Website http//udallcenter. arizona. edu/programs/immigration/publications/Citizenship%20and%20Globalization. pdf Smith, E. S. (2003). What is The Bill of Rights Information retrieved on April 28, 2008 from Website http//www. wisegeek. com/what-is-the-bill-of-rights. htm? Bill of Rights Defense Committee. (2008).Current Treats to Freedom of Speech, Religion, and Assembly. Information retrieved on April 28, 2008 from Website http//www. bordc. org/threats/speech. php Hill, Kimberley. (2008). Threats against the Free Speech? The Campus World Information retrieved on April 28, 2008 from Campus World Website http//www. thecampusword. com/content/view/2264/593/ Ameri can Civil Liberties Union, ACLU. (1994) despise Speech on Campus. Information retrieved on April 28, 2008 from Website http//www. aclu. org/studentsrights/expression/12808pub19941231. html