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Documents

  • 1797 Treaty of Tripoli

The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli has been used by some to counter arguments that
the United States is a “Christian nation.” The treaty, aimed to protect
American ships from the Muslim Barbary pirates, assures that the United
States was not founded upon Christianity.

  • Academic Bill of Rights

David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights attempts to establish principles
of the First Amendment on college campuses that Horowitz says have been
violated by liberals on campus.

  • Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations

The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations cataloged
organizations engaged in supposed subversive activity. The list chilled
First Amendment freedoms.

  • Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, was
established in 1791 to guard against an oppressive national government by
establishing certain rights.

  • Carolene Products Footnote Four

Justice Harlan Fiske Stone inserted a footnote that marked a Court shift in
giving more constitutional protection to individual rights, especially
those of the First Amendment.

  • Cato’s Letters

The First Amendment drew language from Cato’s Letters, which endorsed free
speech and said that people must be able to “petition for redress” their
government.

  • Constitution of the Confederate States of America

The constitution of the Confederate States of America included the rights
of the First Amendment. It protected those rights from any laws passed by
the Confederacy but not states.

  • Continental Congress: Declaration and Resolves

The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress in 1774
foreshadowed rights that would be included in the First Amendment,
including the right of petition.

  • Continental Congress: Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec

The letter to Quebec was meant to urge Canadians to join the colonists’
cause against Great Britain. The letter foreshadows the First Amendment
freedom of the press.

  • Continental Congress: Offer of Religious Freedom to Hessians Who Deserted Great Britain’s Army

Not long after Americans declared their independence of Great Britain, General Willaim Howe invaded New York with more than 30,000 troops, which included some 9,000 Hessian mercenaries. Hoping to encourage desertion among them, the Second Continental Congress, which had adopted the Declaration of Independence, adopted another resolution on August 14, 1776. It indicates that, even prior

  • Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence shows a vigorous exercise of future First
Amendment freedoms of speech and press, and paved the way for recognition
of the right of petition.

  • Detached Memoranda

James Madison’s “Detached Memoranda,” written after his presidency, reveals
his increasing emphasis on First Amendment separation of church and state.

  • English Bill of Rights

The English Bill of Rights of 1689 contains many rights that were later
included in the First Amendment, such as the right to petition and freedom
of speech and debate.

  • Flushing Remonstrance (1657)

A number of the Puritans who came to America immigrated from Holland, which had a much more liberal policy toward Protestant religious freedom than many of the Pilgrims themselves established in America. In 1645, Governor Willem Kieft of New Netherlands (today’s New York) granted a charter to settlers in Flushing (in today’s Queens) “to have and

  • Four Freedoms

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address to Congress, articulated the four
freedoms he thought every human should have, two of which relate to the
First Amendment.

  • Jack Smith’s Final Report on Trump Investigations (2025)

In addition to being twice impeached during his first term in the presidential office, Donald J. Trump was the subject of multiple legal investigations after he left office in 2021. He faced prosecutions in Georgia for election tampering (now on hold because of possible conflicts of interest in the district attorney’s office), faced and lost

  • Kalven Report

Amid a politically tumultuous period, the University of Chicago in 1967 issued the Kalven Report, which laid down guidelines for a university in making pronouncements about controversial political issues. The report was named after the chair of the committee that developed it, Harry Kalven Jr., a noted First Amendment scholar and law professor. In recent years,

  • Magna Carta

The Magna Carta is a series of concessions that English noblemen extracted
from King John I in 1215. The document remains an important foundation for
many American founding documents.

  • Maryland Toleration Act of 1649

Before the First Amendment was adopted, Maryland passed the Toleration Act
of 1649, which was meant to ensure religious freedom for Christian settlers
of diverse persuasions.

  • Mayflower Compact

One of America’s most important contributions to government is the written
constitution. The Mayflower Compact is the first constitution written in
the New World.

  • Memorial and Remonstrance

James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”
argued for complete religious liberty and against government support of
religion in any form.

  • Northwest Ordinance of 1787

The Northwest Ordinance primarily created the Northwest Territory in 1789
and presaged several provisions of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

  • On Liberty

On Liberty by British philosopher John Stuart Mill presents an influential
argument in favor of free speech, making it an inspiration for future First
Amendment theory.

  • Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers, classified documents that were leaked to the press,
became the subject of a major Supreme Court case regarding censorship and
First Amendment press freedom.

  • Proposed Revisions of the First Amendment — Conservative, Libertarian, and Progressive

In 2020, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia commissioned three groups of scholars to draft new versions of the U.S. Constitution, all of whom chose to reform rather than abolish the current document. Professors Robert George of Princeton University, Michael McConnell of Stanford University (a former federal circuit judge and frequent writer on the First

  • Ten Commandments

Legal challenges have been brought against public display of the
Ten Commandments for violating establishment clause of the First Amendment.

  • Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 were Democratic-Republican
responses to the Alien and Sedition Acts passed earlier that same year by a
Federalist-dominated Congress.

  • Virginia Declaration of Rights

The Virginia Declaration of Rights outlined rights similar to those later
incorporated into the U.S. Bill of Rights, including some similar to the
First Amendment.

  • Virginia Report of 1800

James Madison’s Report of 1800 argued for full freedom of speech and press
as indispensable checks on officeholders under a republican form of
government.

  • Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

The 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was the driving force
behind the religious clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution, ratified in 1791.

ABOUT US

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The Free Speech Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center dedicated to building understanding of the five freedoms of the First Amendment through education, information and engagement.

freespeechcenter@mtsu.edu

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