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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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,

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.