Identify the significance of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution are uniquely important in America’s political history. The First Amendment guarantees to all citizens the rights of free speech, religious exercise, the press, assembly, and the ability to sue the government for redress. The Fourteenth Amendment extends rights to all individuals, regardless of race, and guarantees “equal protection under the law.” The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment have had the most wide-ranging and significant impact on the way citizens relate to each other and to their government than perhaps any other legal clause or pronouncement in existence.

The First Amendment

The First Amendment reads:

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.

The First Amendment’s prohibition against the abridgment of the freedom of speech, of the press, and of the right to assemble and petition government, are the most fundamental and important political rights in America. Without the freedom to speak one's mind, political campaigns and elections would be meaningless. Without a free press, it would be much more difficult to acquire information about government and political leaders. Without the freedom to assemble, the government would be able to regulate who attended political meetings and even church services. And without the right to take their grievances to the government, the people would simply have to accept whatever the government or others did to them. Indeed, without the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment, the American political system could not exist. It should come as no surprise that the Framers were particularly adamant about protecting the right of the people to express their views about politics and government. The Supreme Court has maintained a similar focus, giving political speech a more “preferred position” in the law than commercial or other kinds of speech.

While most Americans today take their First Amendment rights for granted, the experiences of the colonists in the 1760s and 1770s made them wary of the new government created by the Constitution. Consequently, it was important to them to have a clearly written statement of the rights on which the government could not infringe. While the expression rights guaranteed by the First Amendment are straightforward on paper, much like the Religion Clauses, their interpretation has not always been easy. Surely the Framers did not mean that anyone could say anything they wanted to or express themselves in any way they chose at any time in any place. While the First Amendment says that the “Congress shall make no law” limiting the freedom of speech, very few people believe that the rights listed in it were meant to be absolute. Such things as lying in a court of law and child pornography are clear examples of speech and expression not protected by the First Amendment. However, where the lines between acceptable and unacceptable forms of expression should be drawn is controversial and would fall to the Supreme Court to decide.

The St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, one of the religions found in the United States. ("St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans," Wikipedia, 2004)

The Establishment of Religion and Free Exercise

It is no mistake that a guarantee of religious freedom and a prohibition of government-established religions appear in the first half of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The people were not about to take for granted rights they had only recently come to enjoy. The place of religion in the colonies, and then in the states, however, has evolved significantly over time. Several states had established religions early in America’s history. In fact, the Congregational Church was the official church of the state of Massachusetts until 1833.

As the notion of religious freedom has evolved, however, government’s role in religion has become increasingly circumspect. Not only are there no official, government-sanctioned religions in the United States, but there is a widely held belief that there ought to be a “wall of separation” between religion and government. Furthermore, in the balance between liberty and order, it is widely believed that each individual should be allowed to engage in religious practices that do not directly harm other individuals. While these notions of government noninvolvement in religion and religious liberty are fairly straightforward in most cases, there have been numerous instances in which the proper role of government has been unclear or where it has been unclear just how harmful an individual or group’s religious practices are. In these cases, the people of the nation, usually led by the Supreme Court, had to strike a workable balance between liberty and order. Those who have been on the losing side of these battles, however, have not given up trying to shift the balance in their preferred direction. Indeed, much of the story of the First Amendment is the continuing struggle to find a balance that everyone can live with.