Name: The First Amendment | National Constitution Center | Khan Academy
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T17:39:36.000Z
Duration: 16 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Kim] Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy.

And today, I'm learning more about the First Amendment

The First Amendment is one of the most important amendments

to the Constitution, if not the most important.

"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,

of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School

and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Professor Chemerinsky, there's a lot going on

Can you tell us a little bit more about why the framers

chose to protect these rights in particular?

- [Erwin] The historical background of the First Amendment

of the Constitution shows why the framers

wanted to be sure that all of the liberties

Let's focus on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

In England, there was after the printing press developed

licensing so that anyone who wanted to be able

to publish anything needed a license from the government.

Such licensing was seen to be inconsistent

with freedom of speech; freedom of the press;

for that matter: freedom of thought, freedom of inquiry.

Okay, so there are a lot of essential freedoms

that are packed into this First Amendment,

so much that it's almost amazing that we're gonna attempt

Professor McConnell, what is freedom of speech?

Does that encompass some things and not others?

- [Michael] Freedom of speech was actually less important

to the framers than the freedom with which it was coupled

that can reach large audiences is much more important

to the individual, but also dangerous to the state

When you speak, only those people within hearing range

fantastic new technology to publish your sentiments

maybe even over the entire country or across the Atlantic

and reaching hundreds of thousands of people,

So you think about how the American Revolution was won.

It required gaining converts and telling people

through the mechanism of the printing press.

what's freedom of speech, there's implicit within it

Ultimately, the answer to your question is

the First Amendment protecting speech broadly safeguards

- [Kim] Interesting, can you say more about that?

- [Erwin] The Supreme Court always has been clear

The court has said that there are certain categories

of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment.

Incitement of illegal activity is a category

The court has said this requires showing that

Another example: obscenity is unprotected

The court struggled for years trying to define

"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

There are also these categories of speech

- [Michael] That's where most of the limitations

on the freedom of speech and of the press come from

hurt other people's rights through the use of our own.

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The First Amendment | National Constitution Center | Khan Academy

content

expression

practice

aware