Minnesota Lawyer

For a dramatic demonstration of the real value of a free press in American life, just look to the Gulf of Mexico, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.

Licensing journalists is an idea that surfaces from time to time. But it’s always a bad idea.

The First Amendment’s five freedoms ensure that government doesn’t run roughshod over our religious-liberty and free-expression rights.

What is it about humor that all too often results in situations that decidedly are not a laughing matter?

The fight for freedom of expression takes many forms. But it occurs again and again, at different times, in different cultures, among very different people. And in the United States, the First Amendment makes the fight profoundly different from the struggles elsewhere.

Headlines — ironically, given this subject — have proclaimed for some time that newspapers in the United States are dying; headlines have documented bankruptcy filings by companies that own large news groups, and have noted thousands of lost newsroom jobs.

Through the years this annual rite at times has also been an unlikely battleground for social issues, as in Mississippi recently, and for some of what the nation’s Founders called our inalienable rights—freedom of assembly and free speech.

Balancing or pitting First Amendment freedoms against each other is tough work. Akin to asking a parent which child is the favorite, seeking to favor one or two of the five freedoms-religion, speech, press, assembly or petition-over the others creates an inherent contradiction.

As we mark the 50th anniversary this month of a hallmark image of the civil rights era - the earliest lunch-counter sit-ins - it's worth noting how all five freedoms in the First Amendment nurtured and empowered a movement that transformed our society.

The 45 words of the First Amendment are law rather than literature. But for the U.S. Supreme Court in an upcoming case, the question "What's in a name?" will involve parsing the modern meaning and application of First Amendment rights of free speech, petition and assembly.