What Does the First Amendment Mean?

HT HE FIRST AMENDMENT to the Constitution is, I believe, the most significant political statement which we Americans have made. And yet, just because it is so fundamental and revolutionary, its words are strangely confusing and paradoxical. By contrast with older forms of governing, the Amendment declares that the people of the United States are to be free-free from certain forms of governmental control, to govern themselves in ways which they may choose, to control those governing bodies which they have established as their agents. But the words free and government, when used in such statements as these, are torn away from their earlier meanings. Freedom,'' after the Constitution was adopted, did not mean what it had meant before. Nor did government. And, for that reason, the interpretation of the Amendment is constantly involved in deep and perplexing ambiguity. The Amendment means, I am sure, what it says. But there is a sense in which it does not say what it means. At any rate, it does not say it to us unless we practice eternal vigilance in the criticism of our words and meanings. And, in that situation, the task of interpreting the Amendment, of discovering and formulating what its meaning is, what it has become, belongs primarily to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is the purpose of this paper to ask whether, under the strains of world war and domestic conflict, recent opinions of the Court have cleared away confusion and error about our freedom or have increased those evils. And, as a representative instance under that general inquiry, we will examine specifically the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Dennis v. United States.'