First Amendment Heroes Hall of Fame

Greetings ! Welcome to the First Amendment Hall of Heroes. My name is John Marshall.

I was the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Let’s learn about the role our Supreme Court plays in protecting our First Amendment freedoms.

The Supreme Court has a special role to play in the United States system of government.

The Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to check, if necessary, the actions of the President and Congress. It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed by the Constitution. It can also tell Congress that a law it passed goes against the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court is like a referee on a football field. The Congress, the President, and other government officials are the players. As "referees", it is the Supreme Court judges, called “justices”, say when government officials step out-of-bounds.

The decisions of the Supreme Court are made inside a courthouse in Washington, D.C.

Here the justices receive about thousands of requests, called “cases”, each year. Of these the Court will agree to hear only a few.

One the morning of each day, the justices take their seats. Lawyers step forward and explain their side of the case. The justices listen from their high seats and often interrupt to ask the lawyers questions.

The justices may take several days to study the case more.

Some cases are about the First Amendment. The Constitution does not allow laws that "abridge the freedom of speech." Freedom of speech is protected, along with freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, and freedom of religious expression.

These are the sorts of difficult questions that the Supreme Court justices must answer. That’s why they deserve to be in our First Amendment Hall of Heroes!

Let’s visit our Hall of Heroes and hear what our Supreme Court justices have said about our First Amendment freedoms.

Those who won our independence believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means to the discovery of truth. Justice Louis Brandeis

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” Justice William Douglas

The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected because speech is the beginning of thought. Justice Anthony Kennedy

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. Justice William Brennan

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official can prescribe matters of opinion or faith. Justice Robert Jackson

Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message or its ideas…Each individual is guaranteed the right to express any thought. Justice Thurgood Marshall

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that regulating speech must be a last resort. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

You can study more about Supreme Court’s cases about the First Amendment and how the Court works for our freedoms…