First Amendment Essay Research Paper In the

First Amendment Essay, Research Paper

In the First Amendment, it is stated that: 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 to

peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of

grievances. These aforementioned statements ratified by our forefathers are

commonly referred to as the freedom of expression. The freedom of expression is

not only limited to speech; it refers to all forms of exchanging ideas:

religion, press, assembly, petition, etc. In Alan M. Dershowitz’s essay,

"Shouting Fire!", he boldly claims that Justice Holmes’ analogy of

"shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater" to circulating pamphlets to

the public during wartime that contain political ideas against the draft is both

"self-deceptive or self-serving" (Dershowitz, 328). However, shouting

"Fire!" in a crowded theater does not only refer to the freedom of

speech, but to freedom of expression implied by the First Amendment. By shouting

"Fire!", an individual is implying alarm, and the indication of alarm

will ultmately cause chaos. There is no way that a shout of "Fire!" in

a crowded theater, a form of "decontextualized information" (Postman,

8), is the same as the circulation of waritme pamphlets. The idea of

"speech" is not specifically defined in the First Amendment. Due to

the absence of the authors’ intention in using the word, "speech," we

are then forced to speculate on the meaning of this nebulous word. In Webster’s

New World Dictionary, one will find the following: speech (spech) n. [* OE

sprecan, speak] 1 the act of speaking 2 the power to speak 3 that which is

spoken; utterance, remark, etc. 4 a talk given to an audience 5 the language of

certain people Let us interpret "speech" according to the definition

given by Webster’s New World Dictionary, then "speech" should only

constitute audible sound and not also the ideas that may result from the act of

speaking. According to this theory, we are then allowed to freely say anything

that please us, including the act of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded

theater. However, we can clearly see that this is not the intention of the First

Amendment from historical evidence. It does not seem that the Supreme Court and

the public view only the act of "speaking" to be protected by the

First Amendment, for it is the act of expressing ideas that concerns them. Even

Justice Holmes announced that "[t]he most stringent protection of free

speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and

causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from injunction against uttering

words that may have all the effect of force" (Dershowitz, 325). Which then

leads us to believe that it is the expression of ideas that leads "directly

to serious harm" (Dershowitz, 328) to the public that acts as a violation

of the First Amendment. However, each individual’s interpretation of what may

lead directly to serious harm may be different. Some individuals’

interpretations of what cause serious harm are more liberal, while others are

more conservative: I may find the circulation of pamphlets containing radical

political views to be quite detrimental to wartime effort, while others may find

that to be virtually harmless. In recognizing that the government does indeed

have the right to censor "expressions [that] may lead directly to serious

harm" (Dershowitz, 328), Dershowitz implies that there is a hidden status

quo, or norm, that individuals within an interpretive community use as a

guideline to determine what constitutes extreme disorder. It is then left up to

the Supreme Court to act as the absolute authority to set these guidelines for

the members of the interpretive community. In order for chaos to occur, there

must be people to interpret and interact with ideas that are proposed. If one

were to shout "Fire!" in an empty theater, then there would be no

chaos resulting from that action; no one would be there to interpret the shout

of "Fire!" as a potential alarm. As Justice Holmes pointed out in

Schenck v. United States, "the character of every act depends upon the

circumstances in which it is done" (Dershowitz, 325). However, it was most

unfortunate for Schenck to be imprisoned for distributing his political

pamphlets, for it was not the intention of these pamphlets to cause chaos:

"nothing in the pamphlet suggested that the draftees should use unlawful or

violent means to oppose conscription" (Dershowitz, 324). Although the

Schenck pamphlets did not directly cause chaos, it was its potential to cause

chaos that led t

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