Protection & Restriction On The Freedom Of Political Speech In U.s. Constitution

As an act to protect the freedom of speech for the America people and its organization., the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution has set a model for similar legislations around the world. The concept of freedom of political speech can be defined as follow: The individuals (including natural persons & citizens) or organizations of a certain society have the freedom to express their political opinion in written or other forms, and they also have the freedom not to express their political opinions. Over the past 200 years or so, the U.S Supreme Court have been following the spirit of the First Amendment, and have been protecting the freedom of political expression as a core of their work. Judges of the U.S Supreme Court put this article into practice once and once again, exploring the possibility of the freedom of political speech continuously. This paper will discuss the protection and restriction on the freedom of political speech by the U.S Supreme Court.Soon after the United States was founded, the Congress controlled by the Federalist approved the Anti-incitement Law in order to protect their party interests, with the purpose to deprive the freedom of political speech of their opponents. Although the purpose was not achieved, the application of the First Amendment was not taken into account at that time. The First Amendment was not used until the year 1919, when Justice Holmes first created a "clear and present danger" standard in the Scheck case. Ever since then, the First Amendment has been repeatedly cited by the judges in numerous cases involving the freedom of political expression. Since Justice Holmes put forward the 'marketplace-of-ideas' theory, the landmark theory to protect the freedom of political speech in Abrams v. United States, the freedom of political speech of the American society has been developed step by step. The Holmes- Brandeis'Dissents in Gitlow v. New York and Whitney v. California had a far-reaching influence, progressively developing into a broadly-accepted standard, and provide a solid foundation for the protection on the freedom of political speech in later years. The Brandenburg case, on the other hand, set up a precedent, which made the courts'emphasis transfer from investigating ones'speech and their results to investigating the constitutionality of the governments' restriction or deprivation of the freedom of expression.As for the freedom of press, the principle to forbid prior restraint was created in Near v. Minnesota. From then on, the report of printed media should be no longer pre-examined by the government. The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case indicated that opinions against government officials will not be a libel without the actual malice against the government officials. Moreover, when the freedom of political speech for the media runs up against the great benefit of the government(e.g. national security), the government has the burden of proof. For the freedom of political speech in other forms, as the judgment of Case of Burning National Flag had demonstrated, the American national flag protects the persons against it.But since the Schenck case was decided, judges from the U.S Supreme Court have not always safeguard the tradition of the freedom of speech. In a series of cases including Debs v. the United States and Dannis v. the United States, injuries to the freedom for the American people were really made. These examples have demonstrated that the development of the freedom of political speech in America is absolutely no easy . Fortunately, ever since late 1960s , the 'content neutrality' standard has already been widely accepted by the judges in America. But out of consideration for public interests, the U. S Supreme Court still set up 'time-place-manner' restriction and'public place'restriction to explain and apply the First Amendment. The 'time-place-manner' restriction means that although the government cannot regulate the contents of speech, it can place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech for the public safety. The'public place'restriction means the government can't forbid the citizen using public places, such as parks and streets, which have long been used for march , assembly , making speech and distributing leaflets. But in the meantime, governments must do differently in different kinds of public places .In addition, although newspapers and radio & television both belong to the press , to prevent monopoly of expression, the U.S Supreme Court has set different standard for the two kinds of freedom of political expression.