The First Amendment…
…protects five things. Last week, I could only name three (this was for a test). Of all the people I asked, the one who knew the most (four) was actually Canadian.
Amendment I
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 peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Petitioning the government includes lobbying, communicating with your representatives, submitting comments during environmental reviews, testifying at hearings, etc. Apparently that’s the most-forgotten piece. Columbia’s journalism law course was once upon a time team-taught by former NYT columnist Anthony Lewis and Benno Schmidt, who went on to be president of Yale (succeeding Bart Giamatti, who is Paul Giamatti’s dad and left the presidency to become president of the National League, then Commissioner of Baseball).
*Interesting facts:
-Lewis’ wife is Margaret Marshall, once an anti-apartheid activist in her native South Africa and now Chief Justice of Massachusetts Supreme Court, who wrote the opinion legalizing gay marriage in that state.
-Schmidt’s father coined the term “venture capital.”
-Schmidt has been in two Woody Allen movies. (And that’s not mentioned in Wikipedia, yet.)
