10.7 Interactive Knowledge Check: First Amendment: Speech, Press, Religion, Assembly, and Petition

1. Generally speaking, speech in America can only be limited by the government _____

2. The First Amendment’s text states who shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press?

3. Which of these rights is not addressed in the First Amendment?

4. The Supreme Court has said that this type of speech is covered by the First Amendment.

5. According to the Constitution, the First Amendment protects a speaker from abuses by _______

6. The Supreme Court, which heads this branch of government, has frequently declared that the government cannot regulate speech based on its content

7. During the early years of our nation, if someone were to criticize a state or local official, the state’s governor for example, the First Amendment would not protect that citizen from punishment for that speech. The First Amendment was seen to only apply to _____

8. What is true about the freedom of conscience?

9. The two clauses central to the protection of the freedom of religion in the First Amendment are the _________ Clause and the ____________Clause

10. Supreme Court justices do not always agree about constitutional issues, including the freedom of speech. In such cases, justices who do not agree with the majority opinion and would rule differently can write their own opinions, which are called ______

11. During the presidency of John Adams, the passage of this legislation made it a crime to criticize the president (but not the vice president).

12. In which document did Thomas Jefferson write that “the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed in their minds”?

13. Fill in the blanks of this famous opinion of the First Amendment by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in _______shouting fire in a theatre and causing a __________.”

14. Justice Louis Brandeis articulated his beliefs about the freedom of speech in this Supreme Court case from 1927

15. Finish this famous quote about the freedom of speech from Louis Brandeis in 1927: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is__________.”

16. Fill in the missing word from Justice Robert Jackson’s statement in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or            citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

17. Today, the Supreme Court protects free speech rights ____

18. Which of these is true about freedom of speech?

19. The First Amendment does not protect certain types of “low value speech,” which includes ____

20. In the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) case, a group of high school students were disciplined by the school for wearing black armbands in symbolic protest of which war?