Should Freedom Of Speech Be Regulated Essay

The First Amendment of The Constitution is engraved in the minds of the American people for being the guarantor of the Freedom of Speech clause. Nevertheless, the vagueness of said clause has been subjugated to challenges that ask; “Should Freedom of Speech be regulated?” The Supreme Court appeared to be inconsistent for creating answers on a case-by-case basis. However, in the midst of said inconsistency, the Supreme Court’s most compelling standard to determine if speech can be constitutionally restricted is if said speech abridges people from other constitutionally guaranteed rights. To begin, establishing a line between constitutionally protected speech and regulated speech proved to be a daunting task for the Supreme Court. Most importantly, it meant that the Supreme Court was going to run into another major issue; Whether or not individuals would be partially abridged of their Freedom of

United States and thoroughly explored in Abrams v. United States, Whitney v. California, and Dennis v. United States. At this point in time, Marxism-Leninism was seen as a threat to the national security of the United States. In order to protect the United States from the threat of such, Supreme Court Justice Holmes found it necessary to declare in Schenck v. United States that “words used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent” (pg.5). In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that distributing material that would jeopardize national security, should be banned. The jeopardizing of national security, would itself constitute in jeopardizing the constitution that guarantees rights to the people of the United States. As seen here, the Supreme Court found it necessary to partially abridge free speech in order to secure a greater amount of guaranteed rights to