Comment

Comment by gottagetmac

Learning "a little about the 1st amendment" and pondering it "a little in a few minutes" is a dangerous thing. From just looking at this text, for example, you would think that it only applied to Congress, when actually it also applies to the executive branch, the judicial branch, and states and local government (since the Fourteenth Amendment and the incorporation cases).

I also think this narrow view has made you jump to a much stronger conclusion than is warranted. At least one scholar has considered whether the First Amendment could be interpreted to require that contracts of silence be unenforceable. http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/cornell-law-review...

In this case you happen to be mostly right, but don't assume you can understand the contours of First Amendment law just by looking at the text. There is a vast apparatus that has been built around the First Amendment, little of which is deducible from the constitutional text alone.

parent gottagetmac 13 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton