Discover how the First Amendment safeguards speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition freedoms in the U.S. Explore its significance and key Supreme Court cases.

The law makes a few exceptions to its protection of free speech -- not liking what you hear isn't one of them.

Within weeks of retaking the White House, President Donald Trump boasted that he had “brought free speech back to America.” But since then, he has tested the limits of the First Amendment time and ...

Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia, is the CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents most of the individual plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri. Hamburger wrote the following post ...

In the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, a fierce First Amendment debate over the concept of “hate speech” has taken center stage across the nation. Conservative lawmakers and ...

The right to take photographs and record videos of a public space is generally protected by the First Amendment. But freedoms of speech and the press are not unlimited. The boundaries of when people ...

This review is part of a preview of the winter 2026 issue of Academe. The issue will be released in full in February.

A federal district court discusses how the First Amendment limits liability for "hostile environment harassment" based on "speech on matters of public concern" in universities (public or private). And ...

In a landmark 1989 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment. The order describes the flag as the country's "most ...

In a landmark 1989 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment. Now, the Trump administration aims to test that.

President Trump signed an executive order aimed at prosecuting flag burning, despite existing Supreme Court precedent protecting it as free speech. The Supreme Court's 1989 ruling in Texas v. Johnson ...