First Amendment

Free Speech1

Legal Limitations on Freedom of Speech

Most Americans know the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants freedom of speech. While freedom of speech is one of our fundamental rights, there are limitations. What is and what isn’t protected speech has been the subject of countless lawsuits over the years. While those court decisions have provided…

Obscenity Laws and Free Speech

Obscenity refers to a very narrow category of pornography that violates the current community standards and can be proven to have no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. This remains one of the most controversial and confounding areas of First Amendment Law, since, as Justice Potter Stewart put it…