The Rights Of The United States - 1701 Words

When The United States came into being, the heads of the country made a great deal of emphasis in making sure the country fulfilled one requirement: the United States needed to be the living image of freedom. This image of freedom needed to exist not only as a geographical and political entity, meaning free from the English, but as a society as well, and that is why it opted for a democracy as a system to rule, to let the citizens be able to live freely. Despite the obvious issues presented in the country on that moment that we might call hypocrite, like slavery; the founding fathers knew what they wanted the country to achieve, and laid a great base for getting there, The Bill of Rights, the document that preceded the Constitution in†¦show more content†¦As we live in an evolving society the government needs to keep working on how the lines of what can and cannot be said are established. As the years went by, different cases led to different tests and resolutions that decided where speech is not protected by the First Amendment. In 1919 the case Schenck v. United States led to the creation of the Clear and Present Danger Test, in this case Schenck, an anti-war socialist, was convicted for distributing pamphlets against the draft, claiming that it was unconstitutional because it was involuntary servitude and that that was banned under the Thirteenth Amendment. This is a particular difficult case to see because one can object that for him is not about supporting Germany, but giving the people the right to decide what to do, and that he is only exercising his right to freedom of speech. But Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated that this freedom is not absolute, especially in war time, Holmes argued that his action will create a chaos that will put people in danger, he makes the example of screaming fire in a movie theater he said the words are used in such circumstance s 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. The reasons the Court has to pass this test are more than reasonable, one of the duties of the government is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its citizens and if we weight the