~First Amendment, Amendment 1791 to the Constitution of the United States which is part of the Bill of Rights and reads as follows. First Amendment. In the United States, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The First Amendment was adopted as part of the Go to Trial footnotes - S. Const. to modify. Congress shall make no law. restrict freedom of expression. The Supreme Court ruled that, according to Alexander Meiklejohn, the First Amendment is an absolute. Ct. Rev. 245, 255 affirming that the First Amendment "protects the freedom of thought and communication activities by which we 'govern,'" Bork, supra, -28 defining political speech as "speech concerning behavior, policy, or policy government. Meiklejohn, The First Amendment Is an Absolute, 1961. Essays in Political -97 2003, Tim Scanlon asks us to consider the intrinsic value of free speech with an argument for autonomy. As morally autonomous agents, he asserts that we need freedom of speech and access to free speech. When I began my college study of the First Amendment years ago, the topics seemed fairly straightforward. The journal was later named the Free Speech Yearbook and addressed some of the more conventional First Amendment issues. The journal's early essays were written by scholars such as Franklyn Haiman and Robert O'Neill,