Ep. 281: What's the First Amendment's original meaning? w/ Jud Campbell and Stephen Solomon

The First Amendment is only 45 words long. But more than 200 years and thousands of court decisions later, we're still arguing over a basic question: what do those words mean — and what did they mean to the early Americans who adopted them?

To look through history and debate what originalism can — and can't — tell us about the First Amendment's free speech clause, we are joined by: 

• Jud Campbell, Stanford Law School professor and the author of Natural Rights and the First Amendment and Determining Rights

• Stephen Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at New York University, the founding editor of First Amendment Watch, and the author of Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech 

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro  

02:20 Original meaning and modern First Amendment doctrine

09:12 Would the founders recognize our Constitution today?

16:00 The Alien and Sedition Acts

20:21 How the founding generation practiced free speech

24:35 Can we define "originalism"?

32:05 Representative government and the promise of liberty

45:00 The First Amendment's absolute language

51:36 New York Times v. Sullivan

58:01 Amending the First Amendment

01:04:30 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more. 

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.