Discussing the First Amendment

TL;DR: For instance, this article argued that the Court's free speech decisions are theoretically incoherent or untrue to the original text of the First Amendment's original text, and pointed out that the court's free-speech decisions are also incoherent.

Abstract: Since the First Amendment's inception, Americans have agreed that free expression is foundational to our democratic way of life.' Though we agree on this much, we have rarely agreed on much else regarding the appropriate parameters of free expression. Is the First Amendment absolute or does it allow some regulation of speech? Should the First Amendment protect offensive speech, pornography, flag-burning? Why do we protect speech to promote the search for truth, to promote self-governance, or to protect individual autonomy?2 History is rife with disagreements regarding these issues to which there are no definitive answers. Certainly, the text of the First Amendment does not help;3 nor do the contemporaneous but conflicting historical documents. In light of the First Amendment's textual generality, the Supreme Court has had to make up free speech doctrine as it goes along, using whatever tools it can find. The result is a complex set of legal rules regulating speech and expressive conduct that evolved over the last century, which has endured its fair share of criticism. Increasingly, scholars claim that the Court's free speech decisions are theoretically incoherent4 or untrue to the First Amendment's original