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