On Jan. 13 1988 the U.S. Supreme Court announced a devastating blow to student speech and the student press when it approved the authority of the principal of Hazelwood East High School to remove controversial stories about teen pregnancy and divorce from the school newspaper. The court’s decision in Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier was one of…
bill of rights
The right to be let alone
The word privacy isn’t in the Constitution. Yet privacy has become one of the most important values protected by the Bill of Rights. Privacy is the right to get away. To keep people out – out of your house, out of your business, out of your papers, out of your life. It is the right…
Political correctness: clash of values
The national conversation about political correctness is a clash between two of the most important American values – freedom and equality. How much freedom should people have to say nasty things that marginalize those who have historically been treated unequally? The First Amendment’s answer to that question is to favor speech over good manners and…
Two protections for religious freedom
The First Amendment protects religious freedom in two ways. One is the keep the government from telling people what creed they must worship. The other is to keep the government from telling people what creed they can’t worship. The first is the Establishment Clause which means government can’t endorse one religion over another or religion…