First Freedoms A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America

In First Freedoms, noted First Amendment scholars Charles C. Haynes, Sam Chaltain, and Susan M. Glisson present nearly forty documents that helped shape the history of the First Amendment in the United States. Through the lens of primary sources spanning more than three hundred years, First Freedoms demonstrates how liberty and justice in the United States have been shaped by the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment: religious liberty and freedom of speech, assembly, petition, and the press. An illustrated historical essay sets every document in its historical context and is followed by a facsimile of the document itself in its original form, whether a bilingual Japanese-English newspaper or a scribbled handwritten note from one Supreme Court justice to another. Where necessary, a transcript accompanies the document.