Quote:
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Originally Posted by Socrates
You can yell whatever you want, the Congress of the United States cannot write and pass a law limiting your freedom of speech. PERIOD. If you yell fire in a theatre, you are going to held responsible for the damage done by your act, in the tort system.
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In fact there are plenty of laws limiting freedom of speech: laws prohibiting certain kinds of pornography, for example, or laws requiring permits for political demonstrations (which is a twofer, as they also limit freedom of assembly). And whether or not these laws are constitutional is also a matter of considerable debate.
As EricReynolds has pointed out, the framers of the Constitution made it possible -- not easy, but possible -- to change it, since they recognized that changing times would likely require this. And reinterpreting it has gone on regularly, also as a response to changing times. What changes might require the Constitution to be updated or reinterpreted? Well, business practices can change -- hence the interpretations of the word "person" in the Fourteenth Amendment which gave corporations the same rights as persons (a truly bad idea, IMHO, but I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time...). People's opinions about what's right may change: hence we have amendments prohibiting slavery, and giving women the vote.
Of course, for any given
reinterpretation, those in favor tend to label it "strict construction," while those against it call it "judicial activism," "legislating from the bench," or some such...
But which it is seems to depend heavily on the observer's point of view.
So there's nothing sacred about the Second Amendment; if enough people in this country want it changed, or, say, reinterpreted to prohibit individual ownership of firearms, it will be. (No, I am NOT advocating this, thank you very much!)
It will be interesting to see just how
Heller plays out in specific cases, although, Glenn, I rather doubt that it'll protect your right to own fertilizer.