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Penhallow v. Doane's, 3 U.S. 54, 3 Dall. 54, 1 L.Ed. 507 (1795):
"The great distinction
between Monarchies and Republics (at least our Republics) in general is,
that in the former the monarch is considered as the sovereign, and each
individual of his nation a subject to him, though in some countries with
many important special limitations: This, I say, is generally the case, for
it has not been so universally. But in a Republic, all the citizens,
as such, are equal, and no citizen can rightfully exercise any authority
over another, but in virtue of a power constitutionally given by the whole
community, and such authority when exercised, is in effect an act of the
whole community which forms such body politic. In such governments,
therefore, the sovereignty resides in the great body of the people, but it
resides in them not as so many distinct individuals, but in their politic
capacity only."
Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice
BRENNAN, and Mr. Justice FORTAS concur, dissenting.
The First Amendment, applicable to the States by reason of the
Fourteenth (Edwards
v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 235, 83 S.Ct. 680, 683), provides
that ‘Congress shall make no law * * * abridging * * * the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.’ These rights, along with religion, speech, and
press, are preferred rights of the Constitution, made so by reason of
that explicit guarantee and
*49 what
Edmond Cahn in Confronting Injustice (1966) referred to as ‘The
Firstness of the First Amendment.'FN1
With all respect, therefore, the Court errs in treating the case as if
it were an ordinary trespass case or an ordinary picketing case.
FN1. ‘Where would we really
find the principal danger to civil liberty in a republic? Not in the
governors as governors, not in the governed as governed, but in the
governed unequipped to function as governors. The chief enemies of
republican freedom are mental sloth, conformity, bigotry,
superstition, credulity, monopoly in the market of ideas, and utter,
benighted ignorance. Relying as it does on the consent of the
governed, representative government cannot succeed unless the
community receives enough information to grasp public issues and
make sensible decisions. As lights which may have been
enough for the past do not meet the needs of the present, so present
lights will not suffice for the more extensive and complex problems
of the future. Heretofore public enlightenment may have been only a
manifest desideratum; today it constitutes an imperative necessity.
The First Amendment, says Justice Black, ‘reflects the faith
that a good society is not static but advancing, and that the
fullest possible interchange of ideas and beliefs is essential to
attainment of this goal.’ (From
Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 501, 64 S.Ct. 1082, 1088, 88
L.Ed. 1408 (dissenting opinion).)' Cahn, supra, p. 102.
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Mr. Franklin: We're All Democrats Now-article by Congressman Ron
Paul
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