[{"command":"add_css","data":[{"rel":"stylesheet","media":"all","href":"\/sites\/default\/files\/css\/css_veuEhhb1658wti0_ZAig66JOyixENU-N9zhjLQSLfOQ.css?delta=0\u0026language=en\u0026theme=heritage_theme\u0026include=eJwrTi1LzdNPzkksLq7Uy8tPSQUAPMsGtA"}]},{"command":"invoke","selector":null,"method":"openEssay","args":["18008041","\n\n\u003Carticle about=\u0022\/constitution\/amendments\/1\/essays\/208\/right-of-assembly\u0022 class=\u0022node node--type-constitution-essay node--promoted node--view-mode-embedded clearfix\u0022\u003E\n  \u003Ch1 class=\u0022title\u0022\u003E\u003Cspan\u003ERight of Assembly\u003C\/span\u003E\n\u003C\/h1\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-location\u0022\u003E\n      Amendment I\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-context\u0022\u003E\n      \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECongress shall make no law...abridging...the right of the people peaceably to assemble....\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-body\u0022\u003E\n    \n            \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere has been some debate as to whether \u201cthe right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances\u201d in the First Amendment recognizes a unitary right to assemble for the purpose of petitioning the government, or whether it establishes both an unencumbered right of assembly and a separate right of petition. Though the issue continues to be disputed, the text of the First Amendment and the corresponding debates over the Bill of Rights suggest that the Framers understood assembly to encompass more than petition. There are two reasons supporting this viewpoint. First, while punctuation at the Framing did not carry the same significance as it does today, the comma after \u201cassemble\u201d appears to be residual from proposed language for the Bill of Rights forwarded by the several states. Those drafts included separate clauses for assembly and petition.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EA second reason against construing the right of assembly as limited to the purpose of petition comes from a debate between Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts and John Page of Virginia during the House of Representatives\u2019 consideration of the language that would become the Bill of Rights. Sedgwick criticized the proposed right of assembly as redundant in light of the freedom of speech: \u201cIf people freely converse together, they must assemble for that purpose; it is a self-evident, unalienable right which the people possess; it is certainly a thing that never would be called in question; it is derogatory to the dignity of the House to descend to such minutiae.\u201d Page countered Sedgwick\u2019s proposal with a pointed reference to the trial of William Penn to illustrate the importance of the right of assembly. Penn had been arrested and tried in London for unlawful assembly following his preaching on the streets\u2014 an act of religious worship that had nothing to do with petitioning the government. After Page spoke, the House defeated Sedgwick\u2019s motion to strike assembly from the draft amendment by a \u201cconsiderable majority.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe first groups to rely upon the freedom of assembly also construed it broadly. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Democratic-Republican Societies repeatedly invoked the right of assembly against Federalist challenges to their gatherings and activities. During the antebellum era, slaves and free blacks contested the denial of free assembly by Southern legislatures. Meanwhile, female abolitionists and suffragists in the North organized and asserted the right of assembly in conjunction with their political conventions.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn \u003Cem\u003EPresser v. Illinois\u003C\/em\u003E (1886), the Supreme Court narrowly construed the text of the First Amendment by suggesting that the right of assembly was limited to the purposes of petitioning for a redress of grievances. \u003Cem\u003EPresser\u003C\/em\u003E is the only time that the Court has expressly limited the right of assembly in this way, and the Court has since indirectly contradicted the view that assembly and petition compose one right.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile some commentators accepted the Supreme Court\u2019s narrow interpretation in \u003Cem\u003EPresser\u003C\/em\u003E, state courts interpreting parallel state constitutional provisions of assembly articulated far broader protections that extended to religious groups and social activities. This more expansive sense of assembly was also asserted by the women\u2019s movement and labor protesters during the Progressive Era.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ENineteenth-century legal commentators applied the right of assembly to a broad array of gatherings. In 1867, a treatise by John Alexander Jameson referred to \u201cwholly unofficial\u201d gatherings and \u201cspontaneous assemblies\u201d that were protected by the right of peaceable assembly, a \u201ccommon and most invaluable provision of our constitutions, State and Federal.\u201d These assemblies were \u201cat once the effects and the causes of social life and activity, doing for the state what the waves do for the sea: they prevent stagnation, the precursor of decay and death.\u201d Albert Wright\u2019s 1883 \u003Cem\u003EExposition of the Constitution of the United States\u003C\/em\u003E observed that under the right of assembly, \u201cany number of people may come together in any sort of societies, religious, social or political, or even in treasonous conspiracies, and, so long as they behave themselves and do not hurt anybody or make any great disturbance, they may express themselves in public meetings by speeches and resolutions as they choose.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Supreme Court made the federal right of assembly applicable to the states in \u003Cem\u003EDe Jonge v. Oregon\u003C\/em\u003E (1937). After speaking before a group of 150 people at a meeting that occurred under the auspices of the Communist Party, Dirk De Jonge had been convicted under Oregon\u2019s criminal syndicalism statute, which prohibited \u201cthe organization of a society or assemblage\u201d that \u201cadvocate[d] crime, physical violence, sabotage or any unlawful acts or methods as a means of accomplishing or effecting industrial or political change or revolution.\u201d A unanimous Supreme Court reversed the conviction. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes underscored the significance of applying the right of assembly to state action by observing that \u201cthe right of peaceable assembly is a right cognate to those of free speech and free press and is equally fundamental.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn 1939, assembly joined religion, speech, and press as one of the \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d celebrated at the New York World\u2019s Fair. Speeches, newspaper editorials, and other tributes surrounding the Fair heralded the singular importance of assembly to American freedom. When later that year the Supreme Court issued its decision in \u003Cem\u003EHague v. Committee for Industrial Organization\u003C\/em\u003E (an assembly case that first recognized the concept of the public forum, which now plays a central role in free speech doctrine), the editors of the \u003Cem\u003ENew York Times\u003C\/em\u003E pronounced that \u201cwith the right of assembly reasserted, all \u2018four freedoms\u2019 of [the] Constitution are well established.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn 1941, festivities around the country marked the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Bill of Rights. In Washington, D.C.\u2019s Post Square, organizers of a celebration displayed an over-sized copy of the Bill of Rights next to the four phrases: \u201cFreedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press.\u201d The Sesquicentennial Committee, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt as its chair, issued a proclamation describing the four freedoms as \u201cthe pillars which sustain the temple of liberty under law.\u201d Days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President heralded the \u201cimmeasurable privileges\u201d of the First Amendment and signed a proclamation for Bill of Rights Day against the backdrop of a mural listing the four freedoms. (Roosevelt\u2019s 1941 State of the Union Address posited a different four freedoms. Rather than refer to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, and press that had formed the centerpiece of the World\u2019s Fair, Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cFour Freedoms Speech\u201d called for freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The new formulation\u2014absent assembly\u2014quickly overtook the old.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn \u003Cem\u003EThomas v. Collins\u003C\/em\u003E (1945), the Supreme Court emphasized that because of the \u201cpreferred place given in our scheme to the great, the indispensable democratic freedoms secured by the First Amendment,\u201d only \u201cthe gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation.\u201d Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge\u2019s opinion noted that the right of assembly guarded \u201cnot solely religious or political\u201d causes but also \u201csecular causes,\u201d great and small. Rutledge also observed that the rights of the speaker and the audience were \u201cnecessarily correlative.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe attention to assembly in the 1940s quickly receded. Although the right remained important in several decisions overturning convictions of African Americans who participated in peaceful civil rights demonstrations, courts had largely ignored the right by the close of the Civil Rights Era. The Supreme Court has not addressed a right of assembly claim in thirty years.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAt least part of the reason for the neglect of assembly has been the Court\u2019s recognition of a non-textual right of association, beginning in \u003Cem\u003ENAACP v. Alabama\u003C\/em\u003E (1958). Justice John M. Harlan\u2019s opinion for a unanimous Court cited \u003Cem\u003EDe Jonge\u003C\/em\u003E and \u003Cem\u003EThomas \u003C\/em\u003Efor the principle that: \u201cEffective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly.\u201d Based on these precedents, Harlan could have resolved the case under the freedom of assembly. But he instead shifted away from assembly, finding it \u201cbeyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the \u2018liberty\u2019 assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech.\u201d The members of the petitioner NAACP had a \u201cconstitutionally protected right of association\u201d that meant they could \u201cpursue their lawful private interests privately\u201d and \u201cassociate freely with others in doing so.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ELater, the Court split the right of association into two component parts in \u003Cem\u003ERoberts v. United States Jaycees\u003C\/em\u003E (1984). Justice William J. Brennan\u2019s majority opinion asserted that previous decisions had identified two separate constitutional sources for the right of association. One line of decisions protected \u201cintimate association\u201d as \u201ca fundamental element of personal liberty.\u201d Another set of decisions guarded \u201cexpressive association,\u201d which was \u201ca right to associate for the purpose of engaging in those activities protected by the First Amendment\u2014speech, assembly, petition for the redress of grievances, and the exercise of religion.\u201d Expressive association to pursue \u201ca wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends\u201d was \u201cimplicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ESubsequent decisions have suggested that few groups outside of the family qualify for protection under the right of intimate association. Other decisions have revealed a deep incoherence in the doctrine of expressive association that has led to less robust protections than those envisioned by the right of assembly. For example, in \u003Cem\u003EChristian Legal Society v. Martinez\u003C\/em\u003E (2010), the Court concluded that a Christian group\u2019s right of association claim \u201cmerged\u201d with the group\u2019s free speech claim. In other words, the Court found no value in association apart from speech.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n      \n  \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--media\u0022\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--info\u0022\u003E\n              \u003Ch4 class=\u0022con-essay-author--name\u0022\u003E\n                      John Inazu \n                  \u003C\/h4\u003E\n                  \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-author--job\u0022\u003E\n         Associate Professor of Law and Political Science, Washington Uniersity\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n            \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n\n    \u003Cdiv class=\u0022con-essay-tabs\u0022\u003E\n      \u003Cul data-tabs class=\u0022tabs\u0022\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-18008041-taba\u0022\u003EFurther Reading\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-18008041-tabb\u0022\u003ECase Law\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n        \u003Cli class=\u0022button-more thirds\u0022\u003E\u003Ca data-tab href=\u0022#node-18008041-tabc\u0022\u003ERelated Essays\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\n      \u003C\/ul\u003E\n\n      \u003Cdiv data-tabs-content\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-18008041-taba\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EM. Glenn Abernathy, The Right of Assembly and Association (2d ed. 1981, 1961)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAkhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (1998)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAshutosh Bhagwat,\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EAssociational Speech\u003C\/em\u003E, 120 Yale L.J. 978 (2011)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETabatha Abu El-Haj, T\u003Cem\u003Ehe Neglected Right of Assembly,\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;56 UCLA L. Rev. 543 (2009)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERichard A. Epstein,\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EForgotten No More, A Review of Liberty\u0027s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly,\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E13 Engage (March 2012)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJohn D. Inazu, Liberty\u0027s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (2012)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJohn D. Inazu, \u003Ci\u003EThe Unsettling \u0022Well-Settled\u0022 Law of Freedom of Association\u003C\/i\u003E, 43 Conn. L. Rev. 149 (2010)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELinda J. Lumsden, Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly (1997)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJason Mazzone,\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EFreedom\u0027s Associations\u003C\/em\u003E, 77 Wash. L. Rev. 639 (2002)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Csub\u003EMichael W. McConnell,\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EFreedom By Association,\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E First Things (August\/September 2012)\u003C\/sub\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-18008041-tabb\u0022\u003E\n          \n      \u003Cdiv\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUnited States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPresser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 267 (1886)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDe Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHerndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242 (1937)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 U.S. 496 (1939)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENAACP v. Alabama\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003Eex rel\u003C\/em\u003E Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERoberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBoy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n              \u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EChristian Legal Society v. Martinez, 130 S. Ct. 2971 (2010)\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n          \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n        \u003C\/div\u003E\n        \u003Cdiv data-tabs-pane class=\u0022tabs-pane\u0022 id=\u0022node-18008041-tabc\u0022\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000139\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EFreedom of Speech and of the Press\u003C\/a\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000140\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EFreedom of Petition\u003C\/a\u003E\n                      \u003Ca href=\u0022\/essay_controller\/10000149\u0022 class=\u0022use-ajax\u0022\u003EDue Process Clause\u003C\/a\u003E\n                  \u003C\/div\u003E\n      \u003C\/div\u003E\n    \u003C\/div\u003E\n  \n\u003C\/article\u003E\n"]}]