First Amendment To The United States Constitution - International Significance

International Significance

Some of the provisions of the United States Bill of Rights have their roots in the English Bill of Rights and other aspects of English law. The English Bill of Rights, however, does not include many of the protections found in the First Amendment. For example, while the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech to the general populace, the English Bill of Rights protected only "Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament." The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a French revolutionary document passed just weeks before Congress proposed the Bill of Rights, contains certain guarantees that are similar to those in the First Amendment. For instance, it suggests that "every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom."

Article III, Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution of the Philippines, written in 1987, contain identical wording to the First Amendment regarding speech and religion, respectively. These phrases can also be found in the 1973 and 1935 Philippine constitutions. All three constitutions contain, in the section on Principles, the sentence, "The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable", echoing Jefferson's famous phrase.

While the First Amendment does not explicitly set restrictions on freedom of speech, other declarations of rights sometimes do so. The European Convention on Human Rights, for example, permits restrictions "in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary." Similarly the Constitution of India allows "reasonable" restrictions upon free speech to serve "public order, security of State, decency or morality."

The First Amendment was one of the first guarantees of religious freedom: neither the English Bill of Rights, nor the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, contains a similar guarantee.