Flag Desecration Amendment - Proposed Amendment

Proposed Amendment

The full text of the amendment (passed several times by the U.S. House of Representatives):

The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

This proposed amendment was intended to give Congress the right to enact statutes criminalizing the burning or other desecration of the United States flag in a public protest. Proponents of legislation to proscribe flag burning argue that burning the flag is a very offensive gesture that deserves to be formally outlawed. Opponents maintain that giving Congress such power would essentially limit the principle of freedom of speech — enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and symbolized by the flag itself.

The theories underlying these First Amendment principles include a robust national discourse about political and social ideas, individual self-realization, the search for truth, and speech as a "safety valve." These concepts are expounded in both the majority and dissenting opinions of the cases described below. There Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr. noted that the "Principal function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute; it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger."