ABSTRACT
VAST erudition and enormous scholarly research have been devoted to determining whether the first amendment to the United States Constitution stands somehow apart from, and above, other provisions of the Constitution, even other provisions of the Bill of Rights. Were it not for the subtle legalisms said to be involved in the controversy and the impressive credentials of the disputants, including members of the United States Supreme Court, one might well have thought that to ask the question was to command the only answer which a free society can give, an answer which Justice Cardozo articulated with eloquent simplicity. Freedom of speech and thought, he said, is "the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." 1
