The ‘war on terror’ weakened the first amendment. Now we desperately need it | Jameel Jaffer

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Over the past quarter-century, the US supreme court has repeatedly failed to protect first amendment rights. We are suffering the consequencesCongress ratified the first amendment in 1791 but the supreme court didn’t breathe life into it until after the first world war, when prosecutions of antiwar protesters led the justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis – and then, fortunately, other justices as well – to realize that US democracy would be undermined, not strengthened, by allowing t