<P> The First Amendment bars Congress from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens commented about this phraseology in a 1993 journal article: "I emphasize the word' the' in the term' the freedom of speech' because the definite article suggests that the draftsmen intended to immunize a previously identified category or subset of speech ." Stevens said that, otherwise, the clause might absurdly immunize things like false testimony under oath . Like Stevens, journalist Anthony Lewis wrote: "The word' the' can be read to mean what was understood at the time to be included in the concept of free speech ." But what was understood at the time is not 100% clear . In the late 1790s, the lead author of the speech and press clauses, James Madison, argued against narrowing this freedom to what had existed under English common law: </P> <P> The practice in America must be entitled to much more respect . In every state, probably, in the Union, the press has exerted a freedom in canvassing the merits and measures of public men, of every description, which has not been confined to the strict limits of the common law . </P> <P> Madison wrote this in 1799, when he was in a dispute about the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws, which was legislation enacted in 1798 by President John Adams' Federalist Party to ban seditious libel . Madison believed that legislation to be unconstitutional, and his adversaries in that dispute, such as John Marshall, advocated the narrow freedom of speech that had existed in the English common law . </P> <P> The Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of any federal law regarding the Free Speech Clause until the 20th century . For example, the Supreme Court never ruled on the Alien and Sedition Acts; three Supreme Court justices riding circuit presided over sedition trials without indicating any reservations . The leading critics of the law, Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued for the Acts' unconstitutionality based on the First Amendment and other Constitutional provisions . Jefferson succeeded Adams as president, in part due to the unpopularity of the latter's sedition prosecutions; he and his party quickly overturned the Acts and pardoned those imprisoned by them . In the majority opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Court noted the importance of this public debate as a precedent in First Amendment law and ruled that the Acts had been unconstitutional: "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history ." </P>

Which constitutional amendment gives the states freedoms and control