Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government
Osmond K. Fraenkel, Alexander Meiklejohn · Law and Contemporary Problems · 1949
| at St. John's College, and, in part, as a lecture and discussion in the Great Issues Course at Dartmouth Col-lege.It is here presented with some slight changes 'which are intended to serve the transition from the hearing of an argument to the reading of it.| The book discusses a principle of law.It is written, however, not by a lawyer, but by a teacher.It springs from a strong conviction that a primary task of Amer--ican education is to arouse and to cultivate, in all the © members of the body politic, a desire to understand _ what our national plan of government is.The book, |therefore, is a challenge to all of us, as citizens, to study the Constitution.That constitution derives whatever validity, whatever meaning, it has, not from its acceptance by our forefathers one hundred and sixty years ago, but from its acceptance by us, now.Clearly, however, we Cannot, in any valid sense, "accept" the Constitution unless we know what it says.And, for that -