No, Professor, Rights
Are Not For Shredding

There is only one thing worse than listening to an American citizen propose that we cut up the U.S. Bill of Rights, and that is listening to an American citizen propose that we cut up the U.S. Bill of Rights while pretending they are doing no such thing.

In The Boston Globe last December, Professor Mary Anne Franks did precisely this. As part of a symposium on the U.S. Constitution, Franks argued that Americans should seek to “edit” the “deeply flawed” First and Second Amendments so that they are less “aggressively individualistic.” The first two provisions within the U.S. Bill of Rights, she concluded, “are highly susceptible to being read in isolation from the Constitution as a whole and from its commitments to equality and the collective good.” And so, they must go.

There is, of course, a reason that the First and Second Amendments tend to be “interpreted in aggressively individualistic ways,” and that reason is that the First and Second Amendments are aggressively individualistic rights—that is their purpose, their point, their function. A First or Second Amendment that was not “aggressively individualistic” would be of no use whatsoever. It would be a dead letter—not worth the paper it was written on.

Franks’ piece is filled to the brim with euphemisms that all mean the same thing in practice. She suggests that, instead of interpreting the First Amendment as we do currently, we should “resolve” any conflicts that arise “in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.” This means that the First Amendment should have no teeth [...] .....