The First Amendment was written in 1789 and ratified (officially approved) on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. When the Constitution was written in 1787, it did not initially include a list of individual rights.
The First Amendment protects your right to think, speak, believe, and gather freely—the main freedoms that make self-government and open debate possible. There have been many lower court and Supreme Court cases that have explored the freedoms under the First Amendment, so it has been reviewed and refined many times since it was created.
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