Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, when he was governor of New York, said, the Constitution is what the judges say it is." This book discusses what the justices of the United States Supreme Court have said about the First Amendment since 1791. The book is also about people-Walter Barnette, Benjamin Gitlow, Ismael Jaffree, and Fred Shuttleworth, to name a few-who during the past 200 years fought "to place [our freedoms] beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by courts" (Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 [1943]). And it is about judges and justices who had to make difficult choices between individual freedom and government interests. Also included: Justice Louis D. Brandeis' description of what the Founders envisioned this country should be.