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Originally Posted by C4 Diesel
Which is exactly the point, daswig. Actions that are injurious to society (as I firmly believe political parties, or at least the ones that we have, have become) can be excluded from constitutional protection without directly being stated in it. This is generally where cases have gone to the US supreme court and been decided by interpretation. If a law passed banning political parties, the same would probably happen. I would actually find this a very interesting circumstance... lawyers debating the constitutional protection of assembly for politicians vs injury to society which they cause.
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The issue with your statement is that political parties were around before the constitution was drafted and continued to be around afterwards.
While it might appear that the things dawsig listed were arbitrarily decided upon, the justices actually go through a historical analyses to see the traditional things understood to be part of one's fundamental freedom of speech.
Basically, one's right to defraud another or commit perjury never existed, even before the first amendment. so the justices would conclude that it doesn't exist now, afterward. Being a well established concept and limitation to the drafters, it wouldn't be realistic to interpret their actions as abolishing that limitations, especially after they look at the various local laws and common understandins in the lower courts and find that those limitations existed after the drafting, too.