Ideas of the First Amendment is organized for a course centered on the leading thinkers in the tradition, the brilliant and colorful dissenters, political leaders, and judges who collectively gave us the First Amendment as we know it, while covering each of the conventional doctrinal First Amendment topics. For example, it helps to clarify what Madison meant by rejecting in principle the idea of seditious libel to ask whether such a commitment entails that the government cannot punish flagburners (Texas v. Johnson) or newspapers that publish classified documents (Pentagon Papers). Similarly, students must read Mill's On Liberty unusually closely in order to decide whether his highly rationalistic argument provides a basis for according obscenity or hate speech any protection under the First Amendment. Whether Holmes's "marketplace of ideas" conception of free speech justifies any form of campaign finance regulation designed to level the electoral playing field, or whether Louis Brandeis's argument grounded in the obligations of citizenship extends to commercial advertising, are additional examples of how modern issues help to test and illuminate the arguments of the masters. Topics covered in Ideas of the First Amendment include: advocacy of revolution, libel,obscenity, campaign finance, hate speech, internet regulation, the public forum, subsidies, fighting words, compelled speech and association, publishing classified documents, flagburning, commercial speech, indecency, free speech in wartime.