Sen. Mike Halpin (36th district) presented 'Protecting the Freedom to Speak, Assemble and Be Heard: The Constitution in Action' at Western Illinois University Sept. 17 in recognition of Constitution Day. “I want to read to you the oath that I took when I was sworn in as a state senator. It reads, ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Illinois and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of senator to the best of my ability.’ I also took a similar oath when I became a practicing attorney after my graduation in 2008 from law school,” Halpin began. “The oaths are similar.
They're simple. There's no fine print, no carveouts. It doesn't say that I'll support the Constitution when I like how it's being used or only when the people exercising that right happen to agree with me. It is unconditional.”
The Four Bundled Rights
Halpin focused on four interconnected First Amendment rights: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, the Right to Peaceful Assembly and the Right to Petition for Redress of Grievances. He pointed out the framers understood these as a package, each reinforcing the others, and building these freedoms as a “set.”
“I want to show you exactly how Illinois protects those rights in our own state constitution in some ways more explicitly than even the federal bill of rights does. And I want to talk about why all of this matters most in very concrete terms on a college campus like this one, including a piece of legislation I worked on this year that tries to put these principles into actual law for students in this state,” he explained. “This is not abstract civics. It's the operating system for a university.”
Halpin stressed in his keynote the right to assemble in a peaceable manner, to consult for the common good, to make known their opinions to their representatives and to apply for redress of grievances.
He pointed out the phrase that’s included in the state constitution “for the common good,” which is not included in the U.S.
Constitution.
“That's not just permission to gather in the square. It is a description of what democracy actually looks like in Illinois,” Halpin added. “It's people coming together in person to work out what they think and then telling the people who represent them what they think. Illinois courts have gone further and held that our state's free speech protections are actually broader in some respects than the federal floor.
Illinois wanted, in the words of one of our constitutional convention delegates, ‘added protections,’ not just a copy of Washington's language.
“And these aren't museum pieces. They describe exactly what happens on a college campus every single day. Students speaking, writing, publishing in the student paper, organizing a walk out, showing up to a public forum to tell the administration or their state senator exactly what they think,” he declared.
Halpin cited concrete examples of these rights in action: constituents calling his office, sending emails, testifying before legislative committees, organizing rallies at the Capitol, student newspapers publishing critical pieces and editorial boards criticizing his decisions.
Halpin’s full presentation is available at youtube.com/user/WesternIllinoisU.
