Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf
Page Number: 38

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

3 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring 

less obscure and equivocal.”  The Federalist No. 37, p. 229
(C.  Rossiter  ed.  1961).  As  Chief  Justice  Rehnquist
explained, the Constitution is in some parts “obviously not 
a specifically worded document but one couched in general 
phraseology.”  W.  Rehnquist,  The  Notion  of  a  Living
Constitution, 54 Texas L. Rev. 693, 697 (1976).

That is especially true with respect to the broadly worded
or vague individual-rights provisions.  (I will use the terms
“broadly  worded”  and  “vague”  interchangeably  in  this
opinion.)  For example, the First Amendment provides that 
“Congress  shall  make  no  law”  “abridging  the  freedom  of 
speech.”  And  the  Second  Amendment,  at  issue  here, 
guarantees  that “the right of  the  people to keep and bear 
Arms” “shall not be infringed.” 

Read  literally,  those  Amendments  might  seem  to  grant 
absolute  protection,  meaning  that  the  government  could
never regulate speech or guns in any way.  But American 
law  has 
long  recognized,  as  a  matter  of  original
understanding  and  original  meaning,  that  constitutional 
rights generally come with exceptions. 

With respect to the First Amendment, for example, this
Court’s  “jurisprudence  over  the  past  216”—now  233—
“years has rejected an absolutist interpretation.”   Federal 
Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 
449,  482  (2007)  (opinion  of  ROBERTS, C. J.);  see  R.  Bork,
Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems,
47 Ind. L. J. 1, 21–22 (1971).  From 1791 to the present, “the 
First  Amendment  has  permitted  restrictions  upon  the 
content  of  speech  in  a  few  limited  areas”—including
obscenity,  defamation,  fraud,  and  incitement.    United 
States  v.  Stevens,  559  U. S.  460,  468  (2010)  (quotation 
marks  omitted).    So  too  with  respect  to  the  Second 
Amendment:  “Like  most  rights,  the  right  secured  by  the 
Second Amendment is not unlimited”; it is “not a right to
keep  and  carry  any  weapon  whatsoever  in  any  manner 
whatsoever  and  for  whatever  purpose.”  District  of