The Right to Redress of Grievances

Understanding the First Amendment from its origins

Research by Bob Schulz
We The People Foundation

redress:
(verb) remedy or set right (an undesirable or unfair situation)
(noun) remedy or compensation for a wrong or grievance

First Amendment, 15 December 1791
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [Source]

Question: Does this First Amendment right obligate government to read our petitions for redress and respond to them suitably?

Answer: Yes. The right to petition would be meaningless otherwise, but let's see what our founders and our history can teach us. Note that we can only enforce our rights if we know what they are, and being ignorant of our rights is equivalent to having none.

Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. [Source]

First Continental Congress, 26 October 1774
In this form, the first grand right is that of the people having a share in their own government, by their representatives chosen by themselves, and, in consequence, of being ruled by laws which they themselves approve, not by the edicts of men over whom they have no control. This is a bulwark surrounding and defending their property, so that no portions of it can legally be taken from them but with their own full and free consent, when they in their judgment deem it just and necessary to give them for public services, and precisely direct the easiest, cheapest, and most equal methods in which they shall be collected.

The influence of this right extends still farther. If money is wanted by rulers who have in any manner oppressed the people, they may retain it until their grievances are redressed and thus peaceably procure relief without trusting to despised petitions or disturbing the public tranquility. [Source]

Magna Carta, Chapter 61, 1215 AD
[Writes King John] Since, moreover, for God and the amendment of our kingdom and for the better allaying of the quarrel that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these concessions, desirous that they should enjoy them in complete and firm endurance for ever, we give and grant to them the under–written security, namely, that the barons choose five–and–twenty barons of the kingdom, whomsoever they will, who shall be bound with all their might, to observe and hold, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted and confirmed to them by this our present Charter, so that if we, or our justiciar, or our bailiffs or any one of our officers, shall in anything be at fault toward anyone, or shall have broken any one of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence be notified to four barons of the foresaid five–and–twenty, the said four barons shall repair to us (or our justiciar, if we are out of the realm) and, laying the transgression before us, petition to have that transgression redressed without delay. And if we shall not have corrected the transgression (or, in the event of our being out of the realm, if our justiciar shall not have corrected it) within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been intimated to us (or to our justiciar, if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall refer that matter to the rest of the five–and–twenty barons, and those five–and–twenty barons shall, together with the community of the whole land, distrain and distress us in all possible ways, namely, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other way they can, until redress has been obtained as they deem fit, saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our queen and children; and when redress has been obtained, they shall resume their old relations towards us. And let whoever in the country desires it, swear to obey the orders of the said five–and–twenty barons for the execution of all the aforesaid matters, and along with them, to molest us to the utmost of his power; and we publicly and freely grant leave to every one who wishes to swear, and we shall never forbid anyone to swear. All those, moreover, in the land who of themselves and of their own accord are unwilling to swear to the twenty–five to help them in constraining and molesting us, we shall by our command compel the same to swear to the effect foresaid. [Source]

SPECIAL: Bob Schulz explains further in this video of the Truth in Taxation Hearing held in Washington, DC, in 2002, a hearing to which every member of Congress and representatives of the White House, the US Treasury, the US Department of Justice, and the IRS were invited, a hearing that no member of government attended.