Freedom of assembly is the right of people to gather peacefully to exchange ideas or to protest social, economic, or political conditions and demand reform. Some people believe this freedom also extends to the right to assemble and associate on the internet. Constitutions and the traditions of democracies throughout the world respect the right of freedom of assembly. But no country, including the United States, claims the right as absolute.
In the United States,
the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of freedom of assembly. It says that the government may make no law that diminishes “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Almost all state constitutions also ensure freedom of assembly.
Most public gatherings in the United States proceed without active interference by police or other officials. But sometimes law enforcement officers make arrests when political demonstrations are large or controversial, or when the demonstrations threaten to turn violent. Later, courts may be asked to determine whether the police violated the people’s right to assemble.
In 1937, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down an attempt by the state of Oregon to limit freedom of assembly. A speaker at a Communist Party rally was convicted under a state law. The law said that citizens of Oregon could not participate in organizations that advocated the violent overthrow of the government. The meeting itself was peaceful. The speaker did not urge anyone to act violently or to commit a crime. The Supreme Court reversed the speaker’s conviction. The court ruled that peaceful assembly for lawful discussion could not be made a crime. It also said that those who help conduct such meetings could not be considered criminals.
People do not have an absolute right to gather wherever or whenever they please. A town, city, or county may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of assembling. For example, a city might restrict large, noisy demonstrations to a particular area or to certain times of the day. The Supreme Court has ruled that protesters cannot be denied access to public places traditionally open to gatherings, such as parks and public sidewalks. But the government may refuse entrance to other places that have traditionally been off limits to demonstrations. Such places include military bases, prisons, private property, or corporate property, such as shopping malls.
Although the government may regulate gatherings, it may not do so unreasonably. Most cities and towns require demonstrators, strikers, and marchers to obtain a permit before assembling. The Supreme Court has struck down permit systems that give officials absolute authority to deny people the opportunity to meet. In 1939, in the first such case, the court voided a permit plan in Jersey City, New Jersey. This plan had given absolute power to the director of public safety to decide who could assemble in public places and who could not. The court said that no city official may deny the right to assemble because of a personal whim or because of a disagreement with the content of the message. It said laws regulating permits for the use of public property should be based only on safety standards that all groups could know in advance.
In other countries.
All democratic governments recognize some form of freedom of assembly. But none of them uphold it to the degree established by the U.S. Constitution. The United Kingdom generally permits peaceful assemblies. But the British police have considerable power to prohibit or disband large gatherings as they think necessary. In several instances in the 1900’s, the British government exercised emergency powers to suppress public meetings, even on private premises. For example, the government prevented fascists and others from meeting during World War II (1939-1945). In Canada, the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifically guarantees the right of peaceful assembly.
International organizations recognize freedom of assembly as a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, proclaims that “everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.” The International Labour Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, calls for permitting workers to meet and organize free of government interference.
Not every society, however, endorses freedom of assembly. In 1989, the Chinese government brutally disbanded a large, peaceful assembly of students and other citizens in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Soldiers fired into the crowd and killed many demonstrators. The protesters were calling for more democracy in China and an end to corruption in government.
A mass protest led to a much different outcome in the Soviet Union. In 1991, a huge crowd gathered in Moscow’s Red Square. The group defied tanks and troops to protest the temporary imprisonment of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev by a group of conservative officials of the Communist Party. The coup against Gorbachev eventually failed, and the Soviet Union soon dissolved.
In 2011, mass political protests led to the downfall of dictators in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. Many activists took advantage of internet social networks such as Facebook and Twitter (now called X) that provided them with an effective means of political organization that the dictators had not yet learned to control. However, similar protests in Iran and Syria were met with government crackdowns, killing thousands of protesters and leading to mass imprisonments.
History.
Freedom of assembly has been fully recognized only since the late 1600’s. Ancient democracies endorsed a more limited right to assemble. At various times in the history of Greece and Rome, a small part of the total population could meet in citizen assemblies to help make government decisions. But the majority of the people could not protest government actions.
In England, people traditionally assembled mainly for the purpose of petitioning (making a formal request of) the government. England first recognized this as a right in Magna Carta, a historic charter of liberties, in 1215. A later act stated that if more than 10 people gathered to present a signed appeal to the king or Parliament, even respectfully requesting a change in the law, they were guilty of the crime of “tumultuous petitioning.” The English Bill of Rights of 1689 finally recognized an absolute right to petition the king. But assembly still carried risks. In 1715, a statute called the Riot Act banned “riotous assemblies.” The act required groups of 12 or more to disband when a government authority told them to do so. The phrase to read the riot act, which means to order a disturbance to stop, refers to this law.
In the American Colonies, the First Continental Congress, in 1774, demanded a broader right of the people “peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the King.” State constitutions and the First Amendment finally incorporated the specific rights of petition and assembly.
