The Supreme Court was founded with our Constitution back in 1789. But it only started making major rulings on the First Amendment about a century ago, after World War I.
It was an era of growing intolerance of immigrants. In one case, the Supreme Court upheld the criminal conviction of five Russian immigrants who had distributed leaflets in New York City that criticized Woodrow Wilson and praised the Russian Revolution. They'd sought the protection of the First Amendment and lost.
Today, those cases would have been decided very differently. And we're facing new free speech challenges every year: Russian ads on Facebook, social media accounts banned for hate speech, Wikileaks releasing classified documents and more.
How should we respond as a society? Should we insist social media companies be regulated? What should violate the First Amendment? And who gets to decide what speech is amplified or buried on social platforms?