Your Weekly Constitutional
Your Weekly Constitutional
Stewart Harris
From Romania, with Love
54 minutes Posted Apr 4, 2014 at 1:26 pm.
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Do we have a constitutional right to smile? Seems silly, but we probably do - after all, smiling is expressive activity, and such expression is protected by the First Amendment.
But not every country has a First Amendment. One of those unfortunate countries is Romania, especially when it suffered under the heel of a communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu.
One of Stewart's students at the Appalachian School of Law, a young woman named Irina Dan McGarry, grew up during the last few years of that dictatorship and its aftermath. Her story is a chilling reminder of the often under-appreciated value of our constitutional rights.