Case: 21-51178 Document: 00516474571 Page: 18 Date Filed: 09/16/2022 No. 21-51178 every man shall have a right to speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatsoever, without any prior restraint . . . .”). As originally understood, the First Amendment’s Speech and Press Clauses also protected the freedom to make well-intentioned statements of one’s thoughts, particularly on matters of public concern. See generally Jud Campbell, Natural Rights and the First Amendment, 127 Yale L.J. 246, 280– 87 (2017). States recognized this freedom before the First Amendment’s ratification. 5 The Anti-Federalists worked to protect it in the federal Constitution. 6 And even the Federalists—who were generally less friendly to the freedom of speech—recognized that the First Amendment protected this right. See id. at 286; see also, e.g., 8 Annals of Cong. 2148 (1798) (statement of Rep. Harrison Gray Otis) (recognizing that the First Amendment protects “the liberty of writing, publishing, and speaking, one’s 5 For example, in 1788, Chief Justice McKean of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania explained that “[t]he true liberty of the press is amply secured by permitting every man to publish his opinions; but it is due to the peace and dignity of society to enquire into the motives of such publications, and to distinguish between those which are meant for use and reformation, and with an eye solely to the public good, and those which are intended merely to delude and defame.” Respublica v. Oswald, 1 U.S. (1 Dall.) 319, 325 (Pa. 1788). This statement illustrates both facets of the First Amendment’s original public meaning. First, prior restraints were prohibited, full stop: “[E]very man [may] publish his opinions.” Ibid. Second, whether post-publication liability could be imposed depended on whether an opinion was “meant for use and reformation . . . [or] merely to delude and defame”—to use modern terminology, whether the statement was made in good faith. Ibid. 6 See, e.g., Centinel No. 1, in 2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 136, 136 (Herbert J. Storing ed., 1981) (urging the People to demand constitutional protection for “a right of freedom of speech”). Thomas Jefferson also wrote to James Madison—who later drafted the Bill of Rights—that he thought the Constitution should ensure “[t]he people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak to write or otherwise to publish any thing but false facts affecting injuriously the life, property, or reputation of others or affecting the peace of the confederacy with foreign nations.” Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (Aug. 28, 1789), in 5 The Founders’ Constitution 129, 129–30 (Philip B. Kurland & Ralph Lerner eds., 1987). 18