1. The Establishment Clause in Article One of the First Amendment is the proclamation of the separation of Church and State. Besides, it forbids the government from establishing or supporting any national religion. Therefore, no church would be the official religion of the U.S.A., and no religious community would be given preferential treatment by the government.

To see if the government action in question transgresses the general rule, the Supreme Court devised what is now known as the Lemon Test, which helps one to assess whether any statute or act is excessively entangled with religious considerations. The test asks the following three questions:

Does it have a non-religious purpose? Therefore the act or statute must have some purpose, which is not the advance of a religious cause.

Does it have the effect of aiding or inhibiting religion? In other words, the government must not assist or hinder a religion.

Does it foster an excessive government entanglement with religion? That is, the government must not entangle itself in any affairs concerned with differences among religious organizations or between religious organizations and the state.

Any statute that does not set it correctly under each interrogative is presumptively unconstitutional, acting against the wall of separation between the church and the state.

2. Burning the flag is, of course, a truly First Amendment type of activity. The Supreme Court, in the case of Texas v. Johnson (1989), held that the burning of the flag was, in fact, symbolic speech in which ideas, opinions, or attitudes of its participants are being expressed, and this may or may not be offensive or controversial. Johnson attended a demonstration in which he burned the American flag and was arrested. It was in no way merely disrespectful; even more, it was a politically motivated statement.

The opinion went on with the analysis that this act of flag burning falls under the ambit of protection by the First Amendment, considering it is an avenue of expression of free speech in and of itself. The government should not have the power to prohibit conduct simply because some of its citizens might find it offensive. This case brought out the point that the First Amendment protects not just our words but also how we choose to express those words; anything from spoken words to actions to symbols.

3. When a person says, “I’m taking the Fifth,” they mean they are exercising their constitutional provision under the Fifth Amendment not to self-incriminate. The Fifth Amendment states that no one is bound to utter a word that would tend in any way to expose him or lessen his stature in a criminal accusation against him. So, if the question tends to lead to the prosecution of a crime against some person, he could choose to answer or be restrained from answering.

This right is even more important because it gives the government no power to compel you to testify against yourself while at the same time allowing you not to speak in a manner that makes you look guilty. This is one of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to protect a person during legal proceedings from being forced to confess or give evidence against himself.