My views on Article 19(1)(b), because the question of “permission” for assemblies keeps coming up: 1. The provision gives citizens the right “ to assemble peaceably and without arms.” I read those words as making a prior-permission regime very difficult to defend, and my reasons are purely textual. 2. First, the form of the guarantee in Article 19(1) does not provide that the State may permit citizens to assemble. It provides that all citizens “shall have the right.” That language declares an existing entitlement. It does not confer something the State controls. Nothing in clause (1) contemplates a grantor, and a regime under which the citizen must first seek permission inserts a requirement that the text does not contain. 3. Second, the verb. The right is “to assemble,” which is the act of gathering. It is not a right to apply to gather. The protection attaches when people assemble. A requirement that makes assembling lawful only after an administrative step shifts the right to a position the provision does not mention. 4. Third, the qualifiers – the text places two conditions on the right: the assembly must be peaceable, and it must be without arms. Both go to the conduct of those assembling. Neither goes to approval by the authority. “Peaceably” is an adverb of manner, and manner can be judged only as the assembly proceeds or after it. A permit asks the officer to decide beforehand whether a gathering that has not yet taken place will be peaceable. The constitutional standard is conduct. The administrative standard is prediction. They are not the same. The second point is a matter of construction. The framers listed two conditions. On the ordinary rule, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, that list does not admit a third condition of prior leave. Had one been intended, it would naturally have appeared alongside the other two. 5. The answer usually given is Article 19(3), which permits reasonable restrictions in the interests of public order. I accept that clause (3) permits restrictions. The operative words, however, are restrictions “on the exercise of the right.” A restriction on exercise presupposes that the right is being exercised. It regulates time, place and manner. A licensing requirement does something different. It keeps the right in suspense until the authority consents. In substance that is a prohibition subject to dispensation, and I do not think it fits comfortably within the word "restriction." Article 19(6) makes the contrast clear. For trades and professions, the framers expressly allowed laws prescribing “professional or technical qualifications,” which is a precondition stated in terms. Clause (3) contains no comparable language. Where the Constitution intended to allow a precondition to the exercise of a freedom, it said so.