History
A celebrated legal case in 1734-1735 involved John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper printer who regularly published material critical of corrupt then-Governor of New York, William Cosby. He was jailed eight months before being tried for seditious libel. Andrew Hamilton defended him and was made famous for his speech, ending in, "...nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth." While the judge ruled against his arguments, Hamilton invoked the concept of jury nullification in the cause of liberty and won a not guilty verdict. The Zenger case paved the way for freedom of the press in the United States to be adopted in the constitution; as Founding Father Gouverneur Morris stated, "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America."
Read more about this topic: Censorship In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)