John Peter Zenger

Who: John Peter Zenger

• What: Newspaper Printer charged with “Seditious libel” (slander)

• When: 1734-1735• Where: New York City• Why: He wrote truths

about the corrupt royal governor

John Peter Zenger

• He and his lawyer argued that they printed the truth

• The royal chief justice told the jury not to consider the truth, find him guilty

• The jury defied the judge and found Zenger not guilty

• Roots of the 1st Amendment

A.P. Question

• (page 108B)The Zenger case is significant forA. making sedition illegal.B. establishing freedom of the press.C. guaranteeing backcountry residents

equal representation in colonial governments.D. ensuring taxation through proper

representationE. linking voting rights and officeholding to

property ownership.

NYS Regents Question

• Court decisions in the trial of John Peter Zenger (1735) and the case of New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) strengthened

• freedom of religion • freedom of the press • due process rights • the right to counsel

NYS Regents Question• “It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you

are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main [continent] of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty. . . . Nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power (in these parts of the world at least) by speaking and writing the truth.” — Andrew Hamilton, 1735 This courtroom summation helped establish which democratic principle in colonial America?

• trial by jury • equal voting rights • protection of private property • freedom of the press