You’ve probably never heard of Andrew Hamilton. He was a lawyer in the 18th century who helped settle one of the key foundational concepts of rights and liberty in the United States in a court case.
In 1735, newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal so enraged the governor of the New York colony that he took the man to court for libel. Under English Common Law, the jury was restrained to finding if the accused had actually printed the libel or not. At the time, something being true was no defense for libel, only that it was defamatory. Juries were not to decide whether something was libelous or not, only whether the printing had actually taken place.
Recommended Stories
Print subscriber? Click here to login/register your account
Digital subscriber? Click here to login/register your account.