The Role of the People in First Amendment Theory

Abstract

History is what we make of it.Although there is undeniably a core of hard fact in any historical event, the contemporary significance of a past occurrence turns largely on a series of cultural choices made subsequent to the original happening.Which facts will a society emphasize, and which will it ignore?What words will be used to describe those facts?With what other events will this event be descriptively and normatively assimilated?What theory or principle or concept will this event be taken to exemplify?All of these questions are questions of characterization, and each characterization is a choice that will determine the present perception of a past event, often as much as what actually occurred.I begin with these general observations about the nature of history because the question of the subsequent characterization of a historical event is nowhere more obvious than with respect to the trial 250 years ago of John Peter Zenger. 1 A commonly accepted characterization of the event and its significance is as follows: Zenger was a comparatively minor member of a group that criticized Governor William Cosby's regime of the Province of New York.