The Zenger trial was the 1735 New York prosecution of printer John Peter Zenger for seditious libel, ending in a jury acquittal that rejected the English rule that truthful criticism of government could be a crime. Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, persuaded the jury to ignore the judge’s instructions and decide the case on whether the printed criticisms of Governor William Cosby were true. The verdict did not formally change the law, but it became a touchstone for American press freedom and was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court more than two centuries later.
Why the Governor Wanted Zenger Silenced
The case grew out of a political feud, not a printing dispute. In 1733, New York’s royal governor William Cosby removed Chief Justice Lewis Morris from the bench after Morris ruled against him in a salary dispute, Cosby v. Van Dam. London’s Board of Trade later found the removal illegal, but by then Morris and two prominent attorneys, James Alexander and William Smith, had already retaliated by founding the New York Weekly Journal in November 1733.1Historical Society of the New York Courts. Crown v. John Peter Zenger, 1735
Alexander edited the paper and wrote most of its articles, satires, and lampoons accusing Cosby of tyranny and corruption. Zenger printed it. He was not the author of the essays that got him arrested.2American Antiquarian Society. The New-York Weekly Journal
Cosby moved to shut the paper down. His council ordered specific issues of the Journal burned near the city pillory, and a bench warrant sent the sheriff to arrest Zenger for “printing and publishing several seditious libels” that tended to raise “factions and tumults among the people.”3Famous Trials. Order for the Public Burning of Zenger’s Journals Zenger was arrested on November 17, 1734. Bail was set at £800, a sum designed to keep him locked up. He sat in the Old City Jail for nine months awaiting trial.1Historical Society of the New York Courts. Crown v. John Peter Zenger, 1735
In April 1735, Chief Justice James DeLancey, a Cosby appointee, disbarred Alexander and Smith after they objected to the two-man court Cosby had chosen to try the case.4Online Library of Liberty. 1736 Brief Narrative of the Trial of Peter Zenger With Zenger’s lawyers barred from practice, the prosecution appeared to have cleared its path.
The Law Stacked Against Him
Seditious libel under English common law meant any published material that could bring the government or its officials into contempt or stir public dissatisfaction. Truth was not a defense. The doctrine, traced to England’s Star Chamber, held that truthful criticism was in fact more dangerous, because it was more likely to damage an official’s reputation. Hamilton would later call it a rule from “a polluted source.”
Under that framework, the jury had only one job: decide whether Zenger had physically printed the newspapers. If yes, the judges would then decide whether the content was libelous. Cosby had picked those judges.4Online Library of Liberty. 1736 Brief Narrative of the Trial of Peter Zenger
Hamilton’s Defense
The trial opened on August 4, 1735, in the second-floor courtroom of City Hall. Alexander and Smith had secretly arranged for Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia to travel to New York to represent Zenger. Hamilton was a former Attorney General of Pennsylvania and later Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly.5National Park Service. The Trial of John Peter Zenger
Hamilton’s first move was to admit that Zenger had printed the newspapers. That admission gave away the only question the jury was supposed to answer. Then he asked them to decide something else entirely: whether the statements in the Journal were true. If they were true, he argued, they could not be libelous, whatever English common law said.1Historical Society of the New York Courts. Crown v. John Peter Zenger, 1735
Chief Justice DeLancey pushed back, telling the jury that “the laws in my opinion are very clear; they cannot be admitted to justify a libel.”5National Park Service. The Trial of John Peter Zenger Hamilton pressed on, drawing on Cato’s Letters, the essays by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon that argued “Freedom of Speech is the great Bulwark of Liberty” and that corrupt governors “ought to be publickly exposed, in order to be publickly detested.” His closing told the jurors the case was “not the cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone” but “the cause of liberty,” and asked them to lay a “noble foundation” for the right to oppose arbitrary power “by speaking and writing truth.”4Online Library of Liberty. 1736 Brief Narrative of the Trial of Peter Zenger
The Verdict and What the Jury Actually Did
DeLancey instructed the jurors to return only a finding on whether Zenger had printed the newspapers and to leave the legal question to the court. They ignored him. After a brief deliberation, foreman Thomas Hunt returned the verdict: “Not Guilty.”5National Park Service. The Trial of John Peter Zenger
Legal historians call what the jury did jury nullification. The jurors refused to convict a defendant who was technically guilty under the existing law because they believed the law itself was unjust.6National Constitution Center. Argument in the Zenger Trial Zenger walked out of jail after nine months.
What the Case Actually Changed
The verdict did not overturn English common law. No colonial court was bound by a jury’s acquittal, and seditious libel remained on the books the day after the trial. What changed was public understanding of what press freedom should mean. Gouverneur Morris, a central figure at the Constitutional Convention and a descendant of Judge Lewis Morris, later called the trial “the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America.”
When the states ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791, the First Amendment’s press clause reflected principles Hamilton had argued in the City Hall courtroom fifty-six years earlier. The idea was tested in 1798, when Congress passed the Sedition Act criminalizing “false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the government. Twenty-five people were arrested and ten convicted. The public backlash helped drive the Federalists from power, and Thomas Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under the law after he took office in 1801.7The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Seditious Libel
The case surfaced again in 1964 in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which established the “actual malice” standard for defamation of public officials. Justice Brennan’s opinion quoted Hamilton’s argument directly, warning that officials who “injure and oppress the people under their administration” should not be permitted to “make that very complaint the foundation for new oppressions and prosecutions.”8Justia US Supreme Court. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 US 254 (1964) The words a Philadelphia lawyer spoke to twelve New Yorkers in 1735 were still doing work in the Supreme Court more than two centuries later.