Did Peter Zengers acquittal lead to a more “modern” understanding of freedom of speech?
Not completely. Colonial legislatures continued to pass sedition acts punishing anti-government speech through the Revolution. And in 1798, the United States Congress passed the Sedition Act making it a crime to “write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress of the United States, or the President.”1 But this sedition act explicitly codified the understanding of sedition advanced by Zenger in 1735. Truth was a defense, the state had to prove malicious intent for a charge to stick, and juries ruled on the question of law as well as the facts; that is, citizen-jurors were given the authority to determine not just whether a certain statement was made, but whether it really constituted sedition.
