“The Choicest Privilege”: Press Freedom from Magna Charta to the Early Federal Period

In summer 1789, James Madison proposed amendments to the new Constitution to protect rights "not sufficiently guarded." Madison singled out freedom of the press as one of the "choicest privileges of the people." That was then. Today, the Press Clause plays — at most — a minor role in the Supreme Court's 1st Amendment jurisprudence. The Court's recent turn towards history and tradition, however, invites us to revisit the Founding generation's understanding of freedom of the press and consider again what role the Press Clause was intended to play in our constitutional system.

"The Choicest Privilege," curated from the collection of Matthew L. Schafer and Steven Underweiser, considers this history through works spanning more than two centuries — bookended by a 1587 Magna Charta owned by a Star Chamber judge and an 1804 trial report memorializing Alexander Hamilton's great defense of press freedom in the young United States.