| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert W. T. Martin. The Free and Open Press: The Founding of American Democratic Press Liberty, 1640–1800. New York: New York University Press. 2001. Pp. xi, 239. $40.00.

The Constitution of the United States says that Congress shall make "all laws" of the federal government and "no law" abridging freedom of the press. Those who have been unwilling to regard the liberty as absolute have looked for ways around this language. They have balanced the right against other rights, they have claimed that higher laws (such as survival in wartime) prevail over the press clause, and they have argued that freedom of expression was defined narrowly when the nation was founded. 1

Scholars who have examined eighteenth-century definitions of press freedom have identified two general directions. Leonard W. Levy has contended that the most prevalent viewpoint was that the press is free to publish without censorship but then is responsible legally for criticism of government and other offenses. Levy's critics have maintained that seditious libel and other official restraints were inconsistent with practice and with many pronouncements in early America. They portray the development of democratic press theory as consistent with the postrevolutionary reality of popular sovereignty. . . .

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