freedom to rail

Decorum, the new decision concluded, was not a top priority for the cousins John and Samuel Adams when they drafted Article 19 in the Massachusetts Constitution, ratified in 1780. By laying out the right to request “redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer,” the justices noted, they aimed to protect the colonists’ freedom to rail against King George III, disparaged at the time as “the Royal Brute,” in a profane and ungracious manner.

“There was nothing respectful or courteous about the public assemblies of the revolutionary period,” the court wrote in its opinion. “There was also much that was rude and personal, especially when it was directed at the representatives of the king and the king himself.”

Residents’ Right to Be Rude Upheld by Massachusetts Supreme Court

In an age of division, the court ruled that towns could not mandate polite discourse at public meetings. One official called the decision “very dispiriting.”