NAT HENTOFF | Posted: Thursday, June 2, 2011 5:00 am | (2)
ARIZONA DAILY SUN
When I speak to classes, from fifth-graders to college students, about the Constitution, I tell them stories of how we acquired these fundamental individual liberties, and what it continually takes to keep them.
One of the stories that always engages these listeners begins with a young lawyer, John Adams (later to become our second president), sitting in back of a King George III courtroom in Boston. Before judges in white wigs and scarlet robes, a Massachusetts lawyer, James Otis, was arguing for nearly five hours against British customs officers and soldiers breaking into colonists' homes and offices with warrants ("writs of assistance") they wrote themselves without going to a judge.
