Chapter 7 discusses the continuing relevance and importance of the assembly and petition rights in the modern, online era. Regarding assembly, it notes that large gatherings of citizens such as the 2017 Women’s March (modeled on the 1963 March on Washington lead by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) continue to play a critical role in enabling ordinary citizens to participate in democratic governance. Even in the Internet era, physical assemblies have a unique ability to express the strength and popularity of political positions, as well as to galvanize the participants in such events. The Internet has for that reason not displaced physical assembly, though it has simplified the organizing of such assemblies and permitted individuals who cannot physically assemble to jointly develop and express shared views. The chapter also explores and criticizes legal barriers to the exercise of assembly rights. Finally, the chapter argues in favor of reviving the traditional right of petition, and in particular the use of physical, hand-delivered petitions as a means to restore contact between citizens and public officials. It closes by demonstrating how the 1965 Selma March illustrates the continuing value of assembly and petition in our democracy.

Chapter 3 examines the Petition Clause of the First Amendment. Petitioning is the oldest of the rights of the Democratic First Amendment, with roots in pre-Norman England and given explicit protection in the Magna Carta in 1215. It originated as a means for individuals to seek redress from the king for private harms. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, it evolved into a means for citizens, generally acting in groups, to seek changes in public policy from the legislature. As such, petitioning was an essential element of democratic governance in America during the colonial era and the early Republic. It was a crucial means for citizens to bring their concerns to the attention of their elected representatives in between elections, and the only means for citizens who could not vote – which during this period meant the majority of citizens — to influence their government. Furthermore, during this period American legislatures felt an obligation to respond to properly filed petitions. Petitioning declined during the years leading up to the Civil War, however, and in our modern democracy it unfortunately plays a relatively trivial role.