As with many aspects of U.S. law, the freedoms of assembly and association in the United States draw heavily on English origins. The 1670 arrest of the founder of the Pennsylvania colony, William Penn (1644–1718), in London helped shape the first official right of association recognized within a state declaration of rights. Penn had been locked out of the Grace Church Street Friends Meetinghouse in London and forbidden to preach in any building in the city. Therefore, he preached in the street outside the hall to an orderly group of several hundred Quakers. He then was charged with unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace, and inciting a riot. Penn vigorously fought the charges against him as a thinly veiled attempt to silence his nonconformist religious views. Despite fines and imprisonment, the jury refused to find him guilty, and Penn took that experience...