James Otis

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) was a prominent lawyer and political activist in colonial Massachusetts who formulated the early constitutional foundations of the American Revolution. He achieved fame for his 1761 legal challenge against the Writs of Assistance—broad British search warrants that allowed officials to search private property without cause—a trial that John Adams cited as the spark of American independence. Otis is widely credited with popularizing the revolutionary slogan, "taxation without representation is tyranny." In his 1764 pamphlet, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, he became one of the first colonial writers to defend the inalienable rights of all people, explicitly including Black Americans.