Transparency Law, a specialized practice designed to pry open government records, wasn’t a coined phrase until recent years. But despite the newness of those words, the Founding Fathers knew all too well the concept—and frustrations—of attempting to access public records from government. They even wrote about it right here in Philadelphia in the 1700s.

In their fourth grievance to the king, they lamented in their Declaration of Independence that his majesty would call together legislative bodies at unusual and uncomfortable places “distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

‘Fatiguing Them Into Compliance.’