Constitutional Law

The need for regular amendment

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment … But I know also,...

A bill of rights

There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which governments have yet always been fond to invade. These are the rights of thinking, and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing, the right of free commerce, the right of personal...

A restraint on democracy

Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing; human beings are not competent to exercise it; God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice are always equal to his power. There is no power upon earth so worthy of honor for itself, that I...

The nature of a constitution

Convinced by woeful and eternal experience, societies found it necessary to lay restraints upon their magistrates or public servants, and to put checks upon those who would otherwise put chains upon them; and therefore these societies set themselves to … form national...