Constitutional Law

Amendment by the legislature is inappropriate A … government … cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution. —Thomas Paine. The...

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 constitution should protect individual rights against government. Since socialist prescriptions have the opposite effect, they are inappropriate inclusions in a constitution. An example of what not to do is provided by Article 14 of the German Basic Law, which...

A constitution is a body of general rules that limit the powers of government, not a repository of laws binding on the people. If the people wish to entrench legislation—out of the reach of the legislature—they should do so through legislative initiative. Ranking...

The problem of excessive government Claims made for government as a force for general improvement always turn out to be bogus. Yet it is amazing what claims have been made in the past. For instance after the war, the nationalization of our industries was justified as...

All the elements of the rule of law described in Chapter 2 should be enshrined in the constitution. The Supreme Court’s perversion of the United States Constitution’s due process clause to expand its power in precise opposition to the rule of law demonstrates the...

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...

The constitution should precisely prescribe the duties and limits of each official’s role. If instead convention is relied on, then the people’s safety is built upon sand. The likes of Sulla, Caesar and Lloyd George will brush convention aside, justifying their...

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...

It is therefore high time for all parties to consider what is best for the whole; and to establish such rules of commutative justice and indulgence, as may prevent oppression from any party. And this can only be done by restraining the hands of power, and fixing it...

Nor should our assembly be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a...

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. —Thomas Jefferson. Notes on Virginia: Query XI,...

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...