Lysander Spooner: “All other so-called rights of sovereignty are simply the usurpations of impostors, conspirators, robbers, tyrants, and…”

They were even allowed to grant pardon to criminals, and to correct by their clemency the rigors of justice.

And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.

They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…

One answer is, that this power, which juries have of judging of the law, is not a power of absolute decision in all cases.