If the oath has never been changed, it follows that judges have not only never been sworn to support any statutes whatever of the king, or of parliament, but that, for five hundred years past, they actually have been sworn to treat as invalid all statutes that were contrary to the common law.
Spooner concludes that judges have been sworn to reject any statutes that conflict with common law for centuries.
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When two men meet one upon the highway, or in the wilderness, have they a right to dispose of his life, liberty, or property at their pleasure, simply because they are the more numerous party?
But there is no reason why a judge should have the power of punishing, for contempt, any more than for any other offence.
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.
And whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to…