If, now, this government, (the three branches thus really united in one), can determine the validity of, and enforce, its own laws, it is, for the time being, entirely absolute, and wholly irresponsible to the people.
Spooner argues that a government that can enforce its own laws without public consent is effectively absolute.
Share
More from Lysander Spooner
And the right is practically established only when and because the government, no longer exists to call it in question.
It is also sheer impudence, on their part, to assume that their commands are at all necessary to teach other men what is, and what is not, justice.
Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.
The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the…