If, in private life, a man enters into a perfectly voluntary agreement to work for another, at some innocent and useful labor, for a day, a week, a month, or a year, he cannot lawfully be compelled to fulfil that contract; because such compulsion would be an acknowledgment of his right to sell his own liberty.
Spooner argues that individuals cannot be forced to fulfill voluntary agreements, as it would violate their liberty.
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More from Lysander Spooner
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.
A man has a natural right to enforce his own rights and redress his own wrongs.
All those who are not forbidden by law may be judges (jurors).
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…