Orrin Hatch: “the great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, famously characterized our Nation at its founding by…”

“the great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, famously characterized our Nation at its founding by asserting that in America the law is king. This sentiment has undergirded centuries of our Nation's political culture: The rule of law protects us from arbitrary government actions. It is what guarantees our liberties, it is what fosters our prosperity and our flourishing as a free people, and it is a source of our Republic's legitimacy. For as the Declaration of Independence teaches, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. For these reasons, when drafting the Constitution, the Framers obligated the President to take care that our laws be faithfully executed, but they were careful not to give the President the authority to make or change the law on his own. Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of Montesquieu, that ``in all tyrannical governments . . . the right both of making and of enforcing the laws is vested in one and the same man, or . . . body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.'' To safeguard our liberties as the Constitution requires, the Constitution vests Federal legislative powers in the Congress--the House of Representatives and the Senate--which were designed to engage in a particularly thorough and deliberative legislative process.…”