Thomas Paine "In America the Law is King" Lawn Signs

 

I suppose everyone (or at least everyone residing in a "blue state" has seen these signs. Being fond of Paine myself, but not liking this quote, I had to check if that line really could be found somewhere. And I want to quickly disclose that I didn't rush off to my copies of his books and papers and start hunting around: I used google.  

But before getting into what Paine said, what do I have against that quote anyhow? What's wrong with the idea of the law being king? Well...think about it: what if this law was put in place by one of the awful monarchs whose authority American revolutionaries wanted to cast off? Or, considering more contemporary objection, what if  the currently effective laws were put in place by a  merely sham democracy? I mean, Russia, North Korea have lots of laws. Many of Orban's are still around in Hungary. Should those codes be "crowned" and celebrated?

No doubt it will be objected that it sounds like I think I should be able to obey only those laws I happen to agree with. What a mess that type of arrangement would be! Am I saying that everyone should be able to pick and choose what laws they think should be authoritative, or do I really think that only Walter Horn should be able to pick the legitimate ones? 

Actually, I'm not saying either of those things. It's my view that all and only those laws that have been democratically enacted (via an actually decent process) are the ones that should be exalted (though we will likely want to obey lots of others for our own safety). And this is because legal codes should not be thought of as kings any more than some monarch or president. Only the people as a whole should get the crown. If they are the ones appropriately enacting laws, such laws should be revered. Otherwise, meh.

It's interesting -- and will be unsurprising to those with much familiarity with his writings -- that Paine took much the same position that I am advocating. Here's the essence of google provided to me on that matter: 

In Paine's view, the law could only be "king" if it was directly crafted by the people, rather than handed down by a monarch. 

In the very same paragraph of Common Sense (1776) where he says "the law is king," Paine describes a hypothetical ceremony where a crown is placed on the charter of laws. He then immediately states that the crown should be destroyed and "scattered among the people whose right it is." To Paine, any royal authority was just stolen people-power. 

In his later masterpiece, Rights of Man (1791), Paine directly argued that no past generation has the right to bind future generations to its laws. He believed: 

• Government is a contract among the living.
• The people retain the perpetual right to change, alter, or completely abolish their laws and constitution whenever they see fit.
• A law is only valid if it originates from the "consent of the governed." 

Paine explicitly rejected the idea that any government or legal system has authority over the population. In Rights of Man, he wrote:

"The nation is always sovereign, and has an inherent, unalienable, right to abolish any form of government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition, and happiness."

So, When modern signs quote Paine's "the law is king," they are usually highlighting the principle of the rule of law—meaning nobody, not even a president, is above the law. But for Paine, "the law" was not a tool of control; it was a protective shield created by the people, for the people, which they could redesign at any time.

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I find this discussion generally congenial, both in substance and as representative of Paine's views, although the "consent of the governed" part is not something I would endorse without alteration. I won't go into that matter here, because I have discussed it in a bunch of other blog posts (most recently with respect to the views of Willmoore Kendall), but for those who would like more on Paine, see this.