The Consent of the Governed
It seems a paradox that people who claim to revere the rule of law, are sometimes the same people who would advocate disobeying the law. How can someone advocate for the rule of law at the same time as advocating for civil disobedience, nullification or jury nullification? Wouldn’t these activities undermine the rule of law and lead inevitably to chaos and anarchy?
The beginning of the answer to this paradox comes to us from Thomas Paine. In Common Sense, a document which “challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy”, Paine wrote,
so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.
Harold
