Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)
“Our society seems no longer able to understand that it is possible to exist otherwise than under the reign of law, elaborated by a representative government and administered by a handful of rulers.”
Source: Law and Authority (1886), I
Context: In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. … In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.
We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferrule of a law, which regulates every event in life — our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship — that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves. Our society seems no longer able to understand that it is possible to exist otherwise than under the reign of law, elaborated by a representative government and administered by a handful of rulers. And even when it has gone so far as to emancipate itself from the thralldom, its first care has been to reconstitute it immediately. "The Year I of Liberty" has never lasted more than a day, for after proclaiming it men put themselves the very next morning under the yoke of law and authority.
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Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice
Writing for the court, Smith v. Texas, 33 U.S. 129 (1940).
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Source: 11-12 July 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944
Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician
Rappler http://www.rappler.com/nation/1550-outrage-over-attack-on-filipino-boxer <br class="br">2012
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)
Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States
Veto Mesage Regarding the Bank of the United States http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp (10 July 1832). <br class="br">1830s <br class="br">Context: It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.
H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian
Source: The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (1963), p. 61
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.
“The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 19