House of Representatives - Article I, Section 2, Clause 1

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualification requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature."

Comment: The framers wanted the people to be represented in the House of Representatives (vs. the Senate which represented the States), and they wanted a direct link between the People and the government. As a result, every two Years the People were to choose the Members, not the State legislatures. Madison argues in The Federalist No. 52 that "it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured." Regarding the Electors - i.e., the People that have the right to vote the Members into the House of Representatives - the framers did not believe they could draft a single provision that would satisfy all States. Therefore, the framers were content with incorporating each State's own laws as to who had the right to vote, which was address within each State's constitution. 


In The Federalist No. 52. Madison writes "The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution....The provision made by the convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State, because it is conformable to the standard already established, or which may be established, by the State itself. It will be safe to the United States, because, being fixed by the State constitutions, it is not alterable by the State governments, and it cannot be feared that the people of the States will alter this part of their constitutions in such a manner as to abridge the rights secured to them by the federal Constitution." 


Primary Sources - The Heritage Guide to the Constitution; The Federalist Paper No 52.


Federalist Paper No 52

Legislative Vesting Clause - Article I, Section 1

"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Comment: The framers did not want power combined in any one governmental department - the framers instead wanted Separation of Powers. As a result, Articles I, II, III of the Constitution vests the legislative, executive, and judicial power – each in a separate department of the federal government.  Moreover, the Constitution’s scheme is one of enumerated powers. To that end, the only law making power permitted  of Congress are those “herein granted” by the Constitution. Remember that the powers assigned to each branch were to remain within that branch (called the Nondelegation Doctrine), which is central to separation and accountability. As a result, the Constitution states that “All legislative Powers...shall be vested in a Congress,” not the executive or judicial branches. However, the Supreme Court has failed to prevent the delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch (through its agencies that adopt and enforce regulations); and as a result, the separation and accountability as originally designed under the Constitution has been greatly compromised. 

Primary Source - The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Comment:  The Preamble to the Constitution was written by Gov. Morris. It is important to note that the Preamble does not grant or limit power. The words "a more perfect Union” simply means a better and stronger one than had previously existed under the Articles of Confederation. In order to “establish justice,” the framers believed that it was important to establish an independent Supreme Court, a federal judiciary superior to the states, and prohibit certain state practices. The founders ended up giving Congress ultimate control over the militias and guaranteed to each state a republic form of government and protection against violence, which was to help “insure domestic Tranquility” and protect against rebellions and insurrections. The founders also expected that other wars would occur, so the Constitution needed to “Provide for the common defense” of the United States. At the time of our founding fathers, “Welfare” meant: well-doing or well-being in any respect; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; exemption from any evil or calamity; prosperity; happiness. And by definition “general” means all, entire, or total, not just a few or a part of the people. As a result, “promote the general Welfare” is actually a limitation of power, more so than a grant of power, because the powers granted by the Constitution were meant to promote the happiness and well-being of all the peoples of the United States, not just a few. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it is the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. Liberty is defined as: the state of a free person; exemption from subjection to the will of another claiming ownership of the person or services; freedom; -- opposed to slavery, serfdom, bondage, or subjection. To that end, the Constitution makes possible the establishment of a government of laws to secure the “Blessing of Liberty.”


Primary Source - The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

The Law by Frederic Bastiat

Frederic Bastiat- The Law (1848)


THE LAW by Frederic Bastiat  (a short bullet point outline) 

Life is a Gift from God

• Life, faculties, production = individuality, liberty, property = man.

• Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

What Is Law?

•  The Collective Group. The purpose of the collective group’s common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

The Complete Perversion of the Law

•  The Law in France (and now American) Perverted. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense....The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.

A Fatal Tendency of Mankind

• Mankind has the tendency to live and prosper at the expense of others.
• The very nature of man impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

Property and Plunder

•  Property: Man living and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; and by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources.

•  Plunder: Man living and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others.

•  Natural bent toward plunder to avoid pain. Because man’s fatal tendency is naturally inclined to avoid pain, and since labor is pain in itself -- men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.

•  When does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

•  What the purpose of the Law should be – stop the tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

•  Law becomes perverted and used as a weapon because of man’s tendency. The law becomes perverted by man’s fatal tendency to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law, and end up becoming a weapon of injustice.

Victims of Lawful Plunder

•  Plunder becomes a vicious circle. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish the prior legal plunder. Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder.

The Results of Legal Plunder

• The distinction between justice and injustice is erased.
• Many people believe that lawful = legitimate or just.
• So, in order to make plunder appear just, simply make it law.

 Two Kinds of Plunder

•  Illegal. That which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes (e.g., theft).
• Legal. That which the law defends and participates in it.

How to Identify Legal Plunder

• See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

“If so, then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law -- which may be an isolated case -- is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.”

Legal Plunder Has Many Names

• Tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole --with their common aim of legal plunder -- constitute socialism.

The Seductive Lure of Socialism

• Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism.

The Roots of Plunder

• Legal plunder has two roots: human greed (see above - man fatal tendency) and false philanthropy.

•  Legal plunder defined: When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it -- without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud -- to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.

Three Systems of Plunder

• Protectionism, socialism, and communism are basically the same plant in three different stages of its growth.

Law Is a Negative Concept

• The purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force and imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed -- then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives.

...The Law and Charity...The Law and Education...The Law and Morals...The Influence of Socialist Writers...The Socialists Wish to Play God...The Socialists Despise Mankind...A Defense of Paternal Government...The Idea of Passive Mankind...Socialists Ignore Reason and Facts...Socialists Want to Regiment People...A Famous Name and a Frightful Idea...Legislators Desire to Mold Mankind...A Temporary Dictatorship...Socialist Vision of Equality...The Error of the Socialist Writers...

What Is Liberty?

• Is it not the  union of all liberties – liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade, freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons, destruction of all despotism, restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice

• Liberty is largely thwarted, because legislators desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.

...Philanthropic Tyranny...The Socialists Want Tyranny...Dictatorial Arrogance...The Indirect Approach to Despotism and Passive Mankind...The Vicious Circle of Socialism...

The Doctrine of Social Democracy

• The strange phenomenon of our times -- one that will probably astound our descendants -- is the doctrine based on this triple hypothesis:
• the total inertness of mankind,
• the omnipotence of the law, and
• the infallibility of the legislator.

...Socialists Fear All Liberties...The Socialists Reject Free Choice...

The Enormous Power of Government

• As long as these ideas prevail, it is clear that the responsibility of government is enormous. Good fortune and bad fortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, virtue and vice -- all then depend upon political administration. It is burdened with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it is responsible for everything.

...Economics Proceeds Politics...Proper Legislative Functions...Law and Charity Are Not the Same...The Road to Communism...Law is Justice...Freedom, Dignity, and Progress...Do Not Claim to Know More than God...

Let Us Now Try Liberty

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.