The U.S. government is delegated authority. The 10th Amendment says so, as does the Supreme Court, quoted below. The authors of the Constitution did NOT delegate any authority that they themselves did not have.
So how did created-equal citizens of “We The People” get any authority to delegate control over others — such as taxing their neighbors’ wealth, or canceling marriages, or restricting commerce, or make zoning restrictions, or taxing property or inheritance?
Answer: They didn’t.
We are all created equal. “We The People” who created government were your equals. They were not your superiors. You have no duty to obey equals. The government is not your master.
“Sec. 23. … No body can give more power than he has himself; …. ”
John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government
You had no superiors until you consented to be governed. Before “citizens” (lower case c) consented to be governed, Citizens (capital C) had no subjects “and have none to govern but themselves” (quoted below).
We are all created equal. The Declaration of Independence says so. The Supreme Court says so.
“at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country—but they are sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among us may be so called)—and have none to govern but themselves—the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty.”
— 2 US 471, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, Chisolm v. Georgia, 18 February 1798.
This was the decision that led to the Eleventh Amendment.
Yes, The U.S. government is delegated authority.
“all power is in the people, and that rulers have no powers but what are enumerated in that paper.”
— Harry Lee, Virginia Convention to Ratify the U.S. Constitution, June 9, 1788
If the state ratifications of the Constitution were fraudulently induced, then the U.S. Constitution is void from the beginning.
“the president can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary in its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the federal constitution or in an act of congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest… .”
— William Howard Taft, OUR CHIEF MAGISTRATE AND HIS POWERS, pages 139-140 (1916).
Is government your ruler or your agent?
“the proposed Government is to be the government of the people—all its officers are to be their officers, and to exercise no rights but such as the people commit to them. The Constitution only serves to point out that part of the people’s business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated—those persons are to receive that business to manage, not for themselves, and as their own, but as agents and overseers for the people to whom they are constantly responsible, and by whom only they are to be appointed.”
— John Jay, “Address to the People of the State of New-York on the Subject of the Constitution”, April 12, 1788.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-04-02-0324
The people are the source of all power. They delegate some of their powers to their servants (civil servants). Just because they asked others to help them perform some duties, does not mean they cannot step in and still perform those duties. They still retain the powers to do what they asked others to help them with.
The people retain the power to arbitrate all disputes. Supreme power – jura summi imperii – still resides in the people.
That’s right. Government officers are your agents. Not your rulers. And they manage that business. as Jay put it, “not for themselves and as their own but as agents and overseers for the people to whom they are constantly responsible”
John Jay was one of three Americans who signed the Peace Treaty with the British, thereby authorizing the United States to exist.
He became the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court decisions
*Supreme Court in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 US 356, page 370: “While sovereign powers are delegated to … the government, sovereignty itself remains with the people..”
* US Supreme Court in Julliard v. Greenman: 110 US 421: “there is no such thing as a power of inherent sovereignty in the government of the United States. It is a government of delegated powers, supreme within its prescribed sphere, but powerless outside of it. In this country, sovereignty resides in the people, and congress can exercise no power which they have not, by their constitution, intrusted to it; all else is withheld.”
* US Supreme Court in Luther v. Borden, 48 US 1, at page 47: “No one, we believe, has ever doubted the proposition that, according to the institutions of this country, the sovereignty in every State resides in the people of the State, and that they may alter and change their form of government at their own pleasure.
“the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party: That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”
— Vice President Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0370-0004
“We The People” created the U.S. government by writing a Constitution and ratifying it. The U.S. government is an artificial entity. It exists in writing.
“We The People” held the truth that all men are created equal. But Civil Servants are servants. They are not masters.
Civil Servants give life to the artificial entity by swearing oaths to obey it and perpetuate it. Civil servants, by swearing to obey, are no longer equal, they are now subordinates. They consented to be governed. We call them servants. They must obey the oaths they took. For governmental purposes only.
Those who remain equal DID NOT consent to be governed, except by the laws of nature.
We The People did not legalize mutiny. Parliamentary procedure does not legalize mutiny.
Voting does not legalize mutiny.
“Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.”
— Vice President Thomas Jefferson, draft of Kentucky Resolution, before October 4, 1798
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0370-0003
Common law in the Received-Law-of-the-Land
John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, 1690:
“Sec. 141. Fourthly, The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone can appoint the form of the common-wealth, which is by constituting the legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be. And when the people have said, We will submit to rules, and be governed by laws made by such men, and in such forms, no body else can say other men shall make laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any laws, but such as are enacted by those whom they have chosen, and authorized to make laws for them. The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.”
So don’t let your representatives represent others, such as the bar association or lobbyists outside their district.
Don’t consent to be governed
“We The People”, all created equal, delegated to our servants the 18 things we allow the U.S. government to do. (Article 1, section 8 ).
Those who consent to be governed are governed.
So don’t consent.
We are all created equal. Equals have no duty to obey other equals. Equals would never salute another equal. Equals would never swear oaths to other equals. We are all created equal. We remain equal until we swear oaths (under penalty of perjury) to a superior.
We are born free. With Creator-granted unalienable rights. Governments are instituted among men to secure those unalienable rights. We are born with the three rights of all mankind. These rights could never be “required by the laws of society to be sacrificed to public convenience … ” The preservation of these rights, inviolate, secured the preservation of civilized society (according to the introduction to the 1769 book Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law, Book 4 — this link is to an 1803 revision that includes American law.)
If you don’t understand liberty, then liberty is foreign to your way of thinking.
You may also be interested in:
- How did created equal citizens of “We The People” delegate an authority that they themselves did not have?
- The Three Rights of all mankind
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“We The People” now means nothing to the civil servants who swore oaths to obey our Constitution.