Declaration (law)

“ Or 2dly,‭ s‬uppose an Act should be made,‭ ‬to impower the Governor of a Province,‭ “‬without the consent of the Council,” to appoint‭ ‬Judges and other Law-Officers,‭ “‬who shall hold their Commissions “DURING THE PLEASURE OF‭" ‬the Crown,‭ ‬instead of the‭ ‬approved and established‭ legal ‬condition,,‭ “quamdiu se bene gesserint;” ‬thereby setting up WILL AND PLEASURE ABOVE LAW AND‭ ‬JUSTICE,‭ ‬which are the first and most essential Rights of the People! ”

“ Or a right must have been claimed under the Constitution, or a treaty, or law of, or by virtue of a commission held or authority exercised under, the United States; and the decision must have been against the right so claimed. ”

“ The people of any State may at any time meet in Convention, without a law of their Legislature, and without any provision, or against any provision, in their Constitution, and may alter or abolish the whole frame of Government as they please. ”

“ In proceeding to consider the various kinds of precedents and the methods of their operation, we have in the first place to distinguish between those decisions which are creative of the law and those which are merely declaratory of it. A declaratory precedent is one which is merely the application of an already existing rule of law; an original precedent is one which creates and applies a new rule. ”

“ It must be understood, however, that a declaratory precedent is just as truly a source of law as is one belonging to the other class. The legal authority of each is exactly the same. Speaking generally, the authority and legal validity of a precedent do not depend on whether it is, or is not, an accurate statement of previously existing law. Whether it is or is not, it may establish as law for the future that which it now declares and applies as law. ”

“ The general current of authorities, English and American, establishes the principle that a declaration in pais shall not work an estoppel, unless it appears affirmatively that it was intended that the party for or to whom it is made should act on the faith of it, and that he actually did so act, and will be prejudiced by the contrary assertion. ”

“ The language of the great charter is, that no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned but by the lawful judgment of his equals, or by the law of the land. And many subsequent old statutes expressly direct, that no man shall be taken or imprisoned by suggestion or petition to the king or his council, unless it be by legal indictment, or the process of the common-law. ”

“ No bill of attainder shall be passed, nor any ex post facto law; nor shall any title of nobility be granted by the United States, or by either of them; nor shall any person holding an office or place of trust under the United States without the permission of the Legislature accept any present, emolument Office or title from a foreign prince or State. Nor shall any Religious Sect, or denomination, or religious test for any office or place, be ever established by law. ”

“ I. In construing any act of legislation, whether a statute enacted by the legislature or a constitution established by the people as the supreme law of the land, regard is to be had not only to all parts of the act itself, and of any former act of the same lawmaking power of which the act in question is an amendment, but also to the condition and to the history [p654] of the law as previously existing, and in the light of which the new act must be read and interpreted. ”

“ The word law in the clause of the constitution he had last noticed, was not meant in reference to the Treaty-making power; but in reference to Congress. A law prescribes a rule of conduct; it is the expression of the will of the proper authority; it is the result of discretion. Legislation implies deliberation. If a law is the expression of the will, must not an appropriation law be equally so? But gentlemen had found out a new-fashioned exposition of the word discretion, and, according to their definition in fact, it was no discretion at all. ”

“ The royal power saw in this merely a concession from itself, a consultative power, which ought to yield before the royal will, when the latter was clearly manifested, either by lettres de jussion or by the actual words and presence of the king, when he came in person to procure the registration of a law in a so-called lit de justice. ”

“ Because an exposition of the law publicly made, and repeatedly confirmed by the constituted authority, carries with it, by fair inference, the sanction of those who, having made the law through their legislative organ, appear, under such circumstances, to have determined its meaning through their judiciary organ. ”

“ Their declaration was simply their joint expression of their separate wills; each expressing its own will, and not that of any other; each bound by its own act, and not responsible for the act of any other. ”

“ Individuals, in many cases at least, had a right to exercise their own discretion with respect to the propriety of submitting to a civil law or of risking the penalty, the consequence of disobedience; and, as a branch of the Legislature, he believed they had a right to deliberate and consult, among other things, the expediency and duty of making or of refusing to make appropriations, even in the case of a Treaty. ”

“ The Bill of Rights applies to all law, and binds the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and all organs of state.
(2) A provision of the Bill of Rights binds a natural or a juristic person if, and to the extent that, it is applicable, taking into account the nature of the right and the nature of any duty imposed by the right. ”

“ Of the binding obligation, and conclusiveness of decrees in equity where the parties and the subject-matter of such decrees are within the regular cognizance of the court pronouncing them, and of their equality in dignity and authority with judgments at law, we have already spoken. It remains for us only to consider what may be legally intended or concluded from the pleadings in this cause as to the territorial extent of jurisdiction in the court whose decree is made the foundation of this action. ”

“ In any written law and in any document, any reference to the repealed Oaths Act, the repealed Oaths of Office and Allegiance Act or the repealed Statutory Declarations Act shall be treated as a reference to the Act. ”

“ There is no Declaration of Rights, and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitution of the several States, the Declaration of Rights in the separate States are no security. ”

“ Statutes serve to record the rights of a people, and speak the intention of parties to defend what the letter of the law has expressed; but without the vigour to maintain what is acknowledged as a right, the mere record, or the feeble intention, is of little avail.
A populace roused by oppression, or an order of men possessed of temporary advantage, have obtained many charters, concessions, and stipulations, in favour of their claims ”

“ When it is said that a person escaping into another State, and coming therefore within the jurisdiction of that State, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the clause is, that the State itself, in obedience to the Constitution, shall cause him to be delivered up. ”

“ There must be an act of solemnity and importance, such as a statute, and that statute must be by a State, a member of the Union and a public body, owing obedience and conformity to its constitution and laws. ”

“ But if you were assembled in general convention, which would you think the safest depository of this discretionary power in the last resort? Would you add a clause, giving it to each of the states, or would you sanction the wise provisions already made by your constitution? If this should be the result of your deliberations, when providing for the future, are you, can you be ready to risk all, that we hold dear, to establish, for a temporary and a local purpose, that, which you must acknowledge to be destructive and even absurd, as a general provision? ”

“ First, a law violating a treaty ratified by a preëxisting law might be respected by the judges as a law, though an unwise or perfidious one. A law violating a constitution established by the people themselves would be considered by the judges as null and void. ”

“ Within the limits of the statutes, citizens shall have the right of secrecy of correspondence.
(f) Within the limits of the statutes, citizens shall have the right of abode and of changing the same.
(g) Within the limits of the statutes, citizens shall have the right of religious belief.
Article 6. In accordance with the provisions of the statutes, citizens shall have the right of petitioning the Legislature.
Article 7. In accordance with the provisions of the statutes, citizens shall have the right to institute proceedings in the Courts of Law. ”

“ The Constitution is a series of contracts made by each individual with every other of the fourteen millions. A man's oath is evidence of his assent to this contract. If I offer a man the copy of an agreement, and he, after reading, swears to perform it, have I not a right to infer from his oath that he assents to the rightfulness of the articles of that paper? What more solemn form of expressing his assent could he select? A man's oath expresses his conviction of the rightfulness of the actions he promises to do, as well as his determination to do them. ”

“ In the first place, it is stated, that a material variance exists between the writ and declaration, of which (being shown upon oyer) the court, upon a general demurrer to the declaration, are bound to take notice; and if so, it is fatal to the action. ”

“ State v. Commissioners, 37 N. J. Law, 228. This rule applies wherever an act contains general provisions and also special ones upon a subject which, standing alone, the general provisions would include. End. Interp. St. ”

“ Under the very peculiar Constitution of this Government, although the citizens owe supreme allegiance to the Federal Government, they owe also a qualified allegiance to the State in which they are domiciled. ”

“ The language of the Constitution is so peculiar, that the distinction between power to be conferred upon the Government about to be created, and covenants entered into between the parties, as States is obvious at a glance. ”

“ Nothing is said of the manner in which this consent may be given by the State or accepted by the Nation. But if this important limitation can in any way be made the subject of agreement or compact, pray, Sir, where will you stop? What other power or prerogative of the State may not be limited also, especially where there is nothing in the Constitution against any such limitation? All this I adduce simply by way of illustration. There is no question now of any limitation, in the just sense of this term. ”

“ We all know what the Constitution is. We all know that the first principle of it is, that the subject shall not be governed by the arbitrium of any one man or body of men - less than the whole Legislature, but by certain laws, to which he has virtually given his consent, which are open to him to examine, and not beyond his ability to understand. ”

“ The citizens of each State shall be entitled to the rights privileges and immunities of citizens in every other State; and full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of another. ”

“ Whenever the act of any state, whether legislative, executive, or judiciary, shall be attested and exemplified under the seal thereof, such attestation and exemplification shall be deemed in other states as full proof of the existence of that act ”

“ Having adopted its Declaration of the rights of man, the Assembly proceeded to the drawing up of a constitution which should embody the principles of the Declaration, and soon found itself in passionate debate upon the relations to be established between the national legislature and the king. ”

“ Is it sufficient to declare on parchment in the constitution, that each shall remain, and neither shall usurp the functions of the other? No one, well read in history in general, or even in our own history during the period of the existence of our state constitutions, will place much reliance on such declarations. In the first place, men may and will differ, as to the nature and extent of the prohibition. ”

“ Our people in convention, by their act of ratification, declared and made known that the powers granted under the constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever they shall be perverted to their injury and oppression. ”

“ All constitutional acts of power, whether in the executive or in the judicial department, have as much legal validity and obligation as if they proceeded from the legislature; and therefore, whatever name be given to the power of making treaties, or however obligatory they may be when made, certain it is, that the people may, with much propriety, commit the power to a distinct body from the legislature, the executive, or the judicial. ”

“ This is but another application of the familiar rule that, where one state adopts the laws of another, it is also presumed to adopt the known and settled construction of those laws by the courts of the state from which they are taken. ”