Illegality

“ Put the name was associated with illegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and the confiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with no small effect by the tongues of the spiteful in the ears of the ignorant. ”

“ The fault of this country is the want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction—that, senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future.” ”

“ The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. ”

“ A community in which no crime had been committed by any of its members, against none of whom had a warrant been issued or a complaint made, who had resisted no process in the hands of a real or pretended officer, was threatened with destruction in the name of "law and order," and that, too, by men who marched from a neighboring state with arms obtained by force, and who, in every stage of their progress, violated many laws, and among others the constitution of the United States. ”

“ A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. ”

“ Had justice toward offenders been more duly considered the legislature would probably, long ere this, have been induced to inquire more seriously than it has done, into the causes of crime, with a view to remedying them. This consideration is especially due to prisoners, when it appears, that the use of ardent spirits is the chief cause of crime, and that, by legalizing the sale of this article, and by the countenance given to its use by the community, they and the Government are the chief patrons of crime. ”

“ As I said before, the civil law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal 'crimes' which it had manufactured of course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in order to live happily. Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence? ”

“ There is a crime which no code has defined—the crime, not of breaking one specific law of one's country, but of contriving, with a foreign pretender, how to overturn everything vital in a venerable and generous legislation. ”

“ A law the violation of which in the class of instances in which the Government does seriously undertake to enforce it--bootlegging, smuggling and moonshining--is condoned, aided and abetted by hundreds of thousands of our best citizens? ”

“ But it is again to be observed, that the legislature has not referred for a description of place to any previous parts of the law, but has inserted a description, and by so doing, has materially varied the obvious sense of the section. 'Every person who shall, either upon the land or the seas, knowingly and wittingly aid,' &c. The probability is, that the legislature designed to punish all persons amenable to their laws, who should, in any place, aid and assist, procure, command, counsel, or advise, any person or persons to commit any murder or piracy punishable under the act. ”

“ It has been asserted that every person in the United States, unwittingly, in 99 cases out of 100, violates every day some Federal State or local law or regulation; perhaps the honest judge himself in going from his home to the court room where he hands down every day his judgments of justice breaks some minor regulation, for which offense a policeman, if he were nearby and had studied his book of regulations carefully enough, could place the eminent judge under arrest. ”

“ And if any judge shall appoint his own slave, or the slave of another, to transact any legal business, the judge who appointed him shall render full satisfaction to the law for whatever injustice said slave shall commit. Any bailiff who, acting under the orders of such an usurper of judicial authority, shall arrest or imprison any one, or remove any of his property, shall be scourged with a hundred lashes, and, in this way, shall pay the penalty of his insolence. ”

“ Under a Legislation which should strictly and systematically embrace every possible crime against the outward Rights of the Citizens, and under an Administration from which actual crime could seldom or never conceal itself or escape the punishment threatened by the Law, every thought of crime, as something wholly vain and leading to nothing but certain punishment, would at once be stifled in its birth. ”

“ The rights of the people to be secured in their persons [,] their houses, their papers, and their other property, from all unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated by warrants issued without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, or not particularly describing the places to be searched, or the persons or things to be seized. ”

“ For where else is the source of crime concealed but in greediness and passions excited thereby, or in poverty and want, which are impossible if the law carefully watches over the property of each? And how can crimes arise if their sources are stopped? ”

“ Such persons who may have committed the crime of usurpation of authority and allied crimes as defined in Articles 177 to 179 of the Revised Penal Code;
4. Such persons as may have committed the crimes of kidnapping, robbery, carnapping, smuggling, gun-running, trafficking in prohibited drugs and hijacking;
5. Such persons who may be engaged in price manipulation to the prejudice of the public or who may have committed fraud to the prejudice of the public especially in the sale of essential prime commodities and supplies ”

“ Toombs, that a law should be enacted in which all offenses against slave property by persons fleeing to other States should be tried where the offense was committed, making the slave-code, in effect, the test of the criminality of the act,—an act which, in its essential character, might frequently be one of charity and good will. ”

“ Acts innocent in themselves—such, for instance, as buying goods in a foreign market and bringing them for use to this—may be made a legal crime by statute law, while other acts which are monstrous violations of natural human rights may be and are ignored by the code, and are perpetrated with impunity in the highest grades of civilized society. ”

“ Justice STRONG, that a state, in the exercise of its police power, could 'legislate to prevent the spread of crime or pauperism or disturbance of the peace,' as well as 'justify the exclusion of property, dangerous to the property of citizens of the state ”

“ Every municipal regulation, then, of any State, or any of its peculiar institutions, which makes man property, is a violation of this great law of nature, and is founded in usurpation and tyranny, and is accomplished by force, fraud, or an abuse of power. ”

“ There was no arbitrary assumption or exertion of authority, no interference with the exercise of judicial power, no invasion of the province of the judiciary, nothing which bears the most remote resemblance to seizure or confiscation of property. ”

“ XIV. That every person has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and seizures of his person, his papers, or his property; and therefore, that all warrants to search suspected places, to seize any person, his papers, or his property, without information upon oath or affirmation of sufficient cause, are grievous and oppressive ”

“ We may, however, forfeit them by some offense or crime. If, for example, a man is fined for breaking a law, he loses his right to the money he is obliged to pay. By stealing, he forfeits his liberty, and may be justly imprisoned. By committing murder, he forfeits his right to life, and may be hanged. ”

“ Thus, the civil laws prohibit acts which directly interfere with the rights of others, as, for instance, theft, robbery, assault, etc., and hence these laws are not likely to be considered unjust by any one. ”

“ In recognition of this right, so reserved to the states, the words of the clause in reference to fugitives from justice were made sufficiently comprehensive to include every offense against the laws of the demanding state, without exception as to the nature of the crime. ”

“ If the means employed have no substantial relation to public objects which the government may legally accomplish, if they are arbitrary and unreasonable beyond the necessities of the case, the judiciary will disregard mere forms and interfere for the protection of rights injuriously affected by such illegal action. ”

“ That no person ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled, or deprived of his privileges, franchises, life, liberty, or property, but by due process of law.
That no person ought to be put twice in jeopardy of life or limb, for one and the same offence ”

“ It may not be denied that a state which has lawfully prohibited the enforcement of a particular character of transaction, and made the same criminal, has an interest in seeing that its laws are enforced and will be subjected to the gravest humiliation if it be compelled to give effect to acts done within its borders which are in violation of its valid police or criminal laws. ”

“ The state constitutions recognize the right of men to acquire property; theft, robbery, and murder are among the modes in which property may be acquired; therefore theft, robbery, and murder are recognized by these constitutions as lawful. ”