Party (law)

“ That is to say, a party which casts forty-five per cent. of the total vote for representatives must have forty per cent. of the legislature, and the party which casts five per cent. of the total vote must have five per cent. of the legislature. Then only will statute law be framed in accordance with the will of a majority of the people.
The other part of our republican form of government, as understood and intended by American statesmen of the eighteenth century, was that a majority of the people should directly control the organic law. ”

“ Having legally incorporated the party machinery into the system of government, the law must now more carefully define what is meant by a party. A party is not its general com- mittee nor even its party convention as the official ballot law assumes ; it is primarily all the voters who support its principles. The election law leaves this definition to those in control of the organization an instance of the suppression of the individual citizen by the conquering power of monopoly. ”

“ If then party spirit, orders, or aristocracy, flow from the same cause, whatever will prevent either, will prevent all, and whatever will produce one, will produce the rest. As a distribution of property by law is the common cause, an exclusion of such laws, is the common remedy; and as according to our idea of a republican government, it cannot exist in union with these partial laws, the parties they produce are chargeable to a different form of government, partial to a separate interest, and in principle, aristocratical. ”

“ The law may provide that associations which, by virtue of their purpose or activities, violate the criminal laws, shall be subject to restrictions or prohibited. Article 37 (1) The freedom of parties to participate equally in the formation of political will in society shall be guaranteed. (2) The internal organization of the parties shall conform to democratic principles. Members shall have the right to the unimpeded exercise of freedom of opinion and assembly within the framework of the party program, and to equal participation in the formation of party opinion. ”

“ No matter what political party has control of the government, or to what party the men selected to fill the different offices belong, or with what political organizations they affiliate, unless they acknowledge the superior binding force of the fundamental law they should be requested to vacate their official positions, and their places should be filled by men who are willing to acknowledge the binding force of the constitution, and will pledge themselves to abstain from judicial legislation. ”

“ One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one that will probably be a matter of astonishment to our descendants, is the doctrine which is founded upon this triple hypothesis: the radical passiveness of mankind,—the omnipotence of the law,—the infallibility of the legislator: this is the sacred symbol of the party that proclaims itself exclusively democratic. ”

“ We shall very soon have parties formed—a court and country party—and these parties will have names given them; one party in the house of representatives will support the president and his measures and ministers—the other will oppose them—a similar party will be in the senate—these parties will struggle with all their art, perhaps with intrigue, perhaps with corruption at every election to increase their own friends, and diminish their opposers. ”

“ Why is it, then, that such a system of representation would be intolerable to us? Sir, it is because we look beyond parties; because we care for something besides parties; because we know that the constitution does not exist for the benefit of parties, but of citizens; and we do not choose that all the opinions, feelings, and interests of all the members of the community should be merged in the single consideration of which party shall predominate. We require a House of Commons which shall be a fitting representative of all the feelings of the people, and not merely of their party feelings. ”

“ Owing its ratification to the law of a State, it has been contended that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain that a PARTY to a COMPACT has a right to revoke that COMPACT, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. ”

“ Just as the state does not leave the definition of citizen- ship and the machinery of naturalization to the private interests of any body of men, so it cannot leave the definition of party membership to even the party organization. Political parties are no longer private concerns organized for agitation, but they are public institutions organized to name the officers of government and so to control the government itself. ”

“ The state, as its highest tribunal holds, though it has guaranteed the liberty to organize political parties, may legislate for their governance when formed, and for the method whereby they may nominate candidates, but must do so with full recognition of the right of the party to exist, to define its membership, and to adopt such policies as to it shall seem wise. ”

“ In former days, when there were Whigs instead of Liberals, it was almost a rule of political life that all leading Whigs should be uncles, brothers-in-law, or cousins to each other. This was pleasant and gave great consistency to the party; but the system has now gone out of vogue. ”

“ To me this government seems to consist of a confederation of parties of interest, excluding the majority of the nation. Such as the church of England, the paper stock party, the East India company, the military party, the pensioned and sinecure party, and the ins and outs, once called whigs and tories; each struggling for self interest and self government, but all, creeping forth like caterpillars from the legal nests in which they have been hatched, to feed upon the fruits of the nation. ”

“ The habits, too, arising from such functions, will lead them to take a more ardent part in public discussions, and in the vindication of their own political decisions, than seems desirable for those, who are daily called upon to decide upon the private rights and claims of men, distinguished for their political consequence, zeal, or activity, in the ranks of party. In a free government, like ours, there is a peculiar propriety in withdrawing, as much as possible, all judicial functionaries from the contests of mere party strife. ”

“ Our extra-constitutional party conventions, short-lived and poor in power as they are, constitute our only machinery for that sort of control of the executive which consists in the award of personal rewards and punishments. ”

“ Let the Commons in Parliament assembled be one and the same thing with the Commons at large. I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the people itself, whenever, it shall appear by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that those representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law and to introduce an arbitrary power. ”

“ Experience, as well as reason shows, that a government, operating as ours does, must give rise to two great political parties — which, although partaking, from the first, more or less of a sectional character, extend themselves, in unequal proportions, over the whole Union — carrying with them, notwithstanding their sectional tendency, party sympathy and party attachment of such strength, that few are willing to break or weaken them, by resisting, even an acknowledged infraction of the constitution, of a nature alike oppressive and dangerous to their section. ”

“ VI. That elections of representatives in legislature ought to be free and frequent, and all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, ought to have the right of suffrage; and no aid, charge, tax, or tee, can be set, rated, or levied, upon the people without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor can they be bound by any law to which they have not in like manner consented for the public good. ”

“ A large proportion of the most valuable of the provisions in Magna Charta, and the bill of rights in 1688, consists of a solemn recognition, of limitations upon the power of parliament; that is, a declaration, that parliament ought not to abolish, or restrict those rights. Such are the right of trial by jury; the right to personal liberty and private property according to the law of the land; that the subjects ought to have a right to bear arms; that elections of members of parliament ought to be free ”

“ In the Legislative Assembly there are the Government party, consisting of the Colonial Secretary and the Attorney General, who prove their loyalty and devotion by adhering to His Excellency the Governor on every division, and (according to general belief) would rather vote against their own measures than against the representative of their Queen. Then there is the popular party, consisting of the popular member, who speaks at random on either side of the debate, but invariably votes against the Government, in order to maintain inviolate the integrity of his principles. ”

“ In the struggle between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians in the seventeenth century, the two most elementary parties into which a nation can be divided, and which in every community exist in a more or less developed state, came into inevitable contest. The principles of authority on the one side and of liberty on the other were opposed in the most direct manner. These two ideas are both essential to the existence of society and to the exercise of the functions of government ”

“ I assume that all the members of this Constitutional Convention believe that the existence of political parties is essential to the success of free government and to permanence and stability of political policy, and that the perpetuation of party government is desirable for the welfare and best interests of this state. Men cannot secure results and compass their ends in politics, any more than in most other human concerns and matters requiring concerted action, except by organization, cooperation, discipline and responsibility. ”

“ The question is, whether we shall live longer in a Union in which a Party, hostile to us in every respect, has the power in Congress, in the Executive department, and in the Electoral Colleges—a Party who will have the power even in the Judiciary. We think it is not safe. We say that each State has the clear indisputable right to withdraw if she sees fit ”

“ While the rules adopted and used by the House of Representatives are recognized authority in legislative bodies of the country, yet because it is so large a body, its business so complicated, and the supremacy of party so strong, its laws cannot always be followed as a model. ”

“ We recall at this point the wording of the statute invoked by the respondents. 'Every political party in this State through its State Executive Committee shall have the power to prescribe the qualifications of its own members and shall in its own way determine who shall be qualified to vote or otherwise participate in such political party.' Whatever inherent power a state political party has to determine the content of its membership resides in the state convention. ”

“ A further condition precedent is a highly developed political party life which has taken hold of the great masses of the population, so that the tendency of direct legislation to break up parties and to bridge over party opposition are no more to be feared. ”

“ That branch of the government over which the party has most control through frequent elections—viz., the House of Representatives—is the one which has least authority, while those which have most influence in shaping the policy of the government are less directly subject to the penalties of party disapproval, as in the case of the President and Senate, or entirely exempt from any effective party control as in the case of the Supreme Court. ”

“ Let us make use of our privileges against the other house of parliament, whenever occasion shall make it necessary, but not against the people. This is the distinction and this the meaning of privilege. The people are under the law, and we are the legislators. ”

“ The citizens of the Territory who formed the majority in the organization of the territorial government, and in the elections for its Legislature and inferior officers, form one party. The persons who organized a State government, and attempted to put it in operation against the authority of that established by Congress, form another. ”

“ If under the word party, they mean their own private interest; then, they should be more sincere, and say, that they wish, here, a parliament of lords, and a house of commons. If they pride themselves in the beautiful political work of their fathers, they should forsake any dispute of party spirit. ”

“ To this it must be added, that the sovereign body, in the natural course of things, is divided into opposite parties; and in fact, if not by the theory of the constitution, the stronger or ascendant party rules the minority of the active citizens, as well as the great mass of the merely subject community. ”

“ That party, having, as a whole, little or no interest in the property of the state, can be retained in obedience, and hindered from urging on the revolutionary movement, only by being well supplied with offices. ”