Right to petition

“ If it was right thus to dispose of petitions on one subject, it would be equally right to dispose of them in the same manner on all subjects, and thus cut of all communication, by petition between the people and their representatives. Nothing can be more clearly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, as it rendered utterly nugatory a right which was considered of such vast importance as to be specially guarantied in that sacred instrument. ”

“ If we are to decide when they ought to feel aggrieved, and when they ought to be satisfied, if the tribunal to whom their petitions are addressed may refuse to receive them, because, in their opinion, there was no just cause of complaint, the right of petition is destroyed. It would be but a poor answer to their petitions to tell them they ought not to have felt aggrieved, that they are mistaken, and that, therefore, their complaints would not be received by their servants. ”

“ Right to petition Article 56 Everyone shall have the right to put forward petitions and other proposals alone or together with others, to state bodies, entities exercising public powers, bodies of the autonomous province and local self-government units and to receive reply from them if they so request.
No person may suffer detrimental consequences for putting forward a petition or proposal.
No person may suffer detrimental consequences for opinions stated in the petition or proposal unless they constitute a criminal offense. ”

“ The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People out of the grants of power made to Congress. ”

“ Finally, when the representative system of government is complete, and provided with all the rights and all the means of action which it needs in order to accomplish its ends, the right of petition is nothing but the right of calling the attention of the Houses of Parliament, by means of one of their members, to any particular question, or act of the governing power. ”

“ If there be any plausible reason for supposing that we have the right to legislate on the slave interests of the District, you cannot put down the investigation of the subject out of doors, by refusing to receive petitions. On the contrary, you give the petitioners new force and efficiency, by giving them a new cause of complaint and of excitement. Nor do you attain any thing, so far as this House is concerned; for, by shutting out petitions, you do not shut out debate; any member of the House can bring on debate any day, by moving some general resolution applicable to the subject. ”

“ In countries in which the people cannot assemble to cause publick opinion to act on their rulers, and in which the great majority are disfranchised, or never possessed a vote, the right of petition is an all important right. ”

“ Besides the unimpeachable integrity and piety of many of the promoters of this petition, which render those aspersions as idle as they are unjust, such a way of treating the subject can have no other effect than to turn the attention of the House from the merits of the petition, the only thing properly before us, and which we are sufficiently competent to decide upon, to the motives of the petitioners, which belong exclusively to the Great Searcher of Hearts. ”

“ If-on remand-the District Court finds from all of the evidence that petitioner has sustained the burden of proof resting upon him and that he did not competently and intelligently waive his right to counsel, it will follow that the trial court did not have jurisdiction to proceed to judgment and conviction of petitioner, and he will therefore be entitled to have his petition granted. If petitioner fails to sustain this burden he is not entitled to the writ. ”

“ Koontz, that 'a state court is not bound to surrender its jurisdiction of the suit on a petition for removal until a case has been made which on its face shows that the petitioner has a right to the transfer;' and that 'the mere filing of a petition for the removal of a suit, which is not removable, does not work a transfer. ”

“ I have already kept back for several weeks the petitions committed to me, in order to shape my course according to the deliberate decision of the House; but that decision does not come; it is continually procrastinated for the sake of considering questions, which, in my view, are secondary in time and in principle to the question of reception ”

“ It must not be pushed aside to make place for the discussion of speculative resolutions, or for debate, on the merits of the question raised by the prayer of these petitions. I maintain that the House is bound by the Constitution to receive the petitions; after which, it will take such method of deciding upon them as reason and principle shall dictate. It should first lend an attentive and respectful ear to the prayer of the People. Whether it can or will grant that prayer, is an after consideration. ”

“ It is a convenient one, deprives the petitioner of no substantial right, if the petition and traverse are treated, as we think they should be, as together constituting the application for the writ, and the return to the rule as setting up the facts thought to warrant its denial, and if issues of fact emerging from the pleadings are tried as required by the statute.
Second. The District Court proceeded to adjudicate the petitioner's right to the writ upon the allegations of his petition and traverse and those of the return and accompanying affidavits. ”

“ Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United States. ”

“ Mere regulation, such as requiring the cause of removal to be stated, and that the petition should be supported by an affidavit, is not sufficient change in the principle of the Judiciary Act to support the proposition, as the great purpose of the new enactment is to extend the right to a non-resident plaintiff as well as to a non-resident defendant, and to enlarge the time within which the petition may be filed, leaving the alien defendant wholly unaffected by the new regulations. ”

“ On the back of these things, the Legislature last year petitioned Congress that they would not send such men here, but send men that had some claim to decency and propriety. But this is one of the greatest insults considered to be, to petition Congress. What right have American citizens to petition? ”

“ The statute does not, however, permit an indigent's right to be conditioned upon the fortuity of whether a lawyer believes this Court will grant his petition. We ourselves often have difficulty making that prophecy. ”

“ The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have been cited. It has been said that those petitions were not received. ”

“ Upon the Constitution, upon the pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this country and in England, I have argued that this House is bound to revive the Petition under debate. ”

“ That your Petitioners have, time out of mind, possessed certain places allowed to be their undoubted right, and that they lately have been, vi et armis, thrust from their 50 ancient possessions. Their misfortune being in common, they present their common petition ”

“ It is a fact beyond dispute that a petition, without the backing of force, is useless. However, the late Justice Ranade used to say that petitions served a useful purpose because they were a means of educating people. They give the latter an idea of their condition, and warn the rulers. From this point of view, they are not altogether useless. A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery. A petition backed by force is a petition from an equal and, when he transmits his demand in the form of a petition, it testifies to his nobility. ”

“ These our great natural rights we keep to ourselves; we will not have them tampered with; respecting them we give to you no commission whatsoever. ”

“ Bliss tells you that we forged petitions, and in only a few moments, as the Court will remember, he had the kindness to say that anybody in the world would sign a petition for anything, and the question arises if people are so glad to sign petitions why should we forge their names. ”

“ Having petitioned our law-makers, State and national, for years, many from weariness have vowed to appeal no more; for our petitions, say they, by the tens of thousands, are piled up in the national archives, unheeded and ignored. Yet it is possible to roll up such a mammoth petition, borne into congress on the shoulders of stalwart men, that we can no longer be neglected or forgotten. ”

“ At home in England the right of petitioning is so dear to us from tradition that we still cling to it as one of the bulwarks of our freedom; but there cannot be a statesman, hardly a Member of Parliament among us, who does not feel that pen and ink and agitating management have become so common that petitions are seldom now entitled to much respect. ”

“ What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. ”

“ That your petitioner has often heard it said, that the law affords protection to the poor as well as to the rich, and that, if unable to obtain redress any where else, every subject of his Majesty has the road of petition open to him ”

“ Freedom of speech and of the press are fundamental rights which are safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Gitlow v. New York, supra, p. 666; Stromberg v. California, supra, p. 368; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 707; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 243, 244. The right of peaceable assembly is a right cognate to those of free speech and free press, and is equally fundamental. As this Court said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 552:
The very idea of a government, republican in form, implies a right on the part of its citizens to meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for a redress of grievances. ”

“ The Court does not, indeed it cannot and should not try to, give to the initial question of granting or denying a petition the kind of attention that is demanded by a decision on the merits. The assumption that we know no more after hearing and deliberating on a case than after reading the petition for certiorari and the response is inadmissible in theory and not true in fact. ”

“ We do not grant or deny these petitions merely according to a majority vote. We always grant the petition when as many as four think that it should be granted and sometimes when as many as three think that way. ”