Many people mistakenly believe that our Declaration of Independence is part of our system of laws. The Declaration of Indepdence is an aspirational and explanatory document, but it is not in our laws.
Sources of Authority and Jurisdiction
This article is the core of this website.
It is safe to say that most of us do not want to engage in the kind of unprincipled, unguided, unlimited chaos that we call a "revolution".
Most of us would prefer that there be some guiding stars and an established, even if vague and uncharted, framework in which changes are made.
That means that we need to look for hooks that we can use as sources for authority and, implicitly, confine the scope of our Tribunal.
At first glance there seem to be few such hooks in our organic document, the Constitution of the United States. Here we look more deeply and do find that the United States does have the authority and jurisdiction for a tribunal that is both powerful and wide in scope.
"Natural Law" is a concept that appeals to some of us, including some members (such as C. Thomas) of the US Supreme Court.
Natural law is the idea that exists law and system of moral values that exists outside of, and perhaps transcends, our Constitution and state laws.
Clearly there are practices and values that existed before we ever wrote a law or a constitution. But those practices and values are not clearly defined, may at times be imagined or distorted reflections of other practices, and are largely a means through which judges can pick and chose pieces,of "natural law" (perhaps out of context) to support a pre-decided outcome. (See District of Columbia v. Heller 554 US 570 (2008))
One could say that "natural law" is a euphemism for "I made it up."
What Is The Ultimate Power Of A Nation State?
Let us begin at the beginning and ask: What is the ultimate power of a nation-state?
If we answer honestly we bein with the axiom that the power of a nation-state is limited only by its own abilities and by the willingness of others to oppose that power.
A realpolitik view of nation-state power tells us that a nation-state as a whole has the power even to terminate the life of those within its borders, to sieze any property, and to largely whatevever else it wants to do. One only has to look at the Soviet Union under Stalin to see how far a nation-state can go.
Most nation-states today have organic documents - such as Constitutions - that disavow that full range of power. Unlike the Biblical Ten Commandments, as shown in the painting at the top of this piece, Constitutions are not granted by gods. Documents, such as the United States Constitution, are merly works of man and may be changed or replaced by man.
And as recent events in the United States have shown, unless backed by some degree of power, Constitutional limits can be little more than words on a sheet of paper.
