This Day In Legal History: Of Governments And Hammers

Tomorrow is September 25. So what, you ask?

Only three more months to finish that Christmas shopping and get all the holiday cards addressed and signed.

Actually, September 25 provides a more interesting confluence of events.

On that date  221 years ago, the First Congress of the United States of America proposed a series of amendments to the Constitution. Uncharacteristically for Congress, the legislative product got shorter as it went along. 

Seventeen amendments were trimmed to 12 in the Senate, of which 10 were ratified by three quarters of the states. 

Yes--those 10. The Bill of Rights--a document originally intended to create a "fed free" zone of liberty with words like, “Congress shall make no law . . . .”

(**An 11th, now known as the 27th Amendment prohibiting a Congress from raising its own pay, was finally ratified in 1992--hat tip to Judge Brister**)

Astounding by modern standards that Congress would ever draft a sentence beginning with the words, “Congress shall make no law.”  But they did, because folks believed that the new federal government was a potential threat to liberty if its power were not expressly limited.

But there’s some irony here too because sometimes a strong federal government is the only effective guarantor of liberty. On this same date 53 years ago, federal power enabled the Little Rock Nine to finally enter Central High School. 

Interesting that the local public schools in Little Rock developed their own desegregation plan even before Brown v. Board of Education--liberty not being the sole province of the federal government. Yet, the local government did not have the horsepower to carry it out all by itself.

Before the Little Rock Nine could finally start school, it took the orders of Federal District Judge Ronald Daviesenforcing the plan. It also took President Eisenhower nationalizing the Arkansas National Guard--a body which had been used only days earlier by Arkansas’ governor to frustrate desegregation.

So, maybe government, especially a powerful, central government is bad.

Except when it is good. 

Or perhaps its not as simple as a stump speech.  Maybe government is like a hammer, a tool which is equally capable of smashing windows or sculpting marble, depending upon who holds it and how it is handled.