Founding rights and liberties

“No mans life shall be taken away, no mans person shall be arested, restrayned, banished, nor any wayes punished, unless it be by some expresse law of the Country.” Thus, in abridged form, begins the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first statement of rights in the new colony, establishing its founding principle of justice under the law.

And not just justice under law - but law that extended to everyone, whether free or enslaved, a colonist or newcomer. It continued: “Every person within this Jurisdiction, whether inhabitant or Forreiner, shall enjoy the same justice and law, which we constitute and execute one towards another without particularitie or delay.”

The freedoms we take for granted did not begin in the 20th century, nor in the Revolutionary era. The American insistence on the rule of law as the foundation of proper government begins in 17th century New England, with roots in the Magna Carta and English law, as well as the British fight for parliamentary rights over the arbitrary rule of a monarch. These rights were honoured as much in the breach as in practice - as African Americans and Indigenous people testify. But the foundational principles of 1641 remain for us to expand and defend, as Lori Rogers-Stokes concludes in this important blog.