Are Americans Subjects Or Citizens?

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Suverans2's picture
Suverans2, posted on March 24, 2012

"Are Americans Subjects Or Citizens?"

If, by "Americans", this author means "United States citizens", the answer to that question is, "yes".

    Subject. Constitutional law. ...Men in free governments are subjects as well as citizens; as citizens they enjoy the [civil/political] rights and franchises; as subjects they are bound to obey the laws. The term is little used, in this sense, in countries enjoying a republican form of government. Swiss Nat. Ins. Co. v.Miller, 267 U.S. 42, 45 S.Ct. 213, 214, 69 L.Ed. 504 ~ Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition (c.1991), page 1425 [Bracketed information added.]

Unfortunately, United States citizens no longer enjoy a "republican form of government", a government whose sole purpose for existence is to secure, to each of its voluntary members, their un-alien-able rights, i.e. their natural rights, and nothing more.

    "Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights . . . and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him . . . and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right." ~ Thomas Jefferson [in a letter to Francis Gilmer (c.1816)]

 

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