The lexicon · nodes of the quarrel
Concepts
The nodes of the argument — each a thread on the timeline. The force-graph shows which belong together (quartering, standing armies, the militia, and bearing arms are one anxiety wearing several faces); the timeline shows when, in what order, and answered by whom.
Node size = connections to other threads · colour = domain · click a node for its thread.
Liberty
natural rights
Rights held to belong to persons by nature rather than grant of government, the premise of the Declaration and the target of Bentham's and Hutchinson's rebuttals.
freedom of the press
The liberty to speak, write, and publish one's sentiments without governmental restraint, defended as the indispensable safeguard of all other freedoms.
quartering
The compelled lodging of soldiers in civilian houses or inns. The reference thread for v1: the grievance that runs from the Quartering Acts through the Declaration to the Third Amendment.
the prohibition of slavery
The barring of slavery and involuntary servitude (save as punishment for crime) within a jurisdiction, here imposed on the Northwest Territory.
Governance
consent of the governed
The principle that legitimate authority derives from the agreement of those it governs, the engine of the Declaration's argument and the ratification debate.
the supremacy of Parliament
The doctrine that King-in-Parliament is the one supreme legislature of the whole empire, with authority to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. The loyalist ground of the imperial quarrel: Hutchinson, Seabury, and Leonard reduce every American grievance to a denial of it, and the Declaration is its renunciation.
limited government
The principle that government is at best a necessary evil, instituted only to secure freedom and protect property, and therefore to be kept as simple, cheap, and minimal as security allows.
the extended republic
The contested question whether a free, elective government can be extended over a large territory and diverse population without losing liberty; Anti-Federalists held it cannot, while Federalists argued a large republic better controls faction.
factions
Groups united by interest or passion adverse to the rights of others or the common good; the disease the extended republic of Federalist 10 was meant to cure.
free elections
The principle that the choosing of representatives to the legislature must be free from royal or executive interference, and that the legislature must be convened frequently.
separation of powers
The distribution of governmental power among distinct branches so that each checks the others, defended in Federalist 51 against the fear of concentrated power.
energy in the executive
The argument that good government requires a vigorous, single-headed executive whose unity, duration, and competent powers give it the decision and dispatch needed to administer the laws and defend the community, while remaining compatible with republican responsibility to the people.
hereditary rule
Rule transmitted by birth through monarchy and hereditary succession, attacked as an illegitimate usurpation that no generation of electors could bind their posterity to, incompatible with the natural equality of men.
Military
standing armies
A permanent professional army maintained in peacetime, feared as an instrument of tyranny. The adjacent node to quartering and the militia in the founding's military anxiety.
militia
The body of armed citizens called to defense, posed as the republican alternative to a standing army. One face of the same anxiety as bearing arms.
Judiciary
judicial review
The power of courts to measure statutes against the Constitution and refuse to enforce those that conflict, argued in Federalist 78 and asserted in Marbury v. Madison.
judicial independence
The principle that judges must hold their offices and salaries beyond the reach of the executive's pleasure, so that judgment answers to law rather than to the power that appoints — secured in England by the Act of Settlement's good-behaviour tenure, grieved against George III in 1776, and later fixed by Article III.
Federalism
consolidation
The Anti-Federalist fear that the Constitution would absorb the states into a single national government too large to remain free, central to Brutus's first essay.
implied powers
The doctrine that the necessary-and-proper clause lets Congress employ any appropriate, non-prohibited means plainly adapted to carrying its enumerated powers into execution, even where those means are not themselves named; contested between broad and strict construction.
state sovereign immunity
Whether a sovereign State can be made an unconsenting defendant in federal court — Chisholm v. Georgia held it could be sued by a citizen of another State; the Eleventh Amendment was enacted to overturn that holding.
Economy
the commerce power
The federal power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes — construed broadly as plenary over its objects (including navigation) against the claim of a reserved concurrent power in the States.
taxation without consent
The principle that taxes are a free gift of the people, to be levied only by their own representatives — the imperial crisis's central charge, running from the Petition of Right's forced loans through the Stamp Act quarrel to the Declaration's shortest grievance.
Rights
a bill of rights
An enumerated guard of liberties against government; demanded by the Anti-Federalists, argued unnecessary and dangerous in Federalist 84, and ratified in 1791.
petition for redress
The right to lay grievances before lawful authority by humble petition and remonstrance, and the expectation that such petitions will be answered rather than met with contempt. The constitutional remedy the loyalists urged, the patriots pronounced exhausted, and the First Amendment made a right.
the right to bear arms
The asserted right of citizens to possess arms, twinned with the fear of standing armies and the trust in the militia, codified in the Second Amendment.
religious liberty
Freedom to worship and hold religious sentiments without molestation, and freedom from state-imposed religious qualifications — secured in the original Constitution by the bar on any religious test for office and proclaimed in the Northwest Ordinance.
minority rights
The principle that, even though the majority's will prevails, the minority retain equal rights which equal law must protect and which the majority may not violate without oppression.
Procedure
the law of the land
The guarantee that no one may be deprived of liberty or property except by the judgment of his peers or by the established law of the land.
trial by jury
The right to be judged by a jury of one's peers, a recurring grievance against admiralty courts and a demand carried into the Sixth and Seventh Amendments.
the writ of habeas corpus
The guarantee that a person detained may compel the state to justify the imprisonment before a court; the Constitution forbids suspending the privilege except in cases of rebellion or invasion.