To minimize violence from war and crimes, We the People grant governments sovereignty, a monopoly on the use of violence to coerce compliance with law.

It is the nature of governments to coerce compliance. To constrain the nature of governments to coerce, the US Constitution Divided Sovereignty between We the People, the federal government to minimize violence from war, and states to minimize violence from crimes. "Ambition must be made to counter ambition." Federal taxing for defense is to be countered by states taxing for welfare.

  • Preamble: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
  • 9th: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
  • 10th: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

 

Conflict between We the People and our two types of governments is supposed to be subject to jury nullification.

  • John Jay: "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy." (1794, as Chief Justice, US Supreme Court)
  • Thomas Jefferson:
    • "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." — Letter to Thomas Paine (1789)
    • "The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith." (1801)
    • "Trial by jury [is] the best of all safeguards for the person, the property, and the fame of every individual." (1823)
  • John Adams:
    • "It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." — Diary entry (1771)
    • "Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds."
  • Alexander Hamilton: "The friends and adversaries of the plan of the convention, if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists in this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter as an indispensable barrier to the tyranny of popular magistrates." — Federalist No. 83
  • Patrick Henry: "Trial by jury is the best appendage of freedom... Will the exploitation of a jury be allowed? ... The jury benefit will be lost! I seek for the golden key that will unlock that door!" — Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)
  • James Wilson:
    • Trial by jury as essential to liberty and just government, describing the jury as "the most important embodiment of the will of the people" and insisting that it was necessary for freedom.
    • "The rights and the duties of jurors, in the United States, are great and extensive. No punishment can be inflicted without the intervention of one—in much the greater number of cases, without the intervention of more than one jury. Is it not, then, of immense consequence to both, that jurors should possess the spirit of just discernment, to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty?"
    • "The rights and the duties of jurors, in the United States, are great and extensive. No punishment can be inflicted without the intervention of one—in much the greater number of cases, without the intervention of more than one jury. Is it not, then, of immense consequence to both, that jurors should possess the spirit of just discernment, to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty?"
  • James Madison: "Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature." (1789)
  • Sir William Blackstone: "Every new tribunal erected for the decision of facts without the intervention of a jury is a step towards establishing aristocracy, the most oppressive of absolute governments."

  • Alexis de Tocqueville: "The jury, which is the most energetic means to make the people rule, is also the most effective means to teach them to rule." (1835)

Conflicts between our two types of governments should be resolved by each type of government supporting the use of juries to resolve disputes (versus war) and making those jury decisions part of the common law.

Federalist #28: “Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress. How wise will it be in them by cherishing the union to preserve to themselves an advantage which can never be too highly prized!”

When the Federal government violates the Constitution, states are obligated to interpret an defend the Constitution. Madison and Jefferson did this with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and the Report of 1800. They did not provide a clear remedy. Proposed are: