If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, and resist its oppressions, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the fundamental role of juries in ensuring that laws are just and that the government's power is checked by the authority of the people.
Lysander Spooner's quote highlights the crucial function of a jury in a just legal system, suggesting that if juries cannot evaluate the actions of the government against the rights of individuals, then the government operates with unchecked authority. This circumstance leads to the oppression of the populace, equating it to a form of slavery where citizens lack the power to challenge or resist unjust laws, thus reinforcing the importance of civic responsibility and the protection of individual rights.
In practice
During a talk on civil liberties, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of the jury system in protecting individual freedoms.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that-however bloody-can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.
Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.
I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs -- there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.
Men of principle are sure to be bold,_x000D_ but those who are bold may not always be men of principle.
All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
We still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong... this is the reason.
When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.
The lapse of ages changes all things - time - language - the earth - the bounds of the sea - the stars of the sky, and everything 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.
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