Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

including the Derys’ son, were able to delay the government’s confiscation of their homes. In the meantime, Wilhelmina got her wish and died in the house she had been born in eighty-eight years earlier.3

Susette Kelo, the named plaintiff in Kelo v. New London, stated, “There is no amount of money that could replace our homes and our memories. This is where we chose to settle, and this is where we want to stay. This is America, the home of the free, isn’t it?”4 Kelo’s poignant words make a very meaningful point: What ever did happen to the freedom to enjoy happiness on your own property?

That right to enjoy your own property derives from Natural Law, and Natural Law teaches that human freedom extends from human nature, which originates with God. So under Natural Law, legislatures have unwritten limitations imposed on them because human gifts that come from God are greater than government powers based on consensus, whim, fear, or force.

Under Natural Law, our fundamental rights—like freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom of religion, etc.—cannot be taken away by the government, unless it follows procedural due process. Due process means that we knew before we violated the law that the government would prosecute, that we were fully notified by the government of the charges against us, and that we had a fair trial with a lawyer before a neutral judge and jury. It also means that we can challenge the government’s evidence against us by summoning persons and evidence that support our case, that the government must prove its accusations against us beyond a reasonable doubt, and that we are given the right to appeal to another neutral court. Under the Natural Law, only by following procedural due process can the government deprive us of our Natural Law rights.5

Numerous intellectuals throughout history have espoused the Natural Law. Sophocles, Aristotle, and Cicero; Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke; Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas, and Pope John Paul II, all recognized the existence and immutability of Natural Law. As Aristotle put it, “one part of what is politically just is natural, and the other part is legal.” If you fast forward a little bit, transcendental thinker Henry David Thoreau argued in his famous essay, Civil Disobedience, that people should follow their own consciences over what the government purports to be right. Civil Disobedience was published in the mid-1800s, a time when slavery was legal and America was in the midst of a war with Mexico. Throughout the text Thoreau emphasized that through the refusal to accept passively what the government actively tells us, the individual chooses to obey his own morality.6

The underlying message of these philosophers still holds true today within the context of Natural Law. Certain rights are inalienable and implicit within our humanity, regardless of whether they are written down on paper. Among these natural rights are the right to life, to self-expression, to worship, to the use and enjoyment of one’s own property, the ability to contract, and the right to reap the benefits of one’s own labor; and the right to be left alone.

Not only is the right to your own property implicit through the doctrine of Natural Law, but it is also a concept closely tied to the achievement of the American Dream. The familiar white picket fences, lawns, and cars in the garage are the material things and the consequent set of values that the government threatens through infringing upon our natural rights. If I own the brain inside my head and the fingers on the ends of my hands, then I own what they together have conceived, created, and built, be it a book or a house.

Despite Natural Law rights, the government skulks its way into our homes, businesses, kitchens, and even our backyards (literally). However, courageous people have struggled to keep a grasp on their personal liberties in spite of the government’s powerful encroachment upon them.

Your Home Is Your Castle

You may think that once you pay for your house, it is actually yours, and no one can take it away from you. But, guess what? The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifies that the government may take private property for “public use,” so long as the government pays the private owner “just compensation” for it, otherwise known as using eminent domain. The Jeffersonians argued that any use of eminent domain should not be permitted under any circumstance; namely, that only by mutual consent and a fair bargain, but never against your will, could the government end up owning your property. Conversely, the Hamiltonians argued that the government could take any land it wants for free, just like the British kings at one time could and did.

In one New Jersey Supreme Court decision, taking the Hamiltonian position to the extreme, Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz stated, “The basis for the constitutional obligation is simple: the State controls the use of land, all of the land”7 (emphasis in original). This alarming use of state power discussed by the late Chief Justice is exactly the type of action the Constitution was expressly meant to limit. The New Jersey governor who appointed Wilentz as Chief Justice (and who also appointed me to the Superior Court of New Jersey) called this opinion “socialist.”8

Traditionally, a government taking has meant that if someone’s house stood where the government planned a roadway or a post office or a school, the person would be forced to move in order to accommodate the public project, and the government would pay the owner for the market value of the vacated property. The only issues between the government that coveted the private property and the owner of the private property traditionally have been “when” will the government get the property and “how much” will the government pay. Since Jefferson lost the argument in which he asserted that a taking must be fully consensual, the “whether” the government can get the property has rarely been in dispute. Originally, these