9 Rule of Law v Values

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Kings used to rule, or the church. Laws could be arbitrary & often were with no input from the people they affected. Often the rules were said to come from God, or through God's oracle, and there is no arguing with God. America explicitly rejected the rules of kings in the Declaration of Independence, and our concept of “separation of church & state” rejects rules from God. Instead The People make their own laws through representatives in congress.<br /><br />Also, none of us can be strictly held to any standard other than the ones specifically worded in the law. There are no publicly enforced unwritten rules & implicit obligations, so-called morals and ethics. The words of old dead men have no power over us. We are only subject to the Rule Of Law. Minus a contract in law, no one is entitled to anything, nor can people be obligated to do anything without explicit acceptance on their part.<br /><br />The source of authority of all of our laws is the Constitution, which was an agreement written at a time in history when events were ripe for its emergence. The Constitution was influenced by history up until that time and it has been modified by subsequent events. If you were born here, the contract embodied by the Constitution and laws that emerge from it are implicit, meaning you, personally, didn’t agree to abide by them, but your parents did, and by remaining in America, you are subject to the rule of law too. On-the-other-hand, immigrants to this country explicitly agree to abide by the laws of the United States, in fact, they swear to it.</p>