In 1906, the Supreme Court case of Hale vs Henkel was decided. The case centered around whether or not the defendant, serving in his capacity as an officer of a corporation, had a right to claim 4th and 5th amendment protection from the court’s subpoenas for the corporation’s records. In the majority opinion, they attempted to make their point by contrasting the defendant’s standing as corporate officer with his standing as a private citizen. In so doing, they left a significant contribution to the fossil record of personal liberty in the United States.
Why do I refer to it as the fossil record? Because personal liberty is all but extinct in this country today, but it wasn’t always that way. And here, buried in an obscure, century-old, Supreme Court ruling, is a gleaming nugget of evidence of what liberty in this country used to mean:
The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to criminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.
Today, the Supreme Court hands down rubbish like Kelo, or ekes out a disappointing simple majority in a case like Heller. But there was a time, way back in the Mesozoic Era of freedom, that the Supreme Court would affirm what the rest of us already knew: you have the right to do whatever you want, unless or until it infringes upon the rights of another to do the same. Evidence of this attitude among modern Americans is very hard to find, indeed.