A Bar applicant publicly objects to swearing an oath to support the Constitution
Granted, this letter was written in 1835, prior to the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Then again, we now have the 16th Amendment.
From Lysander Spooner’s Letter to the Members of the Legislature of Massachusetts:
In the first place, I object to the oath to bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth, and to support the Constitution. The right of rebelling against what I may think a bad government, is as much my right as it is of the other citizens of the Commonwealth, and there is no reason why lawyers should be singled out and deprived of this right. My being a friend or an avowed enemy of the constitution has nothing to do with the argument of a cause for a client, or with any other of my professional labors, and therefore it is nothing but tyranny to require of me an oath to support the constitution, as a condition of my being allowed the ordinary privileges for getting my living in the way I choose. It will be soon enough, after I shall have been convicted of treason, to refuse me the common privileges, or take from me the common rights of a citizen to decry and expose the character of the constitution, and if possible to bring it into contempt and abhorrence in the minds of the people, without forfeiting any of the ordinary privileges of citizens – and the recognition of this right constitutes one of the greatest safe guards of the public liberty. And if any one class of men, the moment they attempt to prove that our constitution is not a good one, and ought to be abolished, are to be denied any of the ordinary rights and privileges of citizens, then has that class been singled out for the especial tyranny of the government. There would be just as much propriety in requiring a farmer to take an oath to support the constitution, as a condition of his being allowed the privilege of being allowed to enter his deed of record in a public recording office, as there is in requiring it of me, as a condition of my being allowed the privileges of an attorney. There would also be the same propriety in requiring this oath of the members of a manufacturing corporation, as a condition precedent to their receiving an act of incorporation, as there is in requiring it of me.
Follow
