American Principles
What Is the Proper Role of Government?
Government is a universal part of the human condition, from village and tribal elders to modern republics with their complex court systems, parliaments, congresses, and codes of law. Along humanity’s long upward climb from the chiefs and elders that presided over even the most primitive bands of aboriginals, government has assumed forms of increasing complexity, reach, and splendor. The ledgers of history are replete with despots petty and great, from local autocrats to the founders of great empires such as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. Some of these imperial powers — Babylon, Achaemenid Persia, and the various Chinese dynasties, for example — achieved considerable longevity, shored up by sophisticated legal codes and a capacity for ruthless efficiency in enforcing them.
Occasionally, men, moved by the belief that government should not be all-powerful, have tried to frame laws that define and limit the powers of government. Such were the 12 Tables of Roman Law and the English Magna Carta. Such, too, is the U.S. Constitution, which makes explicit the powers delegated by the people and the states to the federal government, with the proviso — spelled out in the 10th Amendment — that all powers not granted to the federal government were to be retained by the people and by the states.
Since the framing of the U.S. Constitution, many other countries have followed the American example in creating written constitutions of their own to define the powers of the state.
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