Guest Essayist: William C. Duncan, Director of the Marriage Law Foundation

It is a commonplace to trace the origins of the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances to Magna Carta in 1215. There, Barons displeased with King John’s pretension to absolute, forced him to agree to specific limitations on his authority in deference to that of the nobility. Chapter 61 of the Great Charter (http://www.constitution.org/eng/magnacar.htm) provides:

Since, moveover, for God and the amendment of our kingdom and for the better allaying of the quarrel that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these concessions, desirous that they should enjoy them in complete and firm endurance forever, we give and grant to them the underwritten security, namely, that the barons choose five and twenty barons of the kingdom, whomsoever they will, who shall be bound with all their might, to observe and hold, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted and confirmed to them by this our present Charter, so that if we, or our justiciar, or our bailiffs or any one of our officers, shall in anything be at fault towards anyone, or shall have broken any one of the articles of this peace or of this security, and the offense be notified to four barons of the foresaid five and twenty, the said four barons shall repair to us (or our justiciar, if we are out of the realm) and, laying the transgression before us, petition to have that transgression redressed without delay. [Emphasis added]

Philip Kurland and Ralph Lerner’s invaluable The Founders’ Constitution contains in its section on the First Amendment the report (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_assemblys6.html) of the 1688 “Trial of the Seven Bishops for Publishing a Libel.” The bishops were accused of libel when they attempted to petition King James II in protest of his declaration of limited religious freedom for Catholics and other dissenters from the Church of England. They were found not guilty after a trial in the Court of King’s Bench in which Justice Holloway told the jury:

Gentlemen, the end and intention of every action is to be considered; and likewise, in this case, we are to consider the nature of the offence that these noble persons are charged with; it is for delivering a petition, which, according as they have made their defence, was with all the humility and decency that could be: so that if there was no ill intent, and they were not (as it is not, nor can be pretended they were) men of evil lives, or the like, to deliver a petition cannot be a fault, it being the right of every subject to petition. If you are satisfied there was an ill intention of sedition, or the like, you ought to find them guilty: but if there be nothing in the case that you find, but only that they did deliver a petition to save themselves harmless, and to free themselves from blame, by shewing the reason of their disobedience to the king’s command, which they apprehended to be a grievance to them, and which they could not in conscience give obedience to, I cannot think it is a libel: it is left to you, gentlemen, but that is my opinion.

The 1689 Bill of Rights (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1689billofrights.asp) explicitly protected “the right of the subjects to petition the king” and said “all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.”

By the time the first amendments to the new United States Constitution were being considered in 1789, the right to petition was well established in U.S. practice. The colonies had widely recognized and employed the right of citizens to petition their government. The Declaration of Independence (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html) singled out the Crown’s treatment of colonists’ petitions for redress (“Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”) in its list of grievances. The debate over the initial proposal of the First Amendment recognition “that these rights belonged to the people” and the drafters “conceived them to be inherent; and all that they meant to provide was against their being infringed by the government.” The First Amendment’s explicit protection of the right from Congressional interference was not a novel development.

After John Quincy Adams left the presidency in 1829, he became embroiled in the most significant right of petition controversy in U.S. history. He had been elected to Congress and began presenting petitions in behalf of citizens calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In the 1830s, a swelling number of petitions from abolitionists were being presented to Congress and the practice at that time of considering all petitions made the growing number seem unmanageable to some. Additionally, defenders of slavery preferred to silence the clamor over the terrible practice. In 1836, Congress adopted (117-68) a resolution: “That all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating in any way or to any extent whatever, to the subject of slavery, or to the abolition of slavery, shall, without being printed or referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon.” Adams called this new “gag rule” “a direct violation of the constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the rights of my constituents” and worked for eight years to see it repealed. In 1844, Representative Adams moved a resolution to revoke the rule (which had become a standing rule in 1840) that was adopted 108-80. This marked the high water mark of petitioning and in the aftermath, the right was “little exercised in the aftermath of the gag rule.” David C. Frederick, “John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Right of Petition” 9 Law & History Review 113 (Spring 1991).

These stories trace in broad outlines the “rise and fall” of the petition right; more accurately, the slow development, acceptance and constitutionalization, and relatively swift descent into disuse of this valuable right. Since the antebellum period, the right of petition has been largely neglected, though it is occasionally the subject of litigation and the U.S. Supreme Court decided a petition clause case, Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, in 2011 (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1476.pdf).

Joseph Story describes the petition right as resulting “from the very nature of [the] structure and institutions” of “a republican government.” (Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, vol. 3, §1887 at http://www.constitution.org/js/js_344.htm) This comment may provide a clue to the relative disuse of the right since the Civil War. With the extension of the franchise to more and more Americans, the ability to directly communicate desires and disapproval to elected representatives by voting and through political parties, has probably eclipsed the importance of petitioning. Coupled with the enhanced status of the right of free speech and advances in communications technology, which fill many of the practical roles (such as providing information to legislatures and allowing citizens to express their opinions) that formal petitions served, the practice of petitioning Congress is not likely to make a resurgence.

This is not to say that the principles it protected are not still vital. The tendency of courts and the executive branch to make decisions previously understood to be only the province of the legislature, threaten the principles of representative government and can serve to exclude all but the most well-connected from influencing government. A proper understanding of what the right to petition was meant to protect could be a helpful spur to citizens to insist that its spirit—the ability of citizens to affect the legislative process—be respected and re-enthroned as a foundation of constitutional government.

William C. Duncan is director of the Marriage Law Foundation. He formerly served as acting director of the Marriage Law Project at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and as executive director of the Marriage and Family Law Research Grant at J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, where he was also a visiting professor.

March 1, 2012 

Essay #9

3 replies
  1. Marc W. Stauffer
    Marc W. Stauffer says:

    This, to me, is the perfect example of “The Peoples” need to be directly involved with and well informed of their governments activities. We have the power to shape our government and it seems to me as if our Founders placed that ability in our hands with this right. Our form of governance takes time and effort. Maybe, “WE the People” need to take this right in hand and redress some of the grievances we have with today’s government and their law making.

    Reply
  2. Alan Paris
    Alan Paris says:

    The courts have been corrupt for many decades with judges legislating from the bench about laws that Congress never had the power to write in the first place. It is time that we get back to the Constitution and Bill of rights as they were written. If there is a large enough need to change the Constitution, there is a process to do so… amending the Constitution to reflect a national desire to do so is the law of the land. it is time to throw any in Congress who do not support this out. Vote in people will support and defend the Constitution as written, and throw out all laws not passed with the Constitution used as the guiding law. Then start impeaching judges who even try to legislate from the bench. Currently Washington politicians seem only to care about their own riches and and the riches of their political cronies. The Supreme Court is as corrupted as the Congress. Impeach them all and start over with judges who will not legislate from the bench and throw laws back to Congress that do not pass muster under the Constitution.

    Reply
  3. Ralph T. Howarth, Jr.
    Ralph T. Howarth, Jr. says:

    This is an example of a precept in the federal constitution that is so arcane yet relevant that a thirteen year old can read the federal constitution for themselves and get an idea in their head: Hey, I can petition the government for xxx yyy. Then ask their parents around and get nothing but blank stairs back on the question: How do I petition the government a redress of grievances. Better yet, go knock on the door of the, oh, the local mayor’s office and ask the question. Then there is the mystery and consultation of paralegals, lawyers and experts to just find out what form or venue must be used to make such a petition. And nobody has a clue just what department, et.al., is responsible.

    Reply

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