The above quote is from the Henry de Bracton. He wrote, "[The king] ought properly to yield to the law what the law has bestowed upon him, for the law makes him king." To claim that a ruler who ignores the law undermines his owns sovereignty would be dangerous today-- and Bracton lived in the 1200s.

Even though Bracton lived in 13th Century England, he somehow had a copy of Justinian's Institutes, written 800 years earlier in Byzantium. Bracton's treatise opens with a quote from Justinian: "The imperial majesty should be armed with laws as well as glorified with arms, that there may be good government in times both of war and of peace, and the ruler of Rome may not only be victorious over his enemies, but may show himself as scrupulously regardful of justice as triumphant over his conquered foes."

Although Bracton grounded himself in antiquity, he would have fit in with any American in 1776. According to the New Hampshire Bill of Rights, every citizen has a right to rise up and forcefully overthrow the government: "whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."

Augustine made the same point (though without the pithy rhyme) in a legendary exchange between Alexander the Great and a pirate. Alexander asked the pirate what he meant to accomplish by keeping hostile possession of the sea. The pirate replied, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?