Navigation Be a Constitutional Lawyer
Jim Vickaryous
Shivering immigrants argue bitterly in a battered ship. It’s a damp and dark Northern Atlantic November day. Blown off course, providentially they shelter in a bay at the finger of Cape Cod. A man asserts that the law no longer applies, as they are hundreds of leagues north of their intended destination. The proto-anarchist states with legal accuracy that their royal charter does not apply to this winter wilderness. A man with military bearing rises to speak. Calming the angry passengers, he concedes that the charter is null and void. The veteran gives his rebuttal: considering their common peril, he proposes that all agree to a compact binding them together for their common good and defense. It is 1620. All 41 male Pilgrim passengers of the battered carrack Mayflower agree to combine,”… together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation.” Col. William Bradford, the handsome veteran of England’s long civil wars, convinced the group that having a constitution, even if only one paragraph, was better than anarchy. Common preservation is often the best argument.
Perhaps it was meant to be that the Mayflower Compact was signed on a cold winter day by a group of lost men. Lasting constitutions are rarely deliberated, drafted, and signed in good times. A great constitution is the result of struggle and a sober effort to maintain a balance between man’s inner yearning for freedom and guardrails to curb the excesses of men who don’t respect the freedom of others. It was the first example in our country’s history of a group of people creating a constitution for themselves to live by.
