Whether the laws of the country are all in conformity with the natural law, and therefore, truly laws; or whether they infringe that law, and therefore operate, as St Thomas says, as a species of violence, and can, or must, be disobeyed, is not canvassed here.
http://www.superflumina.org/bill_of_rights.html#_ftn34
The thing about the American “Bill Of Rights,” which is so often forgotten, is that it is not a bill of rights. It is a list of restrictions on a particular government, superfluous and potentially damaging indeed because it is in the context of a document that provides explicit powers with limitations with the exclusion of all else not mentioned. It is not a document intending to establish a laundry list of positive human rights.
Yes, but isn’t the Bill of Rights necessary for so much judicial precedent? It helped to outline boundaries that certain founders believed were not to be over-stepped. What other way do you propose that this could have been accomplished?
I don’t know… I mean, the entire legal system in the nascent United States was operating off the basis of the ages-old English common law, which everyone knew at the time. I doubt the forefathers could have foreseen how our times when NOBODY knows the law or where it comes from. Ultimately it IS up to the people to make sure their institutions, including governments, obey the law of the land and natural law.