19th Century
Lysander Spooner
1808–1887 · Individualist anarchism
A constitution is a contract, and the enslaved never signed it.
In their words
“Vices are not crimes.”
Spooner argued against slavery from the logic of consent, founded the American Letter Mail Company to compete with the postal monopoly, and in No Treason dismissed the claim that a nation can be bound by a document no living person signed. He held that judges, juries and governments all lose legitimacy when they claim authority apart from the consent of the governed.
Why it matters for freedom
He argued the Constitution binds no living person who never signed it, which is the consent argument taken to its end.
Who they stood against
the postal monopoly, the Fugitive Slave Law, and every court that invented its own authority