President Trump has imposed a series of exceptional tariffs on all kinds of imported goods, all without consulting Congress or even the Senate, claiming authority to declare an international economic emergency under the IEEPA, and declaring a national security need for other tariffs, including goods that have no obvious national security role such as household furniture.
We say that all Americans have a fundamental rights that are being violated by these actions, that include the right to no taxation without representation, no taxation without due process of law, the right to own property, the right to self-government and the right to rule of law.
Our objection is not to tariffs themselves, but to their being imposed unilaterally by the President, rather than by a law enacted by Congress and signed by the President.
There are several lawsuits against the President’s tariffs, filed in the Spring and heading to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, and while we agree with their basic arguments, they do not make the case that the President’s actions violate fundamental rights. This is a cause for concern.
The Due Process Clause of the Bill of Rights declares that “No person shall.. be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law“. While courts have held that, as taxes are every citizens responsibility, no particular judicial “process” is required to make taxes mandatory, we say it is obvious that due process “of law” requires a law, and that executive orders are not law. There is no such principle as due process “of executive orders” and no principle called equal treatment “under the President’s orders.” For the President to order Customs to collect a tax that the law does not require us to pay is a direct denial of our fundamental rights, and must be stopped. All the money must be returned.
Every declaration of rights since the Magna Carta has included a similar statement protecting the people from taxes imposed by the executive; the meaning of these is that the American people do not have to pay taxes that are not enacted into law.
Current Statements of Policy
- IRS, “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights”
https://www.irs.gov/taxpayer-bill-of-rights - “Taxpayers have the right to pay only the amount of tax legally due, including interest and penalties, and to have the IRS apply all tax payments properly.”
American Caselaw on Taxes and Due Process of Law
- While courts have determined that taxation does not require any particular judicial process, every case brought has involved taxes that were enacted into laws. Unlike the current tariffs by executive orders, where the law in question clearly does not require anyone to pay any particular tariff or tax.
The Bill of Rights, Fifth Amendment, Due Process Clause
- “No person shall.. be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law“
Early American Law Books
Kent’s Commentaries on American Law
*331, 332: Every person is entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of his property, not only from invasions of it by individuals, but from all unequal and undue assessments on the part of government. It is not sufficient that no tax or imposition can be imposed upon the citizens, but by their representatives in the legislature. The citizens are entitled to require that the legislature itself shall cause all public taxation to be fair and equal in proportion to the value of property, so that no one class of individuals, and no one species of property, may be unequally or unduly assessed.
Early State Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
Most of the thirteen original states enacted their own constitutions and declarations of rights, before the federal Constitutional Convention in 1787, and before the Ratification Debates and eventual ratification, and before the Bill of Rights was written in the first Congress of 1789. Some of these used stronger and more specific language to protect property and set limits on how taxes were to be determined. In many cases the same people wrote these documents and ratified them as the federal Constitution. Once we realize this, we must consider whether the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights in any way actually repeal the rights the people of the individual states protected for themselves, or whether these rights are still protected.
New York Bill of Rights, 1787
The New York Bill of Rights is a constitutional bill of rights first enacted in 1787 as a statute, and then as part of the state’s constitution in 1881 in the U.S. state of New York. Today, the New York Bill of Rights can be found in Article I of the New York State Constitution and offers broader protections than the federal Bill of Rights. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Twelfth That no tax duty aid or imposition whatsoever shall be taken or levied within this State without the grant and assent of the people of this State by their representatives in senate and assembly and that no citizen of this State shall be by any means compelled to contribute to any gift loan tax or other like charge not set laid or imposed by the legislature of this State: And further, that no citizen of this State shall be constrained to arm himself or to go out of this State or to find soldiers or men of arms either horsemen or footmen, if it be not by assent and grant of the people of this State by their representatives in senate and assembly.
Notice how the protection about taxes is accompanied by the same protection against conscription of citizens into an army. Both actions are made invalid unless done by the legislature, that is, by law.
Massachusetts Constitution, 1780
Art. XXIII. No subsidy, charge, tax, impost, or duties, ought to be established, fixed, laid, or levied, under any pretext whatsoever, without the consent of the people, or their representatives in the legislature.
The Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, makes it clear that there can be no delegating the taxing power to anyone but the legislature.
Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776
Section 6. …and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good
Section 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.
Section 7’s protection against suspending laws or the execution of same, speaks to the importance to Virginians of the rule of law, and shows that the rights of the people are to be maintained even in emergency situations.
Continental Congresses
First Continental Congress, 1774
On the 14th of October, Congress made a declaration, and framed resolves, relative to the rights and grievances of the colonies.
On the same day, Congress unanimously resolved, “that the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage according to the course of that law.” They further resolved, “that they were entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization, and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several and local circumstances.” They also resolved, that their ancestors, at the time of their immigration, were “entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities, of free and natural-born subjects within the realms of England.”
The Stamp Act Congress, 1765
2d. That His Majesty’s liege subjects in these colonies are entitled to all the inherent rights and privileges of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great Britain.
3d. That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted rights of Englishmen, that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.
Founding-era Law Books
Blackstone’s Commentaries on English Law, 1765
The most widely read and used compendium of English law available in the founding era.
§ 191. (iii) Right of private property: law of the land.—The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property: which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land.
§ 193. (bb) Taxation and representation.—[140] Nor is this the only instance in which the law of the land has postponed even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property. For no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes, even for the defense of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representatives in parliament. By the statute 25 Edw. I, c. 5 and 6 (Taxation, 1297), it is provided that the king shall not take any aids or tasks, but by the common assent of the realm. And what that common assent is, is more fully explained by 34 Edw. I, st. 4, c. 1 (Taxation, 1306), which enacts, that no talliage or aid shall be taken without the assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land: and again, by 14 Edw. III, st. 2, c. 1 (Taxation, 1340), the prelates, earls, barons, and commons, citizens, burgesses, and merchants shall not be charged to make any aid, if it be not by the common assent of the great men and commons in parliament. And as this fundamental law had been shamefully evaded under many suc-
Colonial Charters
The first thing to note is that all of the colonial charters tied the colonies to English law, and granted the colonists the same rights as natural born Englishmen; and therefore all of the rights listed in the English Constitution documents, the English Declaration of Rights, Petition of Right, and the Magna Carta, were in effect throughout the colonial era. And as shown above, the colonists valued these rights very highly and wrote them in to their own constitutions and declarations of rights.
Pre-Independence England Philosophers
John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 1689
Sect. 140. It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them: for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government: for what property have I in that, which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?
Major English Constitutional Documents
The Declaration of Rights, 1689
That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;
That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
The Petition of Right, 1628
Humbly show unto our Sovereign Lord the King, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in Parliament assembles, that whereas it is declared and enacted by a statute made in the time of the reign of King Edward I, commonly called Statutum de Tallagio non Concedendo, that no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by the king or his heirs in this realm, without the good will and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm; and by authority of parliament holden in the five-and-twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III, it is declared and enacted, that from thenceforth no person should be compelled to make any loans to the king against his will, because such loans were against reason and the franchise of the land; and by other laws of this realm it is provided, that none should be charged by any charge or imposition called a benevolence, nor by such like charge; by which statutes before mentioned, and other the good laws and statutes of this realm, your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge not set by common consent, in parliament.
Rights Over Rules 
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