The government class book / Designed for the instruction of youth in the principles of constitutional government and the rights and duties of citizens.

by Andrew W. Young

Common and Statutory Law.

Chapter XLVII.

Rights of Persons. Personal Security; Personal Liberty; Religious Liberty; Liberty of Speech, and of the Press; Right of Property.

§1. Having taken a general view of the state governments and the government of the United States, and seen how wisely they are adapted to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty; we proceed to give a digest of the laws which more particularly define the rights and prescribe the duties of citizens, or by which their social and civil intercourse is to be regulated. These laws, it will be recollected, we have elsewhere called the municipal or civil laws, as distinguished from the political or fundamental law of the state. (Chap. III, §6.)

§2. These laws are of two kinds, the written or statute law, and the unwritten or common law. Statute laws are those which are enacted by the legislature, and recorded in writing, and are usually collected and published in books. The word statute is from the Latin statuo, to set, fix, or establish.

§3. The common law is not a code of written laws enacted by a legislature, but consists of rules of action which have become binding from long usage and established custom. It is said to be founded in reason and the principles of justice. The common law of England was brought over by our ancestors, and established here before the revolution. Some of the states, in their constitutions, adopted after the revolution, declared it to be the law of their respective states; and it has continued to be law in all the states, and is still so considered, except such parts as have been altered or repealed by constitutional or legislative enactments, or by usage.

§4. The most valuable rights protected by law are the rights of personal security and personal liberty. The right of personal security is the right to be secure from injury to our persons or good names. By personal liberty is meant the freedom of our bodies or persons from restraint or confinement. Provisions guarantying these rights have been incorporated into our national constitution, and the constitutions of the several states.

§5. The right of personal security is also protected by the law, by which a man, on showing reasonable cause of danger of personal injury, may require his adversary to be bound with sureties to keep the peace. And for violence committed, the offender may be prosecuted in behalf of the state and punished, and is liable also to the party aggrieved in a civil suit for damages.

§6. This right is further protected by the law which permits a man to exercise the natural right of self-defense. In defending his person in case of a felonious assault, he may lawfully take the life of his assailant. This is by law pronounced justifiable homicide, and is allowed also in defense of one's property against felonious and violent injury. But homicide (man-killing) is not justifiable in case of a private injury, nor upon the pretense of necessity when the party is not free from fault in bringing that necessity upon himself.

§7. The right to be secure in our good names, which is included in the right of personal security, is protected by the law against slander and libel. A slander is a false and malicious report or statement tending to injure another in his reputation or business, and which, if true, would render him unworthy of confidence or employment; or it is the maliciously charging of another with anything by which he sustains special injury. The slander of a person by words spoken, is a civil injury, that is, an injury for which redress is to be obtained in a civil suit for damages.