# John Adams — "a government of laws, and not of men" > [!quote] "In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws, and not of men." > — John Adams, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Part the First, Article XXX, 1780 ## Context Adams was the principal drafter of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution — the oldest written constitution still in force anywhere in the world, and a direct model for the U.S. Constitution seven years later. The phrase, which Adams had also used in his 1775 *Novanglus* essays, ties the rule of law explicitly to the separation of powers: government becomes "of laws, not of men" precisely because no single actor may hold all three powers at once. ## Why this matters The single most quoted formulation of the rule of law in the American canon, written by a Founder and a president. "A government of laws, and not of men" is the phrase later presidents — Kennedy, Ford — would reach for in moments when the principle was under threat. Adams locates its guarantee in structure, not virtue: the law rules only where power is divided and checked. That makes this quote the conceptual opposite of [[Unitary Executive Theory]] in its maximalist form, which concentrates power in a single executive will. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Constitution of 1780](https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/commonwealth-museum/exhibits/treasures/constitution.htm). The full constitutional text is also published by the Massachusetts General Court (malegislature.gov/Laws/Constitution). - **Status:** Verbatim from the constitutional text (Article XXX). Undisputed; Adams's authorship of the phrase is well documented. ## Related quotes - [[George Washington - compliance with its laws]] — the same founding-era commitment, stated as a duty of citizenship. - [[John F. Kennedy - no man is entitled to defy a court]] — Adams's exact phrase, invoked in a 1962 constitutional crisis. - [[Gerald Ford - our Constitution works]] — the phrase again, at the close of Watergate. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]].