# "In America the law is king" > [!quote] [[Thomas Paine]], *Common Sense*, January 1776 > "[W]here, say some, is the King of America? … [I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." ## Context *Common Sense* was published in Philadelphia on **January 10, 1776**, anonymously, and it did more than any other document to convert colonial grievance into a case for independence. Paine's argument was not that George III had governed badly. It was that hereditary monarchy was an absurd way to organise authority at all, and that the colonies should not replace one king with another. The passage answers an objection he expected: a people without a monarch has nothing to be loyal to. Paine's reply inverts the relationship. In an absolute government the king **is** the law — his will is what makes a thing lawful. In a free country the law occupies that position instead, and nothing else does. ## Why it matters This is the proposition the wiki measures claims of executive power against, which is why it keeps surfacing in arguments two and a half centuries later. Read next to [[Richard Nixon - when the president does it that means that it is not illegal]] the two statements are precise opposites, and Paine wrote the test case first: "as in absolute governments the King is law" is exactly the claim Nixon made in 1977 and exactly the one Paine said America was founded to reject. The same formulation is what independent counsel [[Lawrence Walsh]] reached for in 1992 when he said the Iran-Contra pardons undermined the principle that no man is above the law, and what is at stake in [[Trump v. United States]]. Paine's phrasing also carries a warning that is easy to miss. He says the law *ought* to be king — a thing to be maintained, not a condition automatically achieved by abolishing a throne. ## See Also - [[Thomas Paine]] · [[Common Sense]] · [[Rule of Law]] - [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]] · [[Trump v. United States]] - [[Lawrence Walsh]] · [[Appomattox]]