MK3|MK3Blog| Oct. 18, 2025
“An Act Against the Constitution is Void”
The American Revolution kicked off in 1761 with a single principle from James Otis Jr.: an unconstitutional law is NO LAW AT ALL.
Any government act exceeding its legitimate authority is void the moment it is passed. It has no more legal power than a law passed by a foreign government.
Call it what it is: usurpation, a theft of power. And stolen power is not to be obeyed, it is to be resisted.
HIERARCHY OF POWER
Government possesses no inherent power. It is a created agent, and as George Mason explained, any authority it holds comes from its boss: the people.
“All power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.”
The people didn’t just hand government a blank check. As John Jay made clear, they gave it the Constitution: a strict, enumerated list of what it is authorized to do.
“The proposed government is to be the government of the people; all its officers are to be their officers, and to exercise no rights but such as the people commit to them.”
This was so essential to the structure of the constitution they made it explicit with the Tenth Amendment, which Thomas Jefferson called the foundation of the entire system.
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’”
James Wilson then locked in this hierarchy of power: the people at the top, the Constitution as their instructions, and the government at the bottom.
“As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures; so the people are superior to our constitutions.”
USURPATION
That hierarchy reveals the crime. Thomas Paine distinguished legitimate, delegated authority from theft.
“All delegated power is trust. All assumed power is usurpation.”
Usurpation, by definition, is an exercise of unauthorized power. In essence, stealing power from those who rightly hold it, the people. A common dictionary definition of the era came from Thomas Sheridan’s 1789 A Complete Dictionary of the English Language:
“Forcible, unjust, illegal seizure or possession.”
A usurper is “One who seizes or possesses that to which he has no right.”
The Declaration of Independence demonstrates this view. Most people today refer to the list of charges against the king as “grievances.” But that word isn’t even in the document.
Instead, the founders used phrases like “A long train of abuses and usurpations” and “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations” to define their opposition to unconstitutional powers like the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, the Coercive Acts and so much more.
VOID
Usurpation justified a revolution, secession, and a long war for Independence. But the Founders knew any government could be just as dangerous. James Iredell issued the same warning against their own.
“Any law not warranted by the Constitution is a barefaced usurpation.”
St. George Tucker broadened it beyond just legislation to any exercise of power beyond constitutional limits.
“Every extension of the administrative authority beyond its just constitutional limits, is absolutely an act of usurpation.”
This is the legal doctrine of void ab initio. It’s a legal nullity from the beginning, and never rises to the level of law, and 3rd Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth applied that principle to the constitution.
“If they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void.”
As James Wilson made clear, this means government has no legal authority to enforce such acts.
“That a void act can confer no authority upon those, who proceed under colour of it, is a self evident proposition.”
In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson took no prisoners. A usurpation of power – an unconstitutional law – is no law at all.
“Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
Even Alexander Hamilton took this position on the supremacy clause. Only acts in pursuance of delegated constitutional powers are supreme.
“But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land.”
PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE
The obvious objection to all this: government doesn’t care about theory or constitutional principles. They’ll do what they want anyway.
Hamilton continued with the practical application – acts beyond the limits of the constitution don’t stop themselves.
“These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.”
Complying with stolen power just encourages more theft. That’s why James Iredell explained that a free people would resist any such acts.
“The people will resist if government usurps power not delegated to it.”
Roger Sherman explained how that works in a union of states under the Constitution.
When the people refuse to comply, and the states back them up, there’s not much the feds can do to shove their so-called “laws,” regulations and orders down our throats.
“All acts of the Congress not warranted by the constitution would be void. Nor could they be enforced contrary to the sense of a majority of the States.”
That’s constitutional enforcement in action: people refuse, states end enforcement, federal overreach fails.
James Otis helped launch the Revolution on one foundational principle: unconstitutional acts do not rise to the level of “law.” The fiery Anti-Federalist Luther Martin tied it all together: When government steals unauthorized power, resistance is duty.
“By the principles of the American revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted.”